Dec. 24, 2023
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a standard workflow I use to spin up a web service in an LXC container to add to my self-hosted collection of services. It went a bit like: do this, and then this, then this other thing. Whenever you find yourself repeating a set of steps like this, it’s usually a sign that you should be automating it. Not just to save time (although this is a key benefit) but also to improve repeatability and to avoid introducing errors.
Dec. 3, 2023
I’ve developed a bit of a workflow for setting up a new service of some type on the homelab. Installing it is the obvious thing, but I also have a few quality of life things I do to make it a full production-quality part of my installation. I thought it might be helpful to run through those things using a recent example of adding audiobookshelf .
audiobookshelf
audiobookshelf is a web based system for viewing, playing, downloading and/or generally managing your audio books. I’ve been an Audible user/subscriber, but recently got grumpy at them about something - I think I had paused my subscription, and my downloaded books were still available on my phone. I was halfway through one, upgraded the app, and then wasn’t able to play the book without re-subscribing. That might not be exactly right, but it was some type of frustrating carry on like that.
Oct. 18, 2023
I’ve taken to running lots of my services in LXC containers under Proxmox. I like the feeling of installing in a VM, but it’s lightweight. I like the backups, I like things being isolated from each other, I like moving them around between machines easily. I’m just a big LXC lover at the moment.
I’m also a Tailscale lover, and the generous number of nodes in the free tier means I now just routinely install them in my VMs and containers without a thought.
Oct. 9, 2023
Years ago, I was very keen on the SETI@home project that used a distributed computing model whereby packets of digitized received radio data were farmed out to individuals’ computers to be processed to look for any unusual signals that could potentially be from an intelligent extra-terrestrial source.
That’s long since defunct, but the idea lives on with BOINC - a system run out of Berkley that allows different science organisations to offer projects to run on individuals’ computers.
Oct. 6, 2023
I’ve picked up an new TP-Link WAP with Omada, so I wanted to spin up an Ubuntu 20.04 LXC to run the controller software in, and ended up spending a couple of hours figuring out why things where not working.
The initial problem was I was having connectivity issues pulling down the updates for all the packages required. I went down a bit of a tangent because I installed an apt cache the other day, so I was looking for problems there. Eventually I narrowed it down to DNS not working and started A/B testing like this:
Sep. 24, 2023
If you create an unprivileged LXC container on Proxmox, then try to back it up to an NFS share, for example on a NAS, you’ll get an error when it tries to build the temporary file.
The clue is in the Permission denied line. It is trying to create a temporary file on my NAS, and failing because of a permissions problem. If I try the same backup to the local storage, it works fine.
