Just a random Sunday morning post, Ive been using my Windows machine for a bit and thought Id switch back to my Mac Mini (stats above, it also has 10gig built in, take that M1!) and I’ve been using Safari really for everything web based. I installed Firefox, which wasnt too bad, but has never really matched the snappyness of Safari and I thought ‘Okay, well its third party so maybe it’s not as optimised’, but just installed Google Chrome this morning and man, it runs like a total dog.
It’s so heavy! The lag while resizing browser windows is HORRIBLE. I know Chrome is a giant beast of a browser, but it makes me wonder how much of the lag is macOS doing it on purpose to promote Apple’s own brower. Yes, Im a cynical sod, but it’s night and day difference even between Firefox and Safari, but Chrome is a terrible experience IMO.
Again, this isnt anything new, it’s just a real surprise that we’ve come so far and the differences between first party and everything else is so skewed it makes me wonder whether its Google’s fault, or Apple’s.
So Xmas was a thing and now it’s gone. I’ve been knackered. Absolutely effing tired but now have a week off and I am doing a little gaming here and there but basically sleeping as much as possible. Hopefully after the new year I might feel somewhere near approaching the edge of human again. Hopefully…
Santa was quite generous, I was going to throw all of his pennies against the old CC bills but since I’ve moved my last gaming update build into my Unraid server, I’m still gaming on my old 4770k system. As such, I’ve bought some updated gear for my gaming build:
Ryzen 3600
Aorus X570 Pro
32GB DDR4 RAM
Sabrent 1TB PCIe 4 NVMe
The build that is now my Unraid server was very similar but it’s using the Asus X570 TUF plus Wifi board, which was great to game on and was head and shoulders better than my 4770k system. The 4770k bits I’ve replaced will be officially retired and stored in a box forever (probably), the case, power supply etc were updated for my gaming build at the start of the year so I’ll keep them for this build. I also have a 500gb NVMe drive for the OS. I really think that 1TB of data for the storage drive for games will be fine, I picked up a 2060 Super through the year, also a new monitor (1080p) which is also fine. I couldnt really give a tits about 4k gaming.
I think the final nail in the coffin for spending money was that Amazon would deliver tomorrow, cant really beat it!
Aarrgh! Its such a pain remembering with actual memory over the age of 26. I’m now 40. I can’t do it anymore.
I had to migrate Nextcloud due to an issue on Linode’s servers due to an impending upgrade. Its taken me about 20 mins I never want to have to spend again trying to find the config.php file that would let me change the trusted servers.
Edit: I’ve pretty much nixed the idea of using a VPN altogether. Im not sure it was really doing a great deal for me anyway. May try again at a later date. Original post still below.
Okay so I use Manjaro Gnome and ProtonVPN and it’s fine. Installing ProtonVPN is really easy, but getting that mother to start up on login, jeezaass it’s a pain in the butt.
I actually had it working fine previously, I’m sure I created a systemd service and had it start at boot. I’m guessing I can’t remember the exact syntax I used as I spent hours last night trying to create and tweak the service file, sh files, using rc.local to try and get it to autostart and there was no luck whatsoever. As my memory is so rubbish I know Ill forget to initialise it every time I log in, I also blame my crap memory for not actually checking and backing up the working settings before I nuked it to put windows on that laptop… I know, I know.
I’m going to turn comments on for this, Ill update if I find a fix to get it running, if anyone happens to see this and can help then please let me know. Thanks.
PS Vita Slim, 250gb SD card with sd2vita, PKGj, emulators all good! Although to be honest its not all roses and ice cream. SNES emulation seems to suffer slowdown – its unbelievable after seeing the Vita games in action. PSX doesnt do too well either, Adrenaline just seems too soft and doesnt even hold up to a Raspberry Pi.
Vita games are fine, its nice to try things that are platform specific – but there’s also a lot of fluff thats multi-platform. Tbh after the reviews of the Vita being the ‘god of emulation’ Im a bit disappointed. The Switch is much better, but it suffers from drift on the joycon if you play it handheld. Sigh. Next I think I might go for one of the proper 3rd party emulation handhelds.
