IT Homelab

[Fishy]

Ditched the Debian snap subsonic install and tried a conventional Ubuntu Java/ subsonic install and it worked no probs.. also moved my media box from windows/ air video to Ubuntu / Jellyfin media server.. all working well with a smaller footprint..
I think Ubuntu is my favourite Linux flavour at the mo but still got my raspberry pis doing pi hole dns and uptime kuma monitoring.. I know I'm only scratching the surface but getting to grips a bit more with Linux

[Fishy]

Good to see the vpn back to home is working well.. music streaming from the new Linux box is spot on

[pxr5]

^ Same here (I'm in a cottage in the Cotswolds). Airsonic is working well as is Jellyfin - we are watching the TV Show: Interview with a Vampire from my home server (I took a Firestick with me, but the TV in the cottage is an LG so I could have out Jellyfin on that). The broadband here is crap though, 11 mbps, but it steams 1080p just fine. I'm also trying Tailscale which is great too, but needs to be installed on the Host and Client - so it's on my music NAS and phone.

I'm also watching our house through a Hikvision CCTV system and a Blink doorbell camera. Also a few cheapy cameras secreted around the house inside.

[Fishy]

I got Blueiris setup for my cams.. moved over from xpenology which worked ok but Blueiris has a ton more functionality..

[Fishy]

Moved my media over to Linux mint and Jellyfin..

[Fishy]

Moved my dhcp over to an Ubuntu Server box... think I've only got a couple of windows VMs left..

Moved my windows torrent box over to a Linux mint with qBitTorrent

Few housekeeping things today....
Patch my veeam backup and replication box
Esxi hosts patched to latest rdlease
Aruba APs updated to latest firmware
Re-instated my dietpi vm pihole DNS to give me some resilience
 Think I'll let all my new shiny Linux boxes bed in and see how they do..

[pxr5]

I've just bought a little Mini PC. I've always had a 'main' computer in my house - something that sits on a desk with big monitors, speakers etc., that used to be used mainly for gaming. I don't game anymore, but it's still there for downloading stuff from usenet and I do all my finance stuff on it. So not much really. Not wife friendly either, so my missus is happy to see it go and replaced with something tiny.

Anyway I've bought this little Minix Z100-0db - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CPLQWN73?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details - I chose this one for 2 reasons: it's dead silent (no fans) so I can stick it in the living room under the TV; also the brand (Minix) - I have an Android box (Minix Neo X-8H Plus) that I bought in 2015 and is still going strong. It doesn't support UHD but apart from that works brilliantly with Kodi. So Minix is a well supported and trusted brand that I like.

Like I said I'll set it up and put it under the TV and access it through VNC or the like. It comes with Win 11 Pro, but I may put Proxmox on it and run some VMs/Docker for Jellyfin, SABnzbd, Airsonic etc. I might sack off my Raspberry Pis too and use this instead and possibly move the containers from one of my Synology NAS to it as well - decisions, decisions.

[Slim]

I have two of these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08G4GNR4D

Installed them as headless Linux servers to run VMs for work, but in the end I only used one of them. They were handy but I didn't claim them on expenses because it might have invited questions about conformance to security policy. So I've still got them. Not sure what to do with them!

[Fishy]

I have two of these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08G4GNR4D

Installed them as headless Linux servers to run VMs for work, but in the end I only used one of them. They were handy but I didn't claim them on expenses because it might have invited questions about conformance to security policy. So I've still got them. Not sure what to do with them!

Kinda limited if they only have 8 gb RAM...

[Slim]

Kinda limited if they only have 8 gb RAM...

It's been more than enough to run two server VMs. Actually the server that this site runs on has 1G RAM:

root:~# free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache  available
Mem:            954        361          68          45        523        351
Swap:          1023        379         644
root:~#

Interesting that it's swapping, I didn't expect that.

8G would be more than enough for a Linux desktop for email, browsing etc. But I don't really need a second computer for that. My usual desktop PC has 16G, but it's only using 5G at the moment.

I may move the BTW server to OCI at some point soon. It's in AWS at the moment which I like and works great but OCI is cheaper and should work just as well. Will see how much a 2G VM costs.

[Fishy]

Yeah you certainly get more bang for you buck with Linux in terms of memory.. I'fe saved quite a bit on the windows vm boxes that were running various things that are now Linux..

[pxr5]

So I've got this MiniPC all set up now. It's under the TV and connected to it, but I mainly access it headless. I messed around for ages with RealVNC, AnyDesk, NoMachine and whilst they work, they're not ideal for running video or trying to operate Word/Excel. I'd just about resigned myself to this limitation when I did a quick google for the fastest remote access. Of course I should have realised that Microsoft's own Remote Desktop Manager would be better. Luckily the Mini PC came with Win 11 Pro (which is needed for Remote Desktop) and was so easy to set up. It's that good it's like being on the PC locally - even 4K video is smooth.

I've now set up a parallel Jellyfin server on it and the N100 Alder Lake processor has a great iGPU that can transcode pretty much anything. It will even do 4K Dolby Vision to a remote client smoothly.

As it's fanless and the case is effectively a heatsink it gets hot, very hot. This is normal according to Minix but I'm not keen - though I could fry an egg on it sometime lol

So far I'm impressed; for a couple of hundred pounds.

[Fishy]

An update to my 2 Esxi hosts and vcenter..

[Slim]

I've just started up one of my mini Ubuntu servers. Previously I used it as a gateway to the site-site VPN used by several of our customers when I worked for a living. So just for fun I thought I'd check that they've disabled it, but ..

minako ~> fortistart
started at Sat 17 Aug 14:32:21 UTC 2024
INFO:  Connected to gateway.
INFO:  Authenticated.
INFO:  Remote gateway has allocated a VPN.
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1
INFO:  Got addresses: [192.168.8.128], ns [172.27.8.4, 172.27.8.5]
INFO:  negotiation complete
INFO:  negotiation complete
local  IP address 192.168.8.128
remote IP address 192.0.2.1
INFO:  Interface ppp0 is UP.
INFO:  Setting new routes...
INFO:  Adding VPN nameservers...
INFO:  Tunnel is up and running.

Oops!

I was even able to ssh as root onto a customer production server. Seven weeks after I left that job.

Needless to say I logged out straightaway. I've sent one of the senior security guys who's a contact on LinkedIn a friendly note.

[pxr5]

Another RPi added to my home set up. A Pi5 this time to go with the 3b+ and 4 I have already. These new RPi 5s are so much quicker than the older models. They also have a single lane PCIe 2.0 connector, so I've bunged on an M.2 hat for an NVMe SSD and it's fair whizzing along. They can even take a PCIe graphics card. Not sure what to do with it yet thoug - haha, but all in with the case/active fan/psu/M.2 hat/ssd was less than £100. And the fun is setting it all up and fiddling.