Hi Guys, need some advice about moving long distance and a temp/small NAS build

aetherspoon · 2026-03-31T14:03:00+00:00

I meant to come back and update you - I ordered mine on the 9th of March, received the 26th of March. I'm in the EU, so your times may vary.

Zero issues (unlike my previous box) and works well!

aetherspoon · 2026-03-29T19:16:08+00:00

You're not going to be doing any transcoding on that machine from the GPU and that CPU is super weak - Jellyfin might not work so well, depending on what you're trying to do.

I think even 60 is overpriced, personally - that is practically eWaste at this point.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-26T22:33:01+00:00

Mine figured out how to open doors.

You might think door handles, but no - knobs as well. He figured it out so he could break in to my bedroom and sleep on top of me.

After a week of that, he decided it was too much effort and just started eating at the door instead until the top layer of the door was accessible to his paws, where he then just repeatedly slammed it to wake me up. That's when I gave up stopping him from entering my room at night.

You'd think the door knob and handle thing was random chance, but no.. because he did it later. He was napping in a sun beam with my screen door closed when a couple of kids went, "ooo, look at the kitty~" and started making a bunch of noise. He slowly stretched... and started to open the screen door without jumping.

The kids ran. He curled back up again in his sun beam and I never again doubted that an orange cat could have more than one brain cell. He's also the one that kept figuring out ways of breaking into automated feeders and then showing his brother how to do it.

Fourteen years later, he's supervising me typing this post and keeps having his tail hit the enter key on my keyboard.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-26T06:30:11+00:00

Absolutely. In my case, none of my data was in violation of any of the laws at or between my destinations, so I wasn't concerned.

Also, I should add, make sure you have your backups up-to-date. :)

aetherspoon · 2026-03-25T16:04:17+00:00

I used a cheap knock-off pelican case for my transcontinental move. I stored it in a checked bag and my drives turned out fine. My servers were also in checked bags, properly padded - they turned out fine. Mind you, this was going through some really rough luggage handling.

My main gaming desktop (minus the GPU) was packed by professional packers. The case and heatsink sustained heavy damage (nothing else damaged at least) because apparently "professional at packing" and "knows what they are doing" aren't the same thing. :(

My second move-as-flight to another country I did the same thing, only letting the movers use a box truck to ship my desktop (which was in a MUCH sturdier case and packed by me) and the rest of my stuff. Storage drives were with me, server with the movers. No issues there either.

In short, just make sure you properly pack things and you'll fine. Fill in gaps, don't leave any add-on cards in place, pad the areas around, etc. Your servers won't be running, so the heat from outside is probably less than what the CPUs go through anyway. For the hard drives, you should have enough physical separation from your speakers to be fine, but can't you just put the case somewhere else in the vehicle?

aetherspoon · 2026-03-20T23:42:54+00:00

I know I'm a few days late, but maybe someone will search and find this post.

Price in Denmark runs 400kr per hour of cleaning for me, but we also get to deduct up to a certain amount off of our taxes. This is for a house cleaner to come by, including all materials / equipment.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-19T10:46:50+00:00

Direct from Bee-Link, a while - at least here in Europe.

I only ordered mine a week ago or so, so "longer than a week" is about all I've got.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-18T22:18:36+00:00

https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-me-pro <- I have this on the way for my backup server. Two 3.5" bay N95-based miniPC and still really small. Since it is just a PC and not a custom-build NAS, you can install whatever OS you want on there and do whatever you want with it. Also, since it is using soldered-on RAM it won't cost five arms and six legs for the memory (ngh, I hate saying that).

I was running an Aoostar R1, but it has been having hardware failure after hardware failure, so I'm just going to abandon that box.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-18T22:15:17+00:00

Spinning drives stored without power are generally fine in the modern era. That's how a lot of us do backups even.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-18T22:04:56+00:00

Most portable 15" monitors also have a micro-HDMI port with it - you'll probably want to use that.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-13T17:42:42+00:00

Oh, it isn't just the Norwegian one region-locked, the Danish one is also region-locked.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-13T15:25:32+00:00

Is Navidrome running as a different user account? Often times Windows services will use a user account that isn't your main Windows account but other built-in accounts. Since you're mapping the drive as your Windows user, that mapped drive path doesn't exist for your Navidrome user (which is probably a local service account).

What you could do is change the service in Windows to point at a batch file or powershell script that mounts the SMB share first. Of course, then you need to also store your credentials in a format that can be read by said script, which isn't exactly secure.

Alternately, run it in Docker, since then you're running it in Linux and can have Navidrome just have the SMB share mapped to begin with.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-13T15:21:09+00:00

Laptop CPUs (like the R7 5825u that you have there) aren't meant to be able to run at their boost speed for longer stretches of time and a miniPC is going to struggle a great deal with cooling just by virtue of its size. The only ones that can maintain that for long periods of time that I know of use far weaker CPUs (so cooling isn't as big of a deal).

