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DigitalDilemma

@ digdilem @lemmy.ml

Posts
5
Comments
773
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Trump Strikes 'Biggest Deal Ever' With EU: Zero Tariffs for US, 15% for Europe

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  • American consumers will be paying 15% extra tax for goods from Europe and this is a win?

  • 1 big SSD or multiple? New NAS build.

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  • so something like RAID 4, 5, 6, or 10 is a great start.

    Sorry - whilst most of your advice is great, this is a bit misleading.

    • RAID 4 is very rarely used. It's not a particularly safe or efficient use of striping, and was replaced by 5 shortly after it was invented.
    • RAID 5 itself is now strongly discouraged for large arrays. (Google, "don't use raid 5 for large arrays" for literally millions of pages explaining this, but it basically boils down to; "If a drive fails, the chance of a second drive failing whilst rebuilding is very high")

    But 6 is good if you've got enough drives and 10 (1+0) is also a fairly well regarded method for arrays of equal-numbered arrays.

  • 1 big SSD or multiple? New NAS build.

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  • I'm confused that you're talking of buying 20tb SSDs - you must be very rich. Spinny drives are more usually used in homelab archive RAIDs since they are more cost effective at large size and RAID offsets some of the slowness associated with them. I'm going to assume you meant HDDs not SSDs, but the advice applies to both if I'm wrong about that.

    Yes, you will want to RAID them. That gives some protection against individual drive failure, and yes, absolutely that is a concern. Whilst the chance of drives failing these days is less than it was, they still do fail without warning, even when relatively new, and because of the bigger sizes, the consequences are greater.

    The alternative to RAID is JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) which means lots of individual drives being presented, each with their true size, in multiple shares. Most folk don't want that.

    What RAID level you choose depends on:

    1. How many drives you fit. 4+ is good, and "more smaller" is better than "fewer larger" for safety, although the compromise is an extra 10watts or so of power per drive.
    2. Current best practice; Don't use RAIDs 0 or 5 on large arrays. (0 means exponential increase of data loss. 5 is strongly discouraged due to rebuild times of large disks) 6 is good if you have enough disks. 1+0 (mirrored and striped) is reasonable, and the choice I made for mine.
    3. The hardware you're using. Whether a linux PC or a bespoke NAS tool. Whilst the RAID levels are similar, the tools used vary a lot.

    Notes:

    • Also, be realistic about the space you need. Don't over-size. Plan for 3-5 years growth, by then you'll be wanting to change because of speed changes or drive failure.
    • Some raid types slow down writing of data, some speed it up. Most are much faster at READing data.
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels gives some explanation of the types.
    • Google for "RAID CALCULATOR" for lots of free websites that allow you to see what space different sized drives give you with different RAID levels.
    • Do not omit a strong backup strategy. RAID only protects against some types of hardware failure. A lightning strike, fire, rogue bios or software update, the host dying with an incompatible raid system. Buy disks for backups that aren't in your RAID. (Good branded USB 3 disk and caddies are sensible). Automate backups if you can. Backup only what's not easily replaceable.
    • I wrote some thoughts on backups here.

  • first attempt at a homelab, please any advice

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  • If there's no errors on the host, that points more strongly at a problem with the drives, their power, or the usb cable, imo.

  • first attempt at a homelab, please any advice

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  • What you have, @basketugly, is a keenness to learn. Hold onto that, it'll pay you dividends throughout your life.

    I'm guessing here because you didn't give the exact error message you're seeing - but two external SSD's - should be fine for almost anything - PROVIDED they have sufficient power. Check the power needs of the enclosure and drive, and then what your S12/13 is supplying to the USB ports. You might need an additional power supply or powered hub that gives them enough beef.

    Or the USB lead itself is pants - that's definitely a possibility.

  • what's something you believe strongly but have little knowledge about

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  • No. The older I get, the more things I realise that I know nothing about. You might learn one thing, but that knowledge leads you to three more things that you didn't even knew existed. Ignorance is exponential that way.

    I do miss those childhood years when you thought your parents had all the answers and all you had to do was to ask.

    And I miss the teenage years when I knew everything and all the answers were absolute black and white.

