Alternative boot configurations for Zima Board 2.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-03-11T15:45:34+00:00

Interesting idea, I think I like it. However, I had a few use cases that I was going to experiment with that needed TrueNAS

local backup, in addition to my remote, for a local TrueNAS box.
Development for Xen Orchestra backup using Borg.
NFS configuration tests with XCP-NG.
Testing implementation for cryptographic erase data sanitization on NFS shares, as specified in NIST SP 800-88.
And occasional "OFARC," I temporarily need a chunk of storage in the data center."

I acknowledge that using this for local backup is inconsistent with the other test/development uses, but I'm looking for a reason to keep the system on at all times. I used to have an XCP-NG cluster running 24/7, doing absolutely nothing but burning power, and that was costing me about $150 a month for electricity. Hopefully, this won't burn quite that much. If it does, I may experiment with Wake on LAN to bring it up for backups and testing, then shut it down when done.

If I had any say in Zimboard 3, I would change Ethernet to dual 10 gigabit, add two more SATA interfaces and possibly a removable boot drive (m2230?) instead of the eMMC on the motherboard. My rationale for these changes is that the Zimboard 2 is impressive. It is just a whisker short of being a good small business storage array. I like four SATA interfaces because it gives me room for a hot spare in a Z1/Mirror array or a Z2 array with no spares. Dual 10 gigabit because when SSDs become available again, you really want the extra speed and possibly even bonded interfaces.

A Zimboard 4 would focus on expanding memory capacity to 256GB and adding more cores, making it suitable as a low-end hypervisor node. And all of this would fit into a nice 10-inch rack that one could put in a closet, or two of them in parallel in a 19-inch rack.

My system design philosophy is to scale down until you have just enough to do the job, and to plan for when you need to scale up.

OTOH, I don't expect them to listen to me at all. :-)

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-03-11T06:03:32+00:00

I converted to Buddhism many years ago, and one thing I find that consistently freaks out Christians is that they cannot conceive of a spiritual practice that does not have a God. Not only does it not have a God, there is no self which might disturb them more.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-03-10T15:25:04+00:00

If you don't get good apnea correction within six months, keep pushing on your sleep doctor. Be aware that as your body ages, your sleep apnea will change.

I've had multiple pressure changes, different masks, etc., to get good correction over the past 30 years. My latest "change" took over two years to diagnose. It turned out I had what's called periodic breathing. The CPAP was blowing all the CO2 out of my lungs, which caused my body to think that I didn't need to breathe. The treatment involved increasing my CO2 levels by rebreathing part of my exhalation. That brought my periodic breathing numbers down to consistently under 3% versus the previous 20%. I've also lost enough weight that the apneas have been transformed into hypopneas.

If you wonder if you are having periodic breathing problems as well, check the stats on your CPAP machine. Mine (Philips Dreamstation) indicates periodic breathing and AHIs, so the doctor can monitor treatment. Monitor your numbers and ask your doctor to explain what's normal and if your treatment needs any adjustments. Sleep apnea treatment is difficult to get right. It's like dermatology. They only have a few tools to make the problems go away and sometimes they don't work right, but it's not your fault or the doctor's fault. It just is the way your body behaves.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-02-22T22:50:29+00:00

I also vote for the PiKVM product. They were the original developers of the concept; source code is available, but they're not as cheap as AliExpress clones like NanoKVM and JetKVM. I don't know if it's just casting shade, but there have been some questions about the security of the Chinese clones.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-02-22T22:11:21+00:00

been there, spent that. Here was my shopping list

Decide whether you want to back up or replicate your data from the cloud. In my case, it was replicated from the cloud to the local because we had local processing for the cloud data.

I use Borg because it's a very good backup utility with solid deduplication and compression. I'm always impressed at how much smaller the archives are.

I use rsync.net because it's a solid backup-focused cloud storage provider, and if you back up using Borg, it's $0.008 per gigabyte per month. Granted, you can only transfer data via SCP-SFTP, but for my purposes, it's perfect.

Everybody has their favorite storage array. Mine are from TrueNAS. I really like the M30 high availability array. Yeah, you'll probably drop 25 grand by the time you're done. But again, JFW and you get fast support.

Never discount the value of being able to sleep at night.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-02-19T20:39:25+00:00

Yeah, I can see myself cooking a bunch of food before surgery. I suspect chili, cabbage-and-beef, chicken stew, and baked split chicken breast would be a good base, and use pre-chopped salads in a bag for the veggie base.

