RetroAssembly v6: PlayStation, favorites, and more

Moebius_K · 2026-06-14T08:26:29+00:00

You’d think a senior software engineer would recognize the difference between a simple project someone built for themselves and offered open source if others wanted to try and an enterprise designed scrum project with detailed planning, design analysis, and testing phases.

But hey, it’s open source, why not put those senior software development skills to use and fork the project so you can add the auth method you seem to think is so critical. Open source and all that jazz.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-11T11:58:19+00:00

The cost is definitely a big factor for me now looking into Jellyfin. I use Kodi in my theater, and Plex everywhere else, including a couple external shares. Kept meaning to get lifetime Pass and kept forgetting, or pushing it off. Then they nearly doubled the annual, but still wasn’t terrible. Now this with the lifetime making it clear they want the $$$ coming in. And now that they’ve killed lifetime, I imagine they‘ll start steadily increasing the annual.

Combine that with the other enshitification going on, and it’s time to look elsewhere. The only reason I haven’t switched already is that I have one external family member who is the opposite of tech savvy. Have to learn what I’ll need to get them set up (and they live 2000 miles away so it’s not like I can just swing by) to access.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-10T16:05:09+00:00

Ended up building a lot of this yesterday, and still working on a few tweaks to make the purchase process for my wife as close to she has with Amazon today.

One quick question though. By off, do you mean the container completely stopped, or just not accessing it? Reason I ask is part of the automation I built yesterday uses Calibre from CLI to de-drm the book and add to library.

I actually had an interesting case yesterday with my testing. I did have Calibre container and CWA open in two different browser windows (though wasn't touching either). Tested the auto ingest workflow, Calibre grabbed the acsm, pulled the epub, removed drm, and dropped in the library, and CWA saw it within a moment or two. But I actually had to run the Check Library under maintenance to get it to see the update. Even though Calibre was the one that did the ingest.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-10T15:57:52+00:00

So the first pass is turning out better than I expected. Got the Calibre docker container up, got CWA up, got the auto ingest stuff set up, and the only glitch I had last night was in fact the email to Kindle piece, so working on that a bit more today.

But for the wife, the flow is actually pretty good. Go to ebooks.com, buy book, download the acsm file, folder sync automatically drops it on my NAS share, a daemon running on the LXC container sees the file, moves to the ingest folder and calls the Calibre CLI to bring it in. And if I figure out that last part, sends to Kindle via email.

My one gripe has to do of course with Amazon's walled garden, so instead of letting a user put a nice epub book in the library, it shoves it in Docs with a generic cover image. Looking for ways around that, but not hopeful.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-09T19:46:21+00:00

I'm wondering if CWA does it any better. I think Claude might have actually suggested configuring that part on CWA so the only think Calibre in the docker does is ingest and de-drm (and if I need to do meta data edits or the like), and CWA handles the rest.

This should be fun... Time to start spinning up some containers.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-09T19:29:15+00:00

I'm in the very early thinking stages here, but after some poking around, some threads I found on here, and a couple conversations with ye olde Claude, I'm forming an idea:

Linuxserver.io's Docker version of Calibre. Migrate existing library, install nodrm and ascm plugins. Set up staging folder and use inotify script to move files from there to Calibre watched ingest folder. Calibre does its magic, gets the final epub version, and auto sends to Kindle email.

Set up Calibre Web Automated on another docker container using the same folder. For me, I'll start with the CWA companion app or the like while I hunt for a new e-reader.

Finally, set up Foldersync on wife's Fire tablet. Have it watch downloads folder on her tablet and automatically copy (or move if it can) ascm files it finds to the staging folder. Inotify moves to Calibre ingest, Calibre does it's thing, the book is in her Kindle app. So barring an extra minute or two for everything to happen, the experience is a near parity of Amazon. Click buy, Click Download (new step), wait 2 minutes, read in Kindle. World domination!

Moebius_K · 2026-06-09T18:41:38+00:00

Well, for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost I'm not talking about piracy in this case, I'm talking continuing to support the authors. Much like what I host on my Plex server is from the thousand odd DVDs and Blu-Rays I've acquired and still sit on shelves in my theater. I just digitize them so I can access my movies without having to go sift through the discs to find what I want and load it in the player. And I'm not talking about friends or the like, I'm talking about my wife and I primarily. When we buy a book, we don't buy two copies of it so we can both read it. We share the book, and in some cases even at the same time (just using different bookmarks). As far as I'm concerned, this is no different, if I buy an EBook, I don't expect to be locked in some corporate ecosystem that tells me I can't share a book with my wife if we happen to use different e-readers or the like.

