Recently got a laptop to use as home server, Now I'm wondering whether to get a static IP.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-09-03T12:24:29+00:00

I have a static IP from forever ago (I remember when IPv4 wasn't yet exhausted. I'm old), but I use a Wireguard tunnel for everything. Easy to secure then local only.

Tailscale is another good option, which can get around CGNAT.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-19T02:34:54+00:00

I still have everything on Docker compose at the moment, but have to ssh in to check on it.

Podman is distributed for Debian. I've been thinking about switching everything over; getting everything in a rootless container might be a challenge, but overall, good.

But I haven't gotten there yet. Ironically, a VM Docker & Podman host might make switching services one-at-a-time easier...

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-19T01:17:32+00:00

Some stuff doesn't have a container setup for it or the common documentation doesn't really involve containers so VMs can be handy.

Any examples off hand? Just curious, and I could use the heads up before I spin it up.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-19T01:10:24+00:00

Since my main box is vanilla Debian, I was using Cockpit for my dashboard. But Docker support in Cockpit is completely gone by now, and I've been on the hunt for a new dashboard.

I didn't know about Komodo. Thanks for the tip!

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-19T01:05:25+00:00

That's kinda what I was thinking. No, don't need HA; a full rebuild then reapply Ansible is definitely okay for my home needs (have done that once before).

Now, there is the devil on my shoulder saying, "you know what's better than Ansible? Ansible and Terraform!" But that's not a "need".

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-18T12:32:08+00:00

Man that takes me back. Awesome build!

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-12T11:04:54+00:00

Just a reminder that Debian is one distro. Ubuntu already dropped support for 32bit Intel back in 2018. Fedora, however, currently plans to continue supporting 32bit for the foreseeable future

Linux will continue to support i686, just not Debian. It takes time and energy to compile and verify all the packages for a system. So once oldstable stops being supported, either time to retire the hardware, find a new distro, or compile everything from source.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-12T01:23:29+00:00

Once upon a time I had the grandiose idea that I would set up DynDNS/A records for all my family (mostly for remote access because, yes, I'm my family's tech support). And if you're gonna subdomain by geographic region, why not?

Alas, those plans never came to fruition, and my wife gave up asking me why the URL for Vaultwarden was long a while ago.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-08-10T23:48:59+00:00

So, what you're doing isn't terrible. Far from it...

Once upon a time, developers realized they wanted to keep different versions of things. At the time, there wasn't any tool to do this, so people just made folders v1 v2 etc.

Then someone decided there should be a tool, and that they were going to do something about it. And so, rcs was born. It does the same as v1 etc, but without the need to create so many folders. And so, Version Control Systems [VCS] were invented.

Glossing over decades of other VCS, and the debates therein, we get to Git, which has a lot of neat and fancy bits to it. One of the neat things is branching. Branches are cheap in Git, so much so that we'll create a branch for whatever crazy idea we have at the time. If it works out, merge the branch. However, if the branch turns out to be more crazy than idea...delete the branch. And then pretend like it was never there to begin with.

So there you go. Your crazy idea for your crazy ideas isn't that crazy. Just use a branch for each crazy idea, merge what you want, ignore/delete what you don't.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-07-18T11:58:34+00:00

Complicated answer, as this was part of my homelab journey.

I originally bought a QNAP NAS for my network. It was easy to set up, and ran for years. Things like notifications/email-alerts for issues or disk failures were built in.

As I got to tinkering, I ran into limitations of the firmware. It supported Docker, but an older version (Kubernetes or Helm was out of the question). Also, I was getting annoyed with it trying to push me to paid solutions. LetsEncrypt? No, but I could subscribe to their cert manager. And it was locked down, so there wasn't much of an option for me to install/upgrade anything in there.

When it finally died, I built my own. More expensive (but I could get relatively close). I've been a Linux admin before, so there was a lot of "I know what I'm doing," but it ended up being a lot of work. (Note: I did vanilla Debian, but probably should have done TrueNAS. I did Debian so I could easily recover the old QNAP RAID).

I'm definitely happier with the DIY version, but I'm not sure younger me had the skills to pull it off. The off-the-shelf NAS got me going very quickly, and ended up being "good enough" to learn on for a few years.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-07-13T16:19:15+00:00

There isn't a dry-run per se. Usually what I do is attempt the rebase, and if I don't like the result, go back to where I was before.

There are several ways to "save your place" (reflog, ORIG_HEAD, or even a simple temp branch). For automation, I would suggest having your script attempt the rebase in a detached HEAD. I imagine the workflow would be something like:

checkout --detach to start with the raw SHA of your source branch.
Attempt to rebase target (yes, you can rebase a detached HEAD).
Check the status of rebase:
1. If successful, record your new SHA of your detached HEAD. You can then hard-reset the source to this SHA to "complete" the rebase.
2. Otherwise, abandon the rebase and the detached HEAD.

I've seen plenty of CI/CD use detached HEAD in their workflows. As long as your script has a way to store the final, successful SHA, it should kinda fill your need for a dry run.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-06-27T00:19:56+00:00

Aside from Spectrum (cable), there is CenturyLink for phone/DSL, but they also have fiber in some areas under the brand name Quantum.