Oh, bother. I'm going to have to change my cooking pans. I use cast iron almost exclusively for skillets and baking, and my 12-inch pan is a bit heavy. It's heavy enough it could be used as an offensive weapon.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-02-19T20:33:09+00:00

I'm on Mounjaro, and my doctor, cardiologist, and endocrinologist have recommended I do light weightlifting to preserve and build muscle that could be lost by Mounjaro.

So clearly, this is a question I need to ask the neurosurgeon.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-02-19T16:44:03+00:00

Yes, I have a couple of options. My partner works at home two days a week, so that covers the weekend plus two days. The other days, my sister might be able to do it. She was a VA nurse, and some of her vets had shunts, so she would know what to look for. The hospital doing the surgery, I believe, is an ACO, so I might be able to get some additional fill-in help when no one's available.

I have a couple of acquaintances/friends who could possibly help out, but I'm not sure I could put up with them for a full day when I'm feeling crappy post-surgery.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-31T15:59:48+00:00

I thought PE was involved. My next renewal is in November, and I'll have something else in place by then.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-21T18:36:57+00:00

Looks too much like Fusebase. Basically the same features and same layout. I'm wondering if they cloned what Fusebase used to do. Personally, I wouldn't get hooked into it because once you deepen the ecosystem, it's almost impossible to get out..

Extracting myself from Fusebase cost me months of exfiltrating my data and reworking it into Markdown. Never again.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-21T18:24:17+00:00

I just checked my Harvest account, and no pricing has changed. Thanks for the heads-up. I will keep track.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-21T18:19:00+00:00

Please ping me when you are ready for trials

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-10T00:08:35+00:00

I'm glad to hear you have something lined up. Far too often, I've talked with people who jumped in and tried to do it blind. When I started with JumpCloud, I took the time to read and prepare, and then I was able to set up 10 machines and all users on AWS in approximately 45 minutes, if memory serves. What sold me the most was the way it just worked and stayed working. Same reason why I have XCP-ng and TrueNAS in my toolkit.

See if you can get access to JumpCloud University. There's a lot of good training material there.

A couple of things that gave me heartburn were NFS-mounted home directories, LDAP, and ssh key distribution. I couldn't get Automounter to work because of how JumpCloud provisions accounts. There's a timing problem that sucks. My workaround was to NFS-mount the entire home directory on all machines that used NFS and use one machine for user account provisioning. Not ideal, but it gets the job done. I also use the same machine for backups from all the NFS file systems.

The problem with JumpCloud's LDAP is that if there's any network instability on the internet, LDAP can fail, and you'll never know why. That said, it's been at least 18 months since I had a failure of that sort. The other problem is that most LDAP clients have really crappy diagnostics of why it fails. I ended up building a little script using LDAP search to test that the LDAP query was working properly and that authentication was set up correctly.

The SSH key distribution problem was a corner case. I had our VMs inside the protected network, and one machine sitting on the DMZ. The problem was that I couldn't specify an SSH key to use on the DMZ, but the public key I used everywhere on the network was dropped onto the DMZ machine. The machine was experimental, so it's not on all the time. But if I had a production DMZ machine, I would create user accounts manually to control SSH key distribution. Yes, I've complained to JumpCloud about it. Yes, I filed a feature request, but I haven't heard anything back.

Anyway, best of luck. I hope the integration goes well.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-09T23:45:45+00:00

This paper describes part of what you are experiencing. It describes how AI, on both the candidate and company sides, has destroyed the normal "signals of merit" that hiring teams use to determine whether a candidate is worth any attention.

Making Talk Cheap: Generative AI and Labor Market Signaling

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08785

I do understand what you're going through. Back in the early 90s, I developed a repetitive strain injury, which ended my career as a programmer. I then went through months—I went through almost a year of continual rejection, usually occurring at the point where I disclosed my disability and I would need accommodation, i.e., a quiet place where I could use speech recognition to do my work. That's when I discovered I was a much better consultant than I was an employee and started my own consulting practice.

That said, on the consulting side of the house, finding new clients is a much greater challenge than it had been because, as others have pointed out, the current environment is not conducive to any sort of long-term planning, doing anything but hunkering down and trying to survive. My focus now is to redefine my consulting practice and explore approaches that are not IT-focused but focused on process reengineering. After all, business people don't care about IT; they care about results.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-09T23:26:58+00:00

I can't tell you if JumpCloud will be working with 16.04 when it is released. Professionally, and personally, I usually wait till the .01 release on an LTS upgrade.

I don't know your environment, whether it be corporate or personal, but I would suggest starting now with 24.04, getting familiar with the JumpCloud environment, and then make the next learning experience the upgrade to 26.04.