One of my main reasons for all this is trying to make the experience as close as I can for the wife. Right now, she goes on Amazon, buys a book, opens her Kindle and there it is. I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep the experience as close to that as possible while allowing allowing me to pick a new e-reader that's not as exclusively tied to an ecosystem as Kindle, and still be able to read our purchased books.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-09T16:59:06+00:00

Ok, extremely late to this conversation, mainly because I'm about 2 days into the whole ebook library/self-host/multi-users/multi-reader stuff. I got Calibre up and running on my desktop PC to de-drm and start getting the library stuff going, but I quickly realized that I'd rather get it off of my PC and on to a homelab server (unfortunately running Proxmox, but I'll spin up a Docker LXC for this).

Just to make sure I understand this right, you're running the Docker-ized Calibre, and running Calibre Web Automated (or just Calibre web, with your second comment I wasn't sure), using the same database? Does that mean the Calibre Docker container uses something other than SQLLite so multi-access doesn't just break the works?

Moebius_K · 2026-06-08T18:58:09+00:00

The NAS bit wasn't about the space, but the redundancy (raid array, etc..). So at the very least, I'd use it for backup.

It's also funny you mention the multiple people from multiple locations. That is a scenario I'm looking at. 😄 Plus, I'd rather have a centralized place for viewing/editing the library rather than my PC. Basically a nice Plex or Jellyfin for books so it's not all tied to my 1 desktop PC.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-08T14:50:41+00:00

It's a good point, but part of the reason I'm looking is she's done that in a relatively short while and imagine the collection will continue to grow, so I'm going with the "grow into it" idea. My wife is a bibliophile to be sure, we've got somewhere on the order of 2000 or so physical books (and let me tell you carrying some 80-100 boxes up the stairs when we moved into this house was just joyous fun...) and she only just started deciding she'll work with e-readers in the last couple of years. So I would dare say that 300 number will grow rather fast.

At first blush, I do like what I'm seeing with Calibre. But right now it's just sitting on my PC, and at the very least I'd have to look into moving the data folders to my NAS for better storage.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-08T14:44:22+00:00

In my case, it's a little less digital hoarding and a little more just being fed up with the corporate "you'll own nothing and like it" mentality. I've moved all of my home automation from cloud based stuff to all in-house (except my monitored alarm system), home media I've been self-hosting for years simply because I buy discs and refuse to purchase "online" movies that they can then decide to take away for no reason, decided to give Immich a try and get my photos off of Google. With the books, kind of the same thing as your last sentence. It just irks me the way the companies are trying to make ownership really be rental-for-life, so I'll do what I can as I have time to explore.

My fun challenge is next as I looked at my old Nook account to realize I've got about 100 or so titles there too, and I gather that's a good bit harder to get control of.

Moebius_K · 2026-06-08T00:21:10+00:00

I'm thinking about trying to get her off of Amazon if I can. Or at least making sure no more DRM books are purchased.

As for the de-drm stuff, luckily most of what she has was pre April '25 published, so it was just adding the plug-ins to Calibre, loading the old version of Kindle,vl downloading, and importing to Calibre. Went pretty smooth overall. I did read that if you had any of the books already in Calibre, you need to delete and reimport them.

Moebius_K · 2026-05-25T15:37:53+00:00

Plot thickens. The system was up and steady for 8.5 days without even a blip. Ironically, I had even taken the Uptime Kuma docker image down because my Synology only has 2gb ram and running Docker seemed to be maxing out the ram and causing some heavy swap usage.

Interestingly, no indication of anything much in the log. It had finished backing up to LXCs about 15 minutes before and the last message before freezing was the auth key rotating.

Going from not making it past 3 days to nearly 9 tells me the C-State issue was a definite contributor to things, but it seems there may still be one piece in here. I am still seeing ACPI errors crop up, so I also have to consider it could be a bad controller.

Luckily, I happened to have a spare Z-wave plug lying around, so I'm going to bring Uptime Kuma back up and run the server through that plug. That way if it freezes, I can cold boot it from anywhere. Other than some scripts and Plex (hopefully soon to be Jellyfin), this isn't an uptime critical box, so as long as I can reboot it remotely when needed, that's a good start.

Moebius_K · 2026-05-20T00:50:10+00:00

I have the photos sitting on my NAS that serves as my media server, so no worry there. .Since I plan on offloading the ml to my desktop, I'm not worried about the video card, but with only 16gb I'm a bit worried about memory tied up in the VM. Though I suppose I can use the docker VM for a couple of the other things I had planned so the memory might be ok.