I cant even remember the spec of this thing. I bought it for £100 about 5/6 years ago, maybe more. Ill have to do a boot test and will report back. Its still pretty sexy!
25u Startech rack, Unifi USG, non-POE switch, and I’ve an AC lite access point on the upper landing. There’s a Hue Hub down there to but you cant see it because the spare room is a mess. On the left I’ve random PC bits, as well as my WD Pro NAS that’s not currently connected. I only use it every few months or so for cold storage of everything that’s on Unraid.
The Unraid box is as described somewhere in a post below: Ryzen 3600, 32gb ram, X570 board and 12tb of useable backup storage. I have a 500gb nvme cache and a 4tb parity. I need to buy another parity really, but its okay for now. I run Unraid and docker containers for the unifi controller, plex, and transmission. I have been previously running public-facing nextcloud and wordpress with letsencrypt, duckdns and mariadb, but right now they are disabled. It does what it needs to do and I couldnt be happier 🙂
3 days… 3 days Ill never get back. Dont get me wrong, Linode is awesome, but their guides are so mixed up it’s unreal. The guides for One Click installs were piecemeal at best. I’m not a total noob with linux and the cli, I am able to learn new things and follow guides, its just flicking about and having to have a knowledge of information that isnt laid out for your verbatim is extremely frustrating and unhelpful for a lazy person such as myself. All I wanted was to set up wordpress and nextcloud, and have an SSL cert for both. Here’s what I did:
I assume you have created a Linode account. Log in, get to the dashboard – this is going to be quick and dirty, sorry, maybe a better write-up at a later date.
Linode WordPress install one-click with SSL certificate:
Click Marketplace on the left of the screen, and select a WordPress – Latest one-click Fill out the appropriate user information and passwords etc make sure if you are using a domain name to add it here Click create
I use Google Domains, add the IP address as an A record to the DNS page (its at the bottom of the screen) Wait for your domain name to resolve the IP so that your site is accessible
Once you can access the site via the domain name, ssh into your instance at the IP address given, either use a terminal app or the built in console ssh root@yourIP Enter your password
So this is where my head scratching began. Almost all the guides you will find for adding an SSL certificate depend on nginx, however, if you try and install nginx it will fail. The answer lay on this guide in really small, grey on blue, text. Instead of using nginx, use apache!
I’ve added it in bold, just in case, like me, you are stupid and miss obvious things. Providing your domain is set up, follow the guide and enter your requested information then check your website. Make sure to forward all requests to https and you should be golden.
The certificate will expire, should you wish to not have to log into your website every time it does, run the command:
sudo certbot renew –dry-run
This should autorenew the certificate when it expires with your information. Also, as the guide advises, back up your certificates somewhere they wont be lost if the worst happens.
Linode Nextcloud install one-click with SSL certificate:
Dont do it, or do it and if you make it work, drop me an email on the address in the box on the right. If you can manage this, you are a great human being and I would love to be you.
I couldnt make it work – there’s a pain with the domain, and the hostname, and then editing files and trying to figure out why it’s adding one to the other and then getting it to work properly with certbot…. urgh, just dont bother. However, I do recommend this video which is what worked for me. Set up an Ubuntu instance, install the snap and then enable the SSL:
So right now this site and my nextcloud site are both set up with SSL, very happy, I can actually start using them proper instead of creating them for a few hours and then nuking them because I made a mess. I appreciate that it’s all about the learnings however I only have a set amount of patience. I’m so glad this is over and done with for now. Any problems over time, Ill undoubtedly make another post.
This isnt the final form, as the room where my rack has been sitting the past few months is a mess, but I realised I hadnt posted a picture of the box since the dusty Proxmox build below. The rack, and this server is rock solid. I love it. Its so flexible. Right now its really just hosting files, Plex with movies and TV shows, Transmission for torrents and my Unifi Controller for my network in docker containers.
I have 12tb of storage and a 4tb parity drive. I also use a 500gb NVMe cache drive to keep things fast.
The system itself is a Zen 2 AMD Ryzen 3600, 32gb of DDR4 RAM and an Asus X570 board. Its fast as fk.
Ill post a pic of the full rack with my Unifi gear in a future post, once it’s less crowded in there.