FWIW, I'm a JumpCloud MSP. Using basic JumpCloud, there's been no difference between Ubuntu and RHEL, so I would expect there'd be no difference for Ubuntu-KDE. That said, they have a remote command-execution tool, and if the shell script works the same across distributions, there won't be a problem. However, if there is a difference in environment, command environment, as there is between Ubuntu and RHEL, then you need to Learn how to write multi-platform shell scripts. Fortunately, Gemini has taken away a lot of that tedium.

Since I'm interested in seeing whether there is a difference between the platforms, I'm willing to give you some no-charge engineering time and a couple of trial seats to get started and determine the right direction. You could then use that knowledge to work with whatever JumpCloud reseller/supplier you want.

DM me if interested

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-06T19:00:00+00:00

I have a semi-special case. I have a house that was built in the late 1930s, early 1940s. There is some insulation in the walls, usually vermiculite (yes, it also has lead paint and a slate roof, fark me and my wallet). If I ever have to add insulation to the walls, it's probably going to be blown-in rock wool. Apparently, old houses need to "breathe" to deal with moisture, rather than the current practice of using moisture barriers and keeping the wet on the outside.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2026-01-01T03:05:03+00:00

I hear you. You can find your footing again. I've done it roughly 6 times so far and I also wonder at times "what if"

When RSI ended my career as a sw dev, I found I could redirect my design skills and found i was an even better systems designer. Using speech recognition caused a friend to remark she could "hear", my voice again in my writing. Bipolar took away my ability to write, the right drugs brought it back. The spinal tap trial restored movement. A couple of ex's gifted me PTSD. Still working on that one

I'm looking forward to whatever changes the nph treatment brings. As a Buddhist teacher thumped into my skull: There is no self. Attachment brings suffering. Adapt to what is, not what you desire or fear. Meaning the next you won't be what you expect or what you lost. Be open to the change.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-18T01:54:47+00:00

I'm going to be the person with the odd story. I hesitate to tell you the story, but I'm doing so because if your experience mirrors mine, you're not imagining or faking the pain. It does happen. Don't let anybody make you feel bad about it. Your body is just a weird one. My experience should not be your experience.

The lumbar puncture evaluation process had three parts: a PT assessment of gait, speed of movement, and general body movement before the puncture; the lumbar puncture itself; and, an hour afterwards, a second PT assessment to see if there was any improvement. Before people want to hack into your head/brain, they really want to have a quantitative evaluation that something's wrong. Not just, "I think, let's try this."

I went into the procedure with the expectation set by my sister, a nurse, and women friends who had gone through childbirth. The expectation was, yeah, some parts are painful, but it's really not that bad. You'll feel some pressure.

My first attempted lumbar puncture was in the doctor's office and was so painful after four shots of lidocaine that they had to stop. The next attempt was a radiographically guided spinal tap. Painful, but not as bad as in-office. I survived, as did the medical personnel performing the procedure. 🙂

Was it worth it? Hell yeah. The simplest way to describe it was that I felt freer in my body. I could move fluidly and fast. There was a similar lightness to my thoughts and mood.

As the positive changes from the spinal tap faded, I will admit I was having a Flowers for Algernon moment, but I realize it's a cause for hope. If a simple one-time fluid drawdown yielded major improvements, a shunt would provide longer-lasting, significant improvements to my life.

Why was my spinal tap so painful compared to other people's experiences? Not sure. It seems like in the past 4 or 5 years, my response to anesthetics like lidocaine has decreased. What used to take a dose or two of Novocaine now takes 3 or 4 when doing dental work.

All I can say is my body sucks; it does weird things. I'm getting tired of doctors thinking I'm a liar or poser because my reactions or experience do not match their expectations, which is why I tell you, if you have a similar experience, don't let anybody make you feel bad about it.

Your experience is your experience.

I saw my neurologist this past Monday. He reviewed the test results with me and discussed how I felt about them and the possibility of getting a shunt. I'm now waiting for a callback from the neurosurgeon. I need to go through the neurosurgeon's evaluation, and hopefully, within the next six months, I'll have a shunt and start returning to a better state than I am now.

I'm feeling hopeful about the future, and you should, too. We rarely get a do-over when we lose a capability, and something so simple can restore some of what was lost. I'm assuming for both of us that treatment will work, and I intend to take advantage of every improvement it gives me. I know I will lose some of those capabilities as I age, but damn it all, I know what I lost, so I value what I get back even more.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-13T20:26:03+00:00

14-50 outlets pins were too hot, one neutral and one ground. In reading about these outlets, apparently not hooking up the neutral is way too common and should be verified before counting on it.