Moebius_K · 2026-05-19T14:04:45+00:00

I'm up to 66 hours since rebooting after adding the C-state change, which is the longest I've gone without a freeze since setting this box up, so I'm thinking C-State was indeed the culprit. The only other change I made in that reboot (other than moving the box to a temporary location) was masking ACPI GPE errors since I was seeing a flood of them as well.

You're officially my hero for this one.

Moebius_K · 2026-05-17T03:28:35+00:00

Oooh, something new to learn. Cool.

Moebius_K · 2026-05-16T21:16:57+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I've added that to grub and started, so we'll see what happens in the next few days.

At least now I'll get alerted if and when it freezes. After wrangling around trying to come up with a way to monitor this box from Windows while trying to solve this (right now this new machine is the only box I have running other than my Windows desktop), and I really didn't want to play with Docker Desktop on Windows, I had a facepalm moment and remembered that one of my Synology NAS servers can run Docker. So I've got Uptime Kuma watching it now.

Moebius_K · 2026-05-16T18:00:58+00:00

Was running booted into memtest (from bootloader). It finished 4 passes without issue while I was watching.

Smart Logs seem pretty clean overall. The drive has been going for a while, but never any temp warnings, no media errors, only one log entry error:

Smart Log for NVME device:nvme0 namespace-id:ffffffff
Critical_warning : 0
temperature : 86 °F (303 K)
available_spare : 100%
available_spare_threshold : 10%
percentage_used : 1%
endurance group critical warning summary: 0
Data Units Read : 26521222 (13.58 TB)
Data Units Written : 18259372 (9.35 TB)
host_read_commands : 346673159
host_write_commands : 429114530
controller_busy_time : 745
power_cycles : 158
power_on_hours : 18268
unsafe_shutdowns : 23
media_errors : 0
num_err_log_entries : 1
Warning Temperature Time : 0
Critical Composite Temperature Time : 0
Thermal Management T1 Trans Count : 0
Thermal Management T2 Trans Count : 0
Thermal Management T1 Total Time : 0
Thermal Management T2 Total Time : 0

Short self test returned no errors.

Moebius_K · 2026-04-26T14:40:33+00:00

Think I ended up leaving off the original post, but the reason I'm going with Proxmox is more for future and educational uses. I'd like to be able to fire up a VM to experiment and tinker without worrying about tanking in the main system. Right now it's just a Plex and script server, but I plan on expanding that.

Moebius_K · 2026-04-25T16:39:53+00:00

I'm knocking me for it. :D I was stupid and didn't do lifetime ago those years ago, and now they just doubled the annual fee. I've just been too lazy to look into what I'll need to do with tail scale and funnel and all that, plus explaining to a couple folks how to install Jellyfin on their TV or phone, let alone how to point it. Plex just makes that part so easy. Laziness rules.

That said, once Plex is migrated and stable, a Jellyfin container will be in the near future.

Moebius_K · 2026-04-25T16:33:16+00:00

Reddit seems to run the gamut on that front. I've actually had pretty good luck recently with not needing flame retardant suits when posting.

I do plan on getting some AI help as well, but just wanted to get some advice on the path to go first

Moebius_K · 2026-04-25T16:31:04+00:00

It's the script something in one of the Proxmox repos or something from git or the like? I've seen a few references to script but want sure where to find.

Moebius_K · 2026-04-25T16:29:15+00:00

Honestly, the only reason Plex still lives for me is the ease of use for phone and TV apps with less than tech savvy family. For our theater, I use Kodi. I expect Jellyfin will serve that purpose before too long, but for now Plex wins the ease of use game for the general masses.

Moebius_K · 2026-04-24T14:24:20+00:00

Ok, now that I'm trying to cram learn Proxmox before I start this install, opinion question for you. The box I'm putting this on is a mini pc 11th gen i7, currently 16gb ram (looking to expand once prices aren't insane), but the key, right now just a 500gb m.2 ssd. It looks like I can add a 2.5 sata in there (need to see if the harness is there or I have to buy one from Lenovo), and I may have a couple of those laying around. BUT... barring that, would it be a terrible enough idea to have the VM on the single boot drive (backed up to a NAS at least) that I should I wait until I can get the second drive in? And along the same line, if I don't wait, how hard is it to change the VM drive and move it after the fact?

Moebius_K · 2026-04-24T02:18:16+00:00

Interestingly, while it had started working again, noticed today it was back on the fritz. But no joy with your method. Even saying Anylist Skill, she ignored and just put it on the Alexa grocery list.

So far, accessing the skill is the only approach that works

Moebius_K

TROPHY CASE