community of AI haters.

Didn’t down vote…but not all of us are AI haters. A lot of us also have the unique ability to actually scroll right on by things we are uninterested in without leaving castigating remarks. If I were to launch into a diatribe every time someone mentioned the 'arr stack in here, I think most of you would be like 'Hey man, how about giving it a rest. We get it. You don’t like the ‘arr stack’, and you’d have a valid point.

my 2p

Despite what some may think, I’m not a representative of Cloudflare, nor do I receive any benefit from recommending them. I just recommend what works for me. There are many avenues at your disposal. That said, Cloudflare Tunnels/Zero Trust is a winner in my book. You will need a cheap domain name that you can change the nameservers to the ones Cloudflare assigns you. After that, you install Cloudflare Tunnels/Zero Trust on your server, and connect to Cloudflare, Jacks a doughnut, Bob’s your uncle. No need to fiddle with NAT, or opening ports. Cloudflare takes care of all of that. Of course you will need port 22 (ssh) to directly admin your server.

The ones they let people have for free are less than 2 USD for registration and yearly renewal.

Not trying to rain on your parade at all. However, if you have to pay to register and a yearly renewal, then it’s not really free. I’ve never heard of GNAME, which is neither here nor there, but I went and checked it out. One of the things that stood out to me as I had to adjust my ad blocker to visit the site is that they are using baidu.com. So, right off the bat, that’s a red flag in my mind. Not saying that GNAME is doing anything nefarious, but, I’d proceed with caution.

• baidu.com
• fxgate.baidu.com
• hm.baidu.com

Baidu is kind of the Chinese equivalent of Google. GNAME is a Singapore registrar so it would probably make sense to use Baidu.

Baidu, Inc. is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China’s search engine market, and provides a wide variety of other internet services such as Baidu App, Baidu Baike, iQIYI, Baidu Tieba, and ES File Explorer.

While Baidu is not a scam, users should exercise caution, especially when it comes to data security. The company operates under Chinese regulations, which may differ significantly from those in other countries. Therefore, it’s essential to be aware of these differences and take appropriate measures to protect your personal information when using Baidu’s services.

I’m neither encouraging or discouraging, just informing. Additionally, there are some rather sketch reviews dealing with GNAME. One man’s paradise is another’s prison, so be informed and make your decisions based on that information and whether that fits into your threat model profile.

…maybe a kilo of your favorite strain too.

Also, good to run into you again!

Hey Hey Hey! There you are again. Good to see ya. Yes, I’m the guy, in well over his head, with the JSON weather project, and there have been a lot of kind and patient people holding my hand and trying to spoon feed the village idiot. LOL I’m very grateful tho.

Ah, neat idea!

It works for me like I said. Kind of a manual Olive Tin, before I even heard of Olive Tin. Some might find it rather silly, but my mind is shit at remembering. If it weren’t for copious amounts of notes and crutches all over the place, I’d be lost in the weeds.

Oh Snap! You didn’t. I will definitely get this running in a bit when I finish all my chores and can go play. Wow man, thank you so much!! I had put this on my dashboard as a means of encouragement to finish what I started.

ETA: That’s so purty. Haven’t fired it up, just imported. Got chores to do. Will report back.

So retro. I remember a string of those mini crt/camera combos. It was pretty cool tech back in the day.

Even document the little commands you feel dumb for forgetting over and over

Yup! On my dashboard, I have a small notepad where I keep all those ‘commands you feel dumb for forgetting .’ It does go on for a bit, and yes they are basic commands, but my memory is shit, so poke fun if you must. It works for me.

I’ve had to lean on backups many a time. It’s one of the reasons I make them and test them in a VM, because my dim brain coupled with fat fingers are a disaster waiting to happen.

People shit on LLMs

Well yes, and both sides of the coin have valid points. I do use AI occasionally, and at the very least it gets me going in the right direction, tho not always 100% accurate.

Be that as it may, you’re still sysadmin. In fact, you’re the whole IT dept for your network. LOL Chief cook and bottle washer, as it were. Don’t worry about asking for help either. You’re in the right place for this sort of thing.

OP, I failed to mention one of the most important things you can do as a novice or even as a seasoned vet: take prolific notes. Write down everything. All the commands, all the steps, you’ve used in conjunction with setting up whatever service you choose, everything. What I do is while I’m in the middle of deploying something, I write everything down. Upon a successful deployment, take those notes, clean them up, and include them in my 3,2,1 back up scheme. Don’t be lulled into the notion that you’ll be able to remember everything 6 months down the road. You wont! That’s the devil talking Bobby Boucher. Take notes. They’ll save your ass in the future.

I can provide a sample tomorrow.

That would be swell, but I wouldn’t make it a priority. Just whenever you get a round to it. I have been given a ton of source material to read. Stayed up a little too late last night trying to assimilate it all. LOL

Is this a “learn it by coding it” project or is it a “I want this thing to exist, no one has done it, but my code skills aren’t quite there” project?

This is a practical use learning project. I’m sure there have been many iterations of what I’m trying to learn. I’m a prolific reader and consume a lot of data, but I learn the best by hands on. Read, do, screw it up, rince/repeat ad nauseam until I get it right, and then I write that shit down because my brain is shit at remembering.

I know what perl is, but I have never used it before. I’ll spool up on that too.

As I’m not very skilled with sysadmin stuff

You sound pretty skilled to me. What an awesome update. Thank you for sharing.

I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map /s

(In my mind this is hosting images, music, video, connected home controls, search and email)?

• Hosting Images: Immich seems to be a hit
• Music: Navidrome which I use daily
• Video: Jellyfin seems popular these days. Part of the 'arr stack
• Home Controls: Home Assistant gets rave reviews
• Search: Searxng which I use daily
• Email: MailCow gets some good reviews

What are the specs on that SFF? Of the 6 I listed, Immich and Jellyfin might need a few more resources, especially transcoding video. I am not familiar with running either. The rest should run within a nominal spec of something post 2015. I’m running that and another 30+ containers on a little Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 chip and 32 GB RAM (which is a bit overkill), and it barely breaks a sweat. Load averages usually run .20 .15 .35, essentially sleeping. The only time it’s under a real load is on boot up starting about 40 containers total, and that usually takes less than 2 minutes.

I mean, you could start lower on the totem pole and work your way up to those 6, but if your equipment is, like I said, within the last 10 or so years, you should be fine to march right on up to the top. That is, unless this is a learning mission for you and you wanted to just ‘try out’ other similar containers. If I were to give you a map, I’d say start with one container. See how it runs. Learn it. Take note of load averages, temps, resources. Then slowly add to the list. Worst case you might have to split the load between a laptop server and the SFF or NAS if it has capabilities to do so.

There are some security measures to keep in mind with Jellyfin, and with all containers you run really. But Jellyfin seems to need some extra attention, or so I’ve read.

I’m not sure how far along you are as a ‘novice’, but Linux Upskill Challenge is always a good bookmark.

so I’m going to call this gardening level

Micro Farming. ;)

Is it a webpage or an app or such?

I am using the Homarr dashboard. It does have an iframe module that I think I could use once I pretty up the data.

Well, primarily because I wouldn’t learn anything. lol Plus, the Homarr weather plugin doesn’t give as much detail as I would like. It works, no doubt, I just wanted something a bit more.