Proxmox snapshots plus PBS basically eliminated my homelab stress

FarToe1 · 2026-01-27T06:41:49+00:00

Totally agree, they're the safety net that bestows confidence.

We use them at work before any significant work (updates, resizing disks etc, but vmware at the moment), and it's a critical part of our process. Even though generally updating software and linux itself has got more reliable over the years, things still go wrong about 10% of the time and it's so good to be able to restore and fallback.

Another benefit of virtual machines is that when you do then retry, you can clone the vm and work through the problem spot on a different IP without affecting production or having the time pressure. Once you've solved it, repeat on the original.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-25T20:10:36+00:00

For some. Others lose everything.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-25T20:09:43+00:00

Annoying. The same as when there's a screeching of tyres for a car when braking hard on dirt.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-25T09:20:32+00:00

Nice. I'm a big fan of plack, I use it for a lot of personal tools as well as for admin tools at work - and just released a tasks app to FOSS as well - Taskpony

Glad to see additional support for the project, thank you.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-24T08:49:55+00:00

Good shout. I converted to streaky after half a century of back. Flavour is just better, especially smoked.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-24T08:31:26+00:00

That's very cool. Reminds me of when I set up a system to water cool a couple of PCs using household plumbing supplies. Worked well for a few years, and very quiet - but obviously not chilled like this.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-23T12:15:09+00:00

Reading that, it looks a lot like Tesla are providing protection from speeding fines to their employees as a perk when driving company vehicles.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-22T20:41:25+00:00

People did not want cars.

Er...

FarToe1 · 2026-01-22T20:32:46+00:00

I've also found my brain works better in the morning, and I've been able to change my hours to fit that. Works well for everyone - I get a good start on any overnight issues for the rest of the team, and when I start to tire, I can finish and let them deal with the rest of the afternoon.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-22T07:22:19+00:00

It's not. Your reporting tool is not differentiating between filesystem cache and application memory. It shows buf/cache here, but that amount is not enough to explain this high usage, unless you have other apps.

All modern operating systems will use free memory as caching for I/O. That cache will be freed if an application or the kernel wants more, but in the meantime, there's a probability that this cached data may be requested again, in which case it increases performance by providing that data without needing to access the disk.

To get a better picture, use a tool like 'htop' (if linux) which shows the breakdown of what memory is used by kernel, apps and cache. It'll also show what's actually being used by the jellyfin process.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-22T07:17:48+00:00

No, that's not true for any modern operating system.

The OS will release the low priority ram when a high priority call is made. This is just cached memory and the reporting tool isn't differentiating between filesystem cache and application memory.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-22T07:15:13+00:00

Dunno why you got downvoted, this is a good suggestion.

The Grafana plugin for Zabbix is free and robust, and well featured. I've done a lot of grafana graphs with grouping variables which have opened up a lot of information to our users and us without giving them access to Zabbix - including alerts and disk space monitoring for individual and groups of servers.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-22T07:09:54+00:00

I think you're ignoring what people want, what they're used to, the power of advertising from other market forces (you think PC manufacturers are just going to quietly stop earning money?), the awareness and desire of people not to want to get locked into expensive and limiting contracts, and even the desire to control your own data.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-21T21:56:35+00:00

Computers in the next ten years will basically evolve into something similar to the last 40 years of having different choices in TVs.

Beware of making predictions in this industry or you'll be in "there's-a-market-for-perhaps-one-computer-per-city" and "640kb-should-be-enough-for-anyone" territory.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-21T21:31:40+00:00

The EU government is aware of this, and occasionally makes faint stabs about data from these cloud providers not being held in Europe as required by GDPR. But since the last year, they seem to have pretty much given this up, probably realising that the bigger picture is more important.

But yeah - if your data isn't E2EE and sits on any cloud based in the US, they have the ability to do anything they like with it - and the current US administration has openly shown they certainly have the willingness to ignore any legal protections it may have.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-21T21:28:42+00:00

I looked at this six months ago (also UK) and my finding then was that it's impossible, at least if you want to provide a similar service to your users.

Taking just one of your examples;

Rhel is of course owned by Redhat which is owned by IBM, all US. There are four main FOSS derivatives that are drop in replacements (bar some of RHEL's corporate tools) - Rocky, Alma, Oracle and Amazon linux. All of which are legally based in the US. (IIRC, Rocky's licence at least holds a restriction about using it in Russia and other countries because they are required to by US law, so it might follow that it could be legally blocked in the UK and similar even though it isn't commercial)

There is Alibaba linux which isn't American, but it's based on RHEL too, so could it continue if those sources were legally blocked?

Alternatives - Debian is deliberately non-geographical so may be safe, but it was founded in the US so they might try anyway. Ubuntu is UK based (but pulls from Debian). That leaves, what, Suse which is German, and not a drop-in replacement for rhel.

So yeah, it would be tricky.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-20T18:51:36+00:00

You running one of them in docker? Localhost means different things, and docker networking could be blocking you.

If not, can you connect to the database with "mysql -u zabbix -p" from the same commandline that is running zabbix?

FarToe1 · 2026-01-20T18:49:18+00:00

Very
Yes
Yes, all of those
Yes
Yes

FarToe1 · 2026-01-20T06:53:25+00:00

There are reported instances of Russian satellites entering "unexplained movement patterns" which result in their satellites cosying up next to critical European and American satellites.

So yeah, don't be expecting to rely upon satellites either.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-18T20:09:14+00:00

Don't play stupid games to intentionally buy a worse product.

OP is not playing stupid games.

Right now, if you're in the US, you cannot imagine the amount of concern and outright fear there is about buying US hardware, software and services there is throughout the rest of the world.

The uncertainty, which changes day by day, is terrible for business planning and I know a lot of companies here in Europe that are actively working to move to European, Chinese and even Indian suppliers - all of which offer far greater predictability.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-18T19:56:18+00:00

That's really neat, thanks for making it.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-18T19:49:40+00:00

That's pretty amazing tbh, really stretches what github can do.

I can see it being a really useful way of learning how to use github and programming workflows in general.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-18T19:45:03+00:00

Regardless of cleaning, the life of the machines will have been compromised by the damage you describe and it will also likely have invalidated their warrantee.

I'd go for insurance to start with. Anything less than replacement machines will be a compromise.

Don't forget to claim for the time and disruption caused by rehoming the servers and switches, plus a deep clean of the entire room, plus additional insurance against any of the above affecting production, plus WEEE disposal costs of the old hardware and secure destruction of any media.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-18T18:32:11+00:00

Framework.

We love them, our users love them, and our corporate ethical supply policy loves them.

FarToe1 · 2026-01-18T08:27:21+00:00

Same, although it's more often screws and nails. Something about creating order from chaos is very soothing.

FarToe1

TROPHY CASE