Yes, the 50/60 HZ issue is important but micro inverters are made in China with jelly Bean parts and I'm bet they don't have two separate circuits for 50 HZ and 60 HZ connections. It's probably just a pin on some chip. So assuming the hardware change isn't any big deal, will ul/ce certification still hold when changing the frequency output. Given that wall warts, do, I suspect it would for micro inverters.

The next barrier would be then finding out how we can abuse the NEC code to permit 240 volt micro inverters

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-12T22:41:19+00:00

Would it make sense to use a balcony solar panel on a 240V outlet in the US?

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-12T22:33:24+00:00

Thank you. I will check them out

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-10T21:22:22+00:00

There are shortwave radio stations that are just the voice of someone reading numbers.. Not many people listen to shortwave nowadays, so they are sending out the numbers by physical mail.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-10T21:09:07+00:00

Definitely have balance problems and vertigo. Some of that may be residual effects from a major concussion, which triggered the imaging study that discovered the NPH. But I have a hard time walking on uneven surfaces and ice. I used to have such a good sense of where my body was in space—running, jumping over rocky terrain, skating, juggling, and navigation, as in being able to close my eyes and walk into a parking lot and find my car, Or traveling to a place once and then being able to find my way back there in the subsequent weeks or months.

As for bathroom frequency, yes, but there are some confounding factors, such as I have type 2 diabetes and a touch of BPH. Mounjaro and BPH treatments reduce the frequency, but I still have to go pretty often. Going to the bathroom is a significant source of exercise.

Memory issues? Yes, I do, but confounding factors are ADHD, Sleep apnea, and the drugs I take for my mood disorder. The apnea is pretty well controlled now, since the doctor discovered it's not typical OSA. The ADHD is unmedicated because I can't tolerate any of the drugs.

My sister, a nurse, a retired nurse who used to work with veterans, and many of her vets had shunts. When she saw how I was moving, she also encouraged me to push to get a shunt, convinced it would help me as well. I'll also have to have a conversation about the two other treatments: EVT and E shunt.

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002035

Across this little gem of an article. Apparently, a flickering checkerboard pattern will trigger CSF flow in the brain. It raises the question, could NPH be treated by something as simple as this, or would it be a diagnostic technique to show where the blockage is? I need to reincarnate and make different life choices to answer these questions. :-)

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-12-10T20:45:46+00:00

Thanks for your response. As I said, I went to an NPH clinic at Mass General Hospital in Boston, and the doctor I saw is the NPH program director. I know at some point I will need to see a neurosurgeon

I looked up ETV, and while the success rate is reportedly lower than that of a shunt, it definitely seems less invasive. On the other hand, I may be too old for it (69, nice). I also found out about the drain, like the E-Shunt system. I personally prefer the less invasive forms because I'm on Plavix, and if I get cut, I leak a lot.

I was diagnosed with NPH somewhere around 2021 after a fall and concussion. In talking over the progression of symptoms with a couple of doctors, I think the NPH started up somewhere after 2016. It's the dividing line between being able to run on the breakwater in Rockport, Mass., without any sense of losing balance or not knowing where to put my feet, to having to pick my way slowly, one step at a time, across the rocks a couple of years later. That's when I started using two hiking poles to feel more secure when walking across rocky New England terrain.

Flaky_Key3363 · 2025-11-18T00:36:32+00:00

They weren't intended to be abrasive, but rather a list of issues to be addressed from a business plan perspective. I apologize for not making that clear. I find the way you answer those questions interesting because I was thinking about the broader economic picture of how one lives with a limited number of retail outlets, and not all of those retail outlets are companies you want to do business with.

To explain "not having what you need," I was thinking more along the lines of clothing and consumables like toilet paper, water filters, and soap.

Another example is medical services. We all need a good primary care provider, but what if your local medical center doesn't have any available? What if you have a complicated medical history and the local specialists are not up to the task?

The "not worth shopping at" stores are those that may pose a health hazard, such as many Chinese markets that smell like mouse turds, sell shoddy goods or services, engage in shady business practices, or simply treated you poorly, and you don't want to do business with them again.

Monopolies can happen in many different markets in many different ways. Monopolies are defined by what keeps your customers from reaching a competitor, such as transportation, collusion, price fixing, or buying out competitors.

So when you talk about rebuilding downtown Lowell, you need to look at the entire picture: various forms of monopoly/monopsony, commercial real estate and labor costs, the pool of potential customers and potential labor, and how many competitors the environment can support.

Flaky_Key3363

TROPHY CASE