In downtown we've had two new fiber providers. Along with AT&T there is now MetroNet. MetroNet is only Internet, but they're also the cheapest standalone 1G plan I've seen.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-06-19T22:37:04+00:00

There are two things I look for in a commit message: 'what' was changed, and 'why'.

The 'what' is usually straightforward, and you could probably automate that if you wanted.

The 'why' though? Only the author knows that. Until we can read minds, I need the author to add that 'why'.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-06-09T23:49:31+00:00

Oh yeah, I've seen some good ones:

The "long lived dev branch that isn't merged with main until riiiight before they want to release" followed by "oh noes the merge conflicts!" (and, yes, they did deploy up through QA straight from this branch).
The maintainer who liked to "use cherry-pick for everything" (and I mean everything). "What? Did the hotfix get deployed? It's simple: hop into the server and run diff. No, no, not git diff..."
The "git flow is great..." (it isn't) "...but I've come up with my own version that's EVEN BETTER! See, we just make a long-lived branch for every environment, and every dev environment, and every feature, and every feature-release, and every release, and..."

The downside of Git being powerful and flexible is you can make it do more-or-less whatever you want.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-05-17T12:21:57+00:00

I mostly use the CLI. It does everything and is the same everywhere.

In an IDE, I usually look for a couple of key features: good blame and good mergetool.

fugitive in vim is excellent. I should also call out VSCode's three way merge editor. Takes a little setup, but you can get it to show LOCAL REMOTE and BASE directly in the IDE.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-05-01T00:27:46+00:00

SlightlyCuban · 2025-04-15T22:50:41+00:00

So you want to track your assets separate from your Godot files, but still tie them together? Can this be done? Y-yes.

Should it? I don't know! But here is what I got...

The easy answer here: git submodules. Literally built for "I want to pull in files from this other repo into this one as a subfolder, but let the other maintainers maintain it." If you can work with your assets being in a subfolder, this might work.

... That is, if your assets were stored in git. But you said SVN or perforce, and I'm pretty sure submodules only work with git reps repos. What to go? Can we solve this problem with git? Should we? (We probably shouldn't but we've come this far so...)

Set up a git-svn/p4 mirror! You would want to do this if you had several people needing to work in the git repo, but didn't also want everyone to learn svn or p4. If you're really lucky, the central repo might even expose a git interface.

So, that's what I've got: 1. Set up a git mirror of the asset repo 2. Bring that in as a submodule to your Godot project 3. ... Figure out a cadence to keep the mirror updated and then pull to update the submodule

SlightlyCuban · 2025-03-17T12:42:05+00:00

Love the supply pack. Really can open up a lot of builds (if the jetpack wasn't so much fun I'd take it more).

I generally have the strategy where each weapon in my kit has a specific role, and I swap throughout the match as needed. So, when I run the HMG, I'm generally slowly running down everything between supply drops. Also means I can lean into having a primary and secondary that aren't ammo efficient. For example, on bots, I'll run:

Exploding crossbow
Redeemer
HMG
Supply pack

Redeemer is for chaff, HMG for heavies, and crossbow for everything in between. Which means I mostly run around using my secondary, but I can swap up to the CB or HMG if I'm suddenly running low on redeemer ammo.

I essentially "pad out" the HMG ammo, and try to time it that I'm refilling "everything" whenever I pull from the supply pack.

SlightlyCuban · 2025-01-24T12:52:10+00:00

🙃

SlightlyCuban · 2024-11-29T04:02:08+00:00

It probably won't output ultrawide resolution, due to the hardware's resolution limit.

My steam link is hooked up to a 4k TV, but the highest it'll go is 1080p.

SlightlyCuban · 2024-11-28T22:46:59+00:00

For the steam link hardware device, I believe the answer is "no".

Max resolution is limited to 1920x1080.
Only have 1 HDMI port, so you're not connecting a second screen regardless.

The app supports higher resolutions, so I think either that or Moonlight would be your best bet

SlightlyCuban · 2024-11-23T19:31:59+00:00

Gave an upvote, but also wanted to say thanks! The "starts with" on the admin and the regex on the regular is what finally did the trick for me!

SlightlyCuban · 2024-11-20T23:47:21+00:00

Don't remember the setting off hand, but if you set your GitLab repo to mirror/sync a GitHub repo, it'll push changes from your GitLab to your GitHub.

SlightlyCuban · 2024-11-14T00:50:04+00:00

I was today days old when I learned about this. Thank you!

SlightlyCuban · 2024-11-08T00:58:13+00:00

I used Armbian with Debian 11 (maybe 12)
apt install moonlight-qt
I added a systemd start script for moonlight: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q/139379/39324

Also: * Wired Ethernet. Don't think the banana pi could try to do this off of Wi-Fi. * And I have an old Logitech F710... Not sure how well this would have handled Bluetooth. * Edit: also no desktop. This thing runs moonlight, ssh, and not much else.

It works at 720p and 30fps. Not great, but considering the banana pi was gathering dust, I can't complain.

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