I wished they’d create a MobaXterm for Linux.

But the outcome is the same: you have no control over this behaviour.

Yes, I totally understand that. It seemed suspicious to me because it had never happened to me before. (I have bookmarked a few articles about this 'Round Robin to read this evening) Like I said, This check gets done every morning, and has been a ‘ritual’ for years, and I have had the same VPN provider for years. So, that is what triggered my anxiety. I appreciate what everyone else has said, and I bow to greater knowledge bases than I possess. At the very least, TIL. So it’s been a good day 'tater.

this should be checked once

The way I see it is, we have three options:

• Always trust, never verify
• Trust but verify
• Never trust, always verify

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

At some point a drive can get TOO big

I was thinking the same. I would hate to toast a 140 TB drive. I think I’d just sit right down and cry. I’ll stick with my 10 TB drives.

selfhosters have at least one loose screw.

I have a box of them, right next to my box of strings too short to use.

Am I missing anything here or is this how I’m supposed to be doing it?

AFA fail2ban, I always set up the jails in aggressive mode:

[sshd]
mode = aggressive
enabled = true
port = ssh
filter = sshd
logpath = /var/log/auth.log
maxretry = 5 <---edit to tastes
bantime = 3600 <---edit to tastes
findtime = 600 <---edit to tastes

You might want to check out Crowdsec, maybe deploy Tailscale as an overlay. How many users are you providing services for? If just yourself, I use the host allow / host deny feature in Linux. Just make sure you do host allow first, lol.

I’ll have to accept a higher knowledge base than mine, but I check this every morning, and for years they have been the same across different leakcheck sites.

They have always been the same, now for years.

Hmmmm I seem to be unable to explain.

Ok. Fire up the VPN.

Do, 4 different, simultaneous, leak checks from multiple sites like Browser Leaks, dnscheck.tools, etc.

As in the picture, under ‘Your IP’. Results:

• https://dnsleaktest.com/: xxx.xxx.xxx.123
• https://browserleaks.com/dns: xxx.xxx.xxx.131
• https://dnscheck.tools/: xxx.xxx.xxx.125
• https://ipleak.net/: xxx.xxx.xxx.122

Whereas xxx.xxx.xxx stayed the same, but the last set in the sequence was different in every test. The IP block (xxx.xxx.xxx.) was the same, just the last three digits were different in 4 different, simultaneous, tests. I realize VPN IPs change and so do Cloudflare IPs change. What I am saying is tho the IP block was the same (owned by the VPN), just the last three digits were different, even when I changed locales in my VPN.

I hope that explains what I’m trying to say.

Maybe a picture will help. This one is from Browserleaks:

Where the IP is listed at the top of the page. All the last numbers in the IP sequence were different. Same block, still piped through Cloudflare tho.

Each different DNS leak test sites (multiple), were different, yet the same IP block. I don’t view it as paranoia. When you fire up your VPN, even though you have specified a certain locale, say Mexico, you still get different IPs each time you start your VPN, at least I do.

Example: 4.4.4.5, 4.4.4.6, 4.4.4.15

Same block, different IPs reported.

There are a lot of server monitoring softwares out there, but Netdata gives you just about every metric I’d ever want to look at. Can be deployed using Docker (https://learn.netdata.cloud/docs/netdata-agent/installation/docker).

The one thing I do when linking to Netdata in whatever dashboard you are running, I use the v3 switch at the end of the url thusly:

https://netdata.mycoolserver.com/v3

That way you don’t have to log in to the mother ship to view your metrics.

ETA: mobile app available

Welcome. Good to meet you.

Could you manage a windows VM for Office?

It simply doesn’t play nice in a manner I can rely on for professional collaboration when everyone else is using either native microsoft office or office on apple.

If you don’t mind unpacking that for my own edification, what exactly does it do or don’t do? Does it not decode the data properly/same?

I have Windows in my environment, and I still just use LibreOffice. Now, I’m not into huge, complex excel spreadsheets so I can’t speak to that, but LibreOffice ticks all my boxes. It has a Windows app, and comes as a flatpak, snap, appimage, there’s even a portable edition as well.

Um…I would not classify myself as brilliant, but yea…it works.

but keeping a petting zoo of penguins up to date

Ha! Funny that. As far as creating a maintenance free NAS, my NAS(s) usually remain in a state of benevolent neglect. There’s not much to do to them. They house backups, archives, and data at rest. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong.

If you were a fly on the wall in my lab, you’d hear me cussing at myself all the time for pulling stupid boners and stuff.