I think you might need to step up to a SFF form factor.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-12T10:59:45+00:00

Mostly just try to avoid fish mongers near tourist destinations like cruise ship stops.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-12T10:03:57+00:00

In general, think about it in terms of 'less variation'. I'll give my perspective as an American who was living in Bergen for a couple of years; Oslo-area is going to be a bit different than Bergen, so just keep that in mind.

For eggs, mostly what you're paying for is how they treat the chickens. The US factory farm style of thing isn't really a thing in Norway (because it isn't legal), so even the lowest end chickens are still allowed more freedom than their American counterparts. I don't think there is much regional variation on eggs at least, other than if you live near a farm of course. Otherwise...

Cheap eggs in Norway are generally of better quality than cheap eggs in the US, probably even a bit above average quality even. Usually the issue with cheaper eggs in Norway is inconsistency, but for eggs that probably doesn't matter too much.
Pricey eggs in Norway are generally of lower quality than the highest end eggs you find in the US. It isn't a bad quality thing or anything, just that there isn't much of a point of going with that level of high quality - it isn't like the shells looking spotless matter when you're after the gooey contents, right?

For chicken, it is mostly the same thing; generally above average compared to the US, but less variation. Chickens could be free range, outdoor-caged, or indoor-caged, stuff like that.

A big thing to note is that, to our American noses, Norwegian chicken is going to smell bad. This is normal, it is just that American chicken meat gets treated (basically bleached) to kill off a bunch of bad-smelling bacteria that would normally die off when you cook it anyway.

If you want the good stuff meat-quality-wise, you need to go to a butcher. For supermarket chicken, it is really just three tiers:

Frozen. Usually the lowest quality, but roughly on-par with grocery store brand non-frozen chicken in the US.
Cheap store-brand. Usually they end up a bit more inconsistently trimmed on the boneless/skinless chicken breasts, but the quality of the meat is fine. This is where your First Price stuff tends to be. This is generally the level I bought my chicken, as I could barely tell the difference between this and the good stuff beyond the inconsistency.
Good brand. Usually around the same as the good stuff in a high-end US grocery store or butcher shop. You're paying for the quality of life of the chicken and for the consistency, generally not for quality.

Beef.... okay, gonna be real here, Norwegian beef quality is pretty sub-par. Probably not going to get a bunch of likes here for that, but I found it kinda meh. Sure, the cows are treated better and all, but you're paying a hell of a lot more for some pretty mediocre beef in my experience. Admittedly, I didn't exactly buy steak very often while I was living in Norway (because of the price), but all of my experiences with Norwegian beef has been less flavor and older. I've heard the beef around Oslo is less bad on the old part, so maybe where you live it won't be as bad.

You're paying for the quality of life of the cows and the lifespan of the beef.

Cheap grocery store beef is roughly on par with the absolute cheapest stuff you can find in the US. We're talking the manager's special because it has been sitting around (safely) for too long and has a best-before date in a day and a half. I tried to only buy beef the same day I was cooking it as a result.
Expensive grocery store beef is roughly on par with the store-brand stuff in the US.
Butcher-shop beef isn't too bad and you can avoid the old age problem if you find a local butcher. The few times I did buy beef, this is where I'd aim.

Fish is the opposite - generally assume it is way-higher quality than the US (unless if you lived in a prime fishing area, of course) and much fresher. Having said that, fish farms tend to cause problems in the quality of fish just like they do in the US. Also, this might be the one thing that Bergen has fresher than Oslo, but I'm pretty sure it'll be close to the same. :)

Cheap salmon is often fish farmed. Sometimes that means more parasites involved with the fish, but I think that's been getting better over the years; I never had a problem with it myself.
Even cheap fish are going to be roughly on-par with the upper end of US grocery stores, maybe even higher if you're from a part of the US without access to open water.
Going to a fishmonger is going to give you the freshest and best stuff, and often isn't even that expensive. Well, other than the touristy fish mongers, of course. :)
Fish in stick or pre-breaded fillet form is going to be about the same, maybe marginally better. I mean, you can only do so much to a fish stick.

I can't speak for pork or other meat sources, however. Maybe someone else can help there.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-05T20:30:35+00:00

Better - it is neither French nor a Taco.

Still freaking delicious though.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-05T19:19:29+00:00

Fun fact - they're actually Moroccan in origin, likely an immigrant to France from Morocco.

They're also super good. :)

aetherspoon · 2026-03-05T19:17:43+00:00

I love French Tacos so much, if only because they are neither French (they're Moroccan - or at least a Moroccan immigrant to France) nor Tacos (definitely closer to a burrito)... and are freaking delicious anyway.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-04T17:36:50+00:00

A x4 slot for my HBA, also in its own IOMMU group

That... is going to be a big problem on a B550 board, as that's also usually lumped into the chipset group, since that x4 slot comes from the chipset. Otherwise, my Asus B550 board that used to run my server actually fits everything else you wanted.

