TCB13

TCB13 , 4 months ago to linux in As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

Yes, the R4 is the next thing, I’m not sure the wifi board is selling already and what’s the current state of the software. However I happen to have deployed a bunch of R3 boards (with metal case) with OpenWrt and they work amazingly good.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to linux in As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

My biggest fear is that it borks itself and I sit there at 10 pm on movie night without a network or internet to troubleshoot.

If you pick decent hardware eg. Netgear R7800 you won’t have issues. I’ve units of those running OpenWrt at home and a few small offices running for years with a lot of clients and traffic and they’re rock solid.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to linux in As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

I’m also running a few R7800 with OpenWrt units and they’re really nice.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to linux in As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

(powerful, modern (WiFi 6E etc)

wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3

TCB13 , 4 months ago to linux in As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt?

SBCs aren’t routers, while they’re great they might not be good for people who actually want to have WAN and LAN and decent networking performance. Routers usually include some switch chip that will do most of the heavy networking operations, handle VLANs and whatnot without adding CPU load.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in What Router can you recommend?

swear by custom hardware with opnsense

…which is completely unnecessary and overkill for most people, even those with home labs, since OpenWrt can do it all.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to technology in European Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act

This is what happens when the EU decides that your phone should be more open and you get around it with cleaver lawyers and tactics instead of actually doing what’s right.

TCB13 , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to selfhosted in What Router can you recommend?

How much wifi and open-source do you really want?

If you are willing to go with commercial hardware + open source firmware (OpenWrt) you might want to check the table of hardware of OpenWrt at openwrt.org/toh/…/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi and openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864_ac-wifi. One solid pick for the future might be the Netgear WAX2* line or the GL.iNet GL-MT6000. One of those models is now fully supported the others are on the way. If you don’t mind having older wifi a Netgear R7800 is solid.

For a full open-source hardware and software experience you need a more exotic brand like this www.banana-pi.org/en/bananapi-router/. The BananaPi BPi R3 and here is a very good option with a 4 core CPU, 2GB of RAM Wifi6 and two 2.5G SFP ports besides the 4 ethernet ports. There’s also an upcoming board the BPI-R4 with optional Wifi 7 and 10G SPF.

Both solutions will lead to OpenWRT when it comes to software, it is better than any commercial firmware but be aware that it only support wifi hardware with open-source drives such as MediaTek. While MediaTek is good and performs very well we can’t forget that the best performing wifi chips are Broadcom and they use hacks that go behind the published wifi standards and get it go a few megabytes/second faster and/or improve the range a bit.

DD-WRT is another “open-source” firmware that has a specific agreement with Broadcom to allow them to use their proprietary drivers and distribute them as blob with their firmware. While it works don’t expect compatibility with newer hardware nor a bug free solution like OpenWRT is.

There are also alternatives like OPNsense and pfSense that may make sense in some cases you most likely don’t require that. You’ve a small network and OpenWRT will provide you with a much cleaner open-source experience and also allow for all the customization you would like. Another great advantage of OpenWRT is that you’ve the ability to install 3rd party stuff in your router, you may even use qemu to virtualize stuff like your Pi-Hole on it or simply run docker containers.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in Should I learn Docker or Podman?

Look this isn’t even about “drawing lines in the sand”, I do understand why use containers and I use them in certain circumstances, usually not Docker but that’s more due to the requirements in said circumstances and not about personal decision.

Do you object to software repositories that install dependencies precompiled? (…) but then claim that using systems that package all the dependencies into a single runnable unit is too much and cedes too much freedom?

No and I never claimed that. I’m perfectly happy to use a single-binary statically linked applications, in fact I use quite a few such as FileBrowser and Syncthing and they’re very good and reasonable software. Docker however isn’t one of those cases or, at least, not just that.

I agree that containers are allowing software projects to push release engineering and testing down stream and cut corners a bit

Docker is being used and abused for cutting corners and now we’ve developers that are just unable to deploy any piece of software without it. They’ve zero understanding of infrastructure and anything related to it and this has a big negative impact on the way they develop software. I’m not just talking about FOSS projects, we see this in the enterprise and bootcamps as well.

Docker is a powerful thing, so powerful it opens the door for poorly put together software to exist and succeed as it abstracts people from having to understand architectures, manually install and configure dependencies and things that anyone sane would be able to do in a lifetime. This is why we sometimes see “solutions” that run 10 instances of some database or some other abnormality.

Besides all that, it adds the half-open repository situation on top. While we can host repositories and use open ones the most common thing is to see everything on Docker Hub and that might turn into a CentOS style situation anytime.

TCB13 , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to selfhosted in What do I need to separate devices to its own no-internet network and still be able to communicate with within the house and outside? (Diagram provided)

Just a few notes:

1. What you’re describing is not what the OP is asking for. He simply wants a quick solution to block a couple of devices from accessing internet.
2. I don’t get your “note” as that’s precisely what I suggested the OP to do. And if you actually read the manual and pick a recommend model it can be as simple as uploading the firmware using the router’s firmware upgrade feature.
3. The scenario you described can be done with OpenWrt on a consumer router and it isn’t that complex to setup. Even older hardware like the Netgear R7800 will be able to handle that.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in Should I learn Docker or Podman?

I never said people shouldn’t use those platforms. What I said countless times is that while they make the life of newcomers easier they pose risks and the current state of things / general direction don’t seem very good.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in What do I need to separate devices to its own no-internet network and still be able to communicate with within the house and outside? (Diagram provided)

What’s your router? Can you install OpenWrt on it? OpenWrt provides a GUI for the firewall where you can set that a specific device won’t be able to access the internet with a few clicks.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in What do I need to separate devices to its own no-internet network and still be able to communicate with within the house and outside? (Diagram provided)

Just throwing in the usual over-complication. The OP can do this with a simple OpenWRT router and by setting a few firewall rules. To be fair there are even some comercial routers from Asus and Netgear with their stock firmware that will allow you to block a device from accessing the internet.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in Should I learn Docker or Podman?

I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Most people self-hosting don’t need anything special, just a docker compose file

Yes, and they proceed to pull their software from DockerHub (closed and sometimes decides to delete things) and most of them lack the basic Linux knowledge to do it in any other way. This is a real problem.

TCB13 , 4 months ago to selfhosted in Should I learn Docker or Podman?

Yes, I can, but this not about what I or you can do. This is about what the actually do, the direction technology is taking and the lack of freedoms that follows. Distribution is important.