  • what's something you believe strongly but have little knowledge about

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  • I believe in my own ignorance.

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    Permanently Deleted

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  • I think this is something that many of us only learn with age, and reminders of how short life actually is.

    Saving money for a rainy day is sensible, but you can get really locked into that mentality to the point where you don't actually realise the roof's leaking because you didn't keep on top of the repairs.

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    Prosody behind CGNAT

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  • I don't know what prosody is, but my go-to for hosting anything behind a cgnat that needs incoming connections is to use cloudflare tunnel. Free, reliable, lightweight.

  • UPS: how to turn the server back on?

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  • You have no local network access to it at all? (WOL will work across the subnet, you don't need to connect directly to it)

    If genuinely not (and I'd be surprised if that is the case) add another nic of any sort (cheap) for WOL, or use something like Switchbot?

  • UPS: how to turn the server back on?

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  • You would need a third device monitoring both for this edge case. Once the server has been told to shut down, it's going to shut down.

    The third device (also on the UPS, like an Rpi or ESP) can then check for power availability through the UPS and whatever logic you want to apply, can then use wake on lan to the server to power it up once it shuts down.

  • OS Backup - what should and what should not be backup'd?

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  • You need to make your own plan about what's important to you. Don't waste time backing up stuff you can quickly download again - like docker images. Just know where the stuff is that you care about (such as any mounted volumes in docker with your own data on) and back that up, and make everything automated. If you do it manually, chances are you'll gradually stop doing them.

    I wrote some things about properly backing up data that may be of use.

  • Lemmy, what's the meaning, or point if you prefer, of life? I know 42, but I'm serious. Nothing lasts, everything is meaningless - are we just amusing ourselves until death?

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  • are we just amusing ourselves until death?

    Yes, exactly that. There is nothing afterwards, and the fact that we're clinging to the surface of a rock flying through an infinite universe where we could be wiped out any second and never be able to do anything about it does rather make everything seem rather pointless.

    And whilst you could be depressed about that, there's still a lot of pretty awesome things to do that amusing with. Nature is beautiful. The world and its geology is beautiful. Evolution is beautiful. Science is beautiful. Maths is beautiful (if you have the sort of mind that appreciates it). Learning about these things and experiencing them is beautiful. And so on. Even most people all over the world are pretty good most of the time, despite what some other people want you to believe.

    And honestly, accepting there's no greater purpose is remarkably freeing. When something happens, it's just bad luck. It's not some greater power punishing you, it's not because you did something wrong (within reason - getting hit by a bus because you crossed the road without looking is really pushing the concept).

  • Do you use userscripts or other automation options like autohotkey? Which ones do you find most useful? Could you recommend some good sources(including lemmy communities) that are on the topic?

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  • I use AHK a lot at work, and my favourite is a macro that prints the date and my initials. I'm an admin and I use that thing dozens or hundreds of times a day when editing code, configs and notes.

    Eg: # Changed in line with CVEnnnn - 20240713DD

  • How to power NAS HDDs externally?

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  • You could do it for free. Take the guts out of your old PC, leave the HDD's in there and the existing PSU. Extend the sata cables through to your MiniPC.

    If the PSU won't fire up, then there's a couple of pins in the main block you can jumper - or fit a momentary switch to - to act as a switch.

    The old PSU will still be reasonable efficient, since power is not wasted except as heat, and it shouldn't get hot running just the hdd's. 3.5 hdd's use around 8-20watt each, depending on spindle speed, so at most it's 100w at startup, but probably settle down to ~40 for the drives.

    Or - yes, those things you linked will work too, but they're basically doing the same job as the above.

  • Any ideas for transporting variables in chroot bash script?

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  • Pack it into a json or CSV oneline string and shove it in a CLI password manager you can access in a scriptable way from both users. (I use the linux tool, 'pass' for this).

    Alternatively, save it to a dropfile that only both users can access.

  • YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

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  • Why does Arch seem to have a cult like following?

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  • No idea, but ArchWiki has some of the best linux documentation around.

  • Do gamers actually like the look of gaming computers and accessories?

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  • Thank you.