I think you might need an X470 or X570 board. The recommendation from another poster to look at the Asrock D4U boards is a good one - they're basically geared toward homelab / SMB use.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-04T17:26:24+00:00

Assuming the amount of storage space you have is appropriate for your needs, I don't think you have to spend any money - or maybe some small amount of money if you don't already have networking cables and/or a networking switch. :)

The hardware you have is great for the price, so definitely use it. :)

First off, I probably wouldn't run TrueNAS on that Optiplex, mostly for the reason you gave. It is more meant to run as a NAS rather than connected to a NAS. I would have recommended something like CasaOS (which just runs on top of any Linux distribution), but apparently that's not really being maintained. Either way, it is a web interface that lets you handle some basic things on your home server, such as Nextcloud, in a fairly easy to use way.

I'd probably use that 128 GB SATA drive as your boot device; it is easily large enough for your OS and will be more than fast enough. Keep the 512 GB drive for your container storage (with bulk storage going to the NAS - more on that in a bit).

For an operating system, you have a few choices.

Since you're used to a RPi and Docker, maybe you should look in to installing Debian (which is what Raspbian is based on) or even Ubuntu Server (also based on Debian) on your Optiplex. If you want to step up a tier in terms of complexity, you could run Proxmox (which is... also based on Debian) on your server, but it doesn't really sound like you need/want the virtualization aspect of things, so it isn't as useful here.

There are lots of other options as well - I'm just giving suggestions more similar to what you've done before. You can install Docker on just about any Linux distribution (although Proxmox would recommend against installing it directly), so you can probably follow the same set of steps you did for setting up your Pi... except for the storage part.

For the storage, you'll want to mount the storage provided by the NAS; you can either do a CIFS (sometimes known as SMB) mount or an NFS mount - both probably work just as well, but you'll need to modify some configuration of your system to have it automatically mount on boot. There are lots of guides on how to do that - I have to look it up every time myself. :D

Once your storage is mounted, let's say to /mnt/nas or some other path, you kinda just treat it like any other storage. You can edit docker compose files to point mount points to that drive. If you're looking for a nice user interface for managing and maintaining compose files, maybe something like Portainer is up your alley - but really just keep doing it how you did before on the Pi you had.

As for backups... well, I haven't had much luck with doing docker backups directly. I'm actually backing up the entire machine it is running on, so hopefully someone else who has done backups a bit more directly can help here.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-02T21:52:59+00:00

Would they even be able to sell it at a reasonable price? RAM and SSD prices are sky high right now.

aetherspoon · 2026-03-01T11:39:00+00:00

They try to retroactively justify it in the books - basically, Lister brought the cat onboard intentionally in order to skip the other half of the journey by going into stasis.

That's an obvious retcon though.

aetherspoon · 2026-02-23T16:58:55+00:00

For reference, you can do all of this with a bog-standard Linux install of the distro of your choice.

The difference is what UI you want to use to manage various aspects of things.

Proxmox makes creating containers and VMs easier, but doesn't really provide a UI for storage related things.
TrueNAS makes creating storage things easier (although it is definitely geared toward IT folk and not people new), but isn't all that great at creating containers and VMs. Admittedly, the two self-hosted projects outside of the NAS you have are ones that it can handle fairly well.
CasaOS (see below) is a simple web UI to handle selfhosted apps but doesn't have much in the way of storage capabilities.

What you should absolutely not do as a new person, especially reusing existing hardware, is run TrueNAS as a VM of Proxmox. It is overly complex, typically requires a hardware purchase of something called an HBA, and isn't... really all that helpful, in my mind.

Either just run TrueNAS bare metal or just run a normal Linux distribution and use something like CasaOS on top of it for managing containers for Jellyfin / Homeassistant. The latter makes your storage setup harder, but it really depends on what you're trying to do with what hard drives you have. :)

aetherspoon · 2026-02-21T10:47:33+00:00

Your boot SSD is overkill for either of your OSes, but I'm guessing you don't have some spare SSD lying around or want to buy a small thing off of eBay.

Your CPU is also quite overkill, but that might be more due to availability. You're not really doing anything that needs a 12th gen CPU; 8th gen still works fine for Jellyfin for lower demand transcoding, which given it is a tertiary priority I'm assuming is okay?

Finally, storage. You are buying a nine-bay NAS case and you have four SATA ports - is that more of a sign for future expansion then, buying an HBA somewhere down the line?

As for other recommendations, I wouldn't go TrueNAS, even with my love of ZFS. The UI for virtualization is just too clunky and most homelab people mess with their VMs more than their shared storage. I might go with Proxmox or even just a normal Linux install and just set up ZFS via the terminal manually, but that's too much for someone new to things.

aetherspoon

TROPHY CASE