TCB13

TCB13 , 7 months ago to linux in LXD now re-licensed and under a CLA

The issue here is that this will stall the development of LXD/Incus. Two separate projects running in different directions no future feature parity and potentially less features in Incus than in LXD.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to technology in SSH protects the world’s most sensitive networks. It just got a lot weaker | ArsTechnica

*they/them

TCB13 , 7 months ago to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

Are you planning on transcoding? If so you might want to add a decent GPU to deal with that as the CPU won’t be most likely able to handle it alone. Otherwise it should be fine.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to linux in Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Or just stop lamenting for old packages and just enjoy stability while making something productive

I’m not the one lamenting old packages, I run on stable perfectly happy. No issues there.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

Something you might need: www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005515616995.html

TCB13 , 7 months ago to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

Well just be sure to remove the GPU, don’t install a GUI and turn on every power saving option on the BIOS / disable hardware you don’t need etc. If you’ve a watt-meter it will make the task easy as you’ll be able to see how much power you can cut back with BIOS tweaks. Sometimes (but not always) even disabling CPU cores helps.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

DIY gives you more flexibility, but also more maintenance.

More maintenance? Setup is harder for sure, but after that no more maintenance required if you don’t feel like it. To be frank the amount of maintenance is usually corelated with the amount of crap you install. a TrueNAS Scale will run just fine, maintenance free most likely for more than 5 years, however a clean Debian install with a simple Samba server (install via apt-get install) + FileBrowser (webUI file explorer) will last indefinitely without maintenance. Simple tools fail less.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

replace my current aging gaming PC and was thinking id make this one actually just be the server. I have a closet that shockingly has a power outlet and everything that would be amazing for that.

Oh yeah, you’re set, no need to look further. Use that hardware, better than having it laying around end up on a garbage pile. If that’s a gamming PC it should be way overkill for what you need but it will get the job done.

Side note: obviously a HP Mini with an i5 8th gen mobile CPU will be more power efficient but does it really matter? The difference between a 45W or 100W CPU running at idle won’t be that much (they both will downscale to a lower speed like 800Mhz or 1Ghz). Even if the desktop wastes more it will most likely be something like 4 or 5$ more per year to run it so it isn’t worth it to spend more money on a new machine while you’ve that one around.

Pro tip: remove the GPU from the machine AND if it has integrated graphics don’t run a GUI on it - this will greatly reduce the power consumption of the machine. In fact by not having a GPU installed and not having a GUI running you’ll save more power than by replacing that machine with one of those mini units I suggested.

TCB13 , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

Those fancy cases are expensive AF. Cool but expensive.

Another very cool one: www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003125774264.html

TCB13 , 7 months ago to linux in Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Yes.

Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”.

Install Debian, then install all the software you might need using Flatpak. There you go, solid and stable OS with the latest of with little to no effort. Bonus extra security.

TCB13 , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to piracy in Sorry if this is covered somewhere but I couldn't find it! I need recommendations on a good starter NAS

Build it yourself, avoid proprietary solutions. If you’re after power efficiency go with some ARM board with PCI/M2 slot to use as SATA ports, if you want more performance and want to run a few services on it, get a second hand computer like an HP mini or even a full desktop.

I what would recommend is instead a Mini-PC like the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 DM or the Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro.

If you plan to create a small NAS for storage and self-host a few services even an old laptop will do it, however there are advantages to picking a mini PC. Those machines are quiet, don’t require much power and some can even fit a 2.5" hard drive so you won’t need external hard drive enclosures.

Mini-PCs are also cheap second hand, you might be able to get an 8th Gen Intel CPU for 100-200€. Sometimes you’ll find really old models (i3 CPU + 4 GB of RAM) selling for 50€ and while those aren’t usable anymore as a Windows desktop they’re are still more than enough to run your NAS/Cloud solution. I would pick something 6th gen or more recent.

For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option. Aside from the big brands like HP and Dell there are other alternatives such as the trendy MINISFORUM however their BIOS comes out of the factory with weird bugs and the hardware isn’t as reliable - missing ESD protection on USB in some models and whatnot.

A very important thing for you to consider is the storage / hard drive interface. On a Pi you’re usually constrained to USB for your hard drives, however on a Mini PCs you’ve the following options:

• USB Storage - is slower and USB isn’t very robust, not recommended, the only advantage here is that you don’t have to DIY anything;
• Some of those machines come with a SATA port and space for a 2.5" hard drive, either use it a single drive if you don’t need much storage or get a 5 SATA port card to expand it;
• Recent models come with a NVME M.2. slot (PCIe) and that can be turned into 6 SATA ports with a cheap adapter like this.

In both SATA cases you just have to throw NAS hard drives and a cheap power supply at it and you’ll be done. SATA is faster and way more reliable than USB for storage, it won’t randomly disconnect and you will be able to take full advantage of the disks, no speed limitations like in a typical USB connections. Personally I would pick model that has both the SATA connector and the NVME slot and then use the SATA connector for a small 2.5" SSD (boot drive) and the NVME with the adapter above for the NAS hard drives - this option will give you the best performance.

Software: run barebones Debian and install everything from scratch OR use something already made like TrueNAS Scale or OpenMediaVault.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to piracy in RARBG like 4K rips, any group making similar sized movies?

And where can we find 2K movies of 20-50GB nowadays?

TCB13 , 7 months ago to selfhosted in Service for letter/PDF archival

But I’m not trying to convince you, I tried answering the questions :)

I was just trying to see how you’re thinking about the possible lock-in and dependency on those platforms… also exposing my real concerns with them.

To be honest I couldn’t self host anything if I’d had the fear of being lost if a tool is discontinued.

Yeah but most thing we self host are more “fungible” be it a torrent client, RSS aggregator etc. can be quickly replaced by another alternative as they hold little to no data and even sometimes the data they hold doesn’t even have any value. A document management solution however is a long term thing that holds important documents.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to selfhosted in Service for letter/PDF archival

If you have a docker environment I suggest just pulling a container up3, throwing all your documents in it and see if it would save you time or cost you time. Would be an hour well spent!personally the OCR alone is it worth it for me - my country still loves paper letters and being able to copy text out of that is awesome (IBAN, account numbers, etc - all the stuff that’s suspectible to typos).

Yes I understand the pain and I usually go with Acrobat to do OCR of scanned documents. Now tell me something, are you sure docker and paperless will be around in 10 or 20 years? How are you planning to deal with that long term? I’ve documents from the 90’s copied over from floppy disks and whatnot a simple flash drive or hard drive plugged into my computer works as a quick backup for everything. Extra layers of protection can be added, but generally speaking files are easier to copy and checksum across time and media than some software with hundreds of dependencies, a webserver and whatnot.

TCB13 , 7 months ago to selfhosted in Service for letter/PDF archival

Well I do see the advantages of what your suggesting, no depute there. Searching for a specific tag would make my life easier but at what cost?

As I was saying a person - not a company - won’t likely be receiving that much important letters to the point you can’t simply go through a couple of folders and find out what you’re looking for. Paperless-ngx could indeed make me save a few minutes while searching for documents but then, what about the amount of time and effort it would be spending keeping the software running, up to date, backups etc? More importantly, what about longevity? Those kinds of archives are something you may want to get into 10 or 20 years to look for a file and then software you chose might not be around or working anymore.

The extra minutes wasted while searching and having the piece of mind provided by simple folders and PDF files seem to be a good tradeoff as it eliminates the need for databases, upgrades, special servers, formats and whatnot.