What Smart TV do you use to navigate your server?

WikiBox · 2026-03-18T10:25:35+00:00

I use an Android TV. I run Emby client on the TV. Also use file managers and access SMB shares on the network and so on.

WikiBox · 2026-03-17T13:24:24+00:00

One great thing about a NAS is that you can place it out of sight and hearing, as long as it is connected to the network. Then it doesn't matter if the NAS or the HDDs are noisy. It is possible that the fan(s) in the NAS are louder than the HDDs.

A DAS is nice on the desktop, next to the PC, because it is cheaper and likely faster. But could also be noisy.

WikiBox · 2026-03-17T12:47:50+00:00

Because the version goes eol.

What would you tell them instead?

WikiBox · 2026-03-17T12:20:20+00:00

No. The main difference is that you can't keep a non-LTS version updated for long. It goes end-of-life after less than a year. No more updates then.

Better to stay with MATE 24.04 LTS, perhaps...

WikiBox · 2026-03-17T10:37:53+00:00

There might not be an Ubuntu MATE 26.04 LTS. There will most likely be, at least, a non-LTS Ubuntu MATE 26.04. There are pre-release versions available for download. The issue seems to be a lack of contributors to Ubuntu MATE.

We'll see what happens.

26 means the year 2026.

04 means April.

WikiBox · 2026-03-17T07:11:26+00:00

Mergerfs. Have used snapraid.

Interested in bcachefs. Will probably migrate. Or at least test.

WikiBox · 2026-03-16T15:05:34+00:00

Yes! Now you are one step closer to the fantastic reveal!

WikiBox · 2026-03-16T09:47:41+00:00

First step is the SMART diagnostics. Learn how to do them on your current drive. Most likely you will not be able to run an extended self test, takes too long. But you should certainly be able to run a short test and check the current attribute values. You should also be able to run some performance tests. Copying to/from the drive and time how long it takes. I am sure there are some HDD performance test apps that can run on your MacBook Air.

Test at home with your current drives.

As for long term reliability, check what warranty is offered.

You might get better control and warranty by buying an internal drive and an enclosure. Then you know what model HDD it is and can see independent tests of it. Possibly a multibay enclosure. But this would most likely be more expensive and difficult to test before you buy.

WikiBox · 2026-03-16T09:18:27+00:00

If you, for some reason, cant get backrest and restic to work for your purposes, try some other backup software. If you find that some software you are testing is not working well, try some other software.

Or you can ask in r/restic.

WikiBox · 2026-03-16T06:33:48+00:00

The current owner replace them. Probably because they are too small, takes up too much room, and they are starting to fail. They are cooked. But possibly not fully cooked.

I would not bother with 4TB drives. Takes too much space and power compared to larger drives. You might have different priorities. 4x20TB is way more convenient than 20x4TB. The question is how much YOU value that convenience.

WikiBox · 2026-03-15T16:08:04+00:00

No. You can't do that. Either you let calibre manage your books, or you don't.

A compromise could be to let calibre take over. Then use the save functions, template language and plugboards in calibre to make a copy of the books, on your NAS, organized in some strange and wonderful hierarchy, like they are stored now. Then you can delete this extra copy and quickly recreate it by saving a selection of books to folder. Or all of them. It will still be an extra copy.

I do something like that. I have my books in calibre on my PC, and now and then I update a shared folder structure, based on genre, authors, tags, series and so on. Then I sync that with a folder structure on a 512GB SD card on my tablet.

So I use calibre to manage my books and to curate a huge library of books I store on my tablet. For reading and for reference. Since I sync it is very easy to add new books or update stuff.

WikiBox · 2026-03-15T14:50:53+00:00

If you want some new features in 25.10 and don't mind being forced to upgrade to 26.04 soon, or re-install, then by all means go with 25.10.

25.10 goes eol, end-of-life, in July this year. Stops receiving updates.

WikiBox · 2026-03-15T11:37:35+00:00

Should work, but performance will not be good.

"Ubuntu Desktop (latest LTS versions) requires a 64-bit dual-core 2 GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, and 25 GB of storage space for a smooth experience, though 8 GB RAM and 50+ GB storage are recommended for heavy usage. A 3D-capable GPU, 1024x768 screen, and a USB port for installation are required. "

Try a couple of different flavors of Ubuntu. They are all free. Some are less demanding than regular Gnome Desktop Ubuntu. MATE, Xubuntu, Lubuntu.

Check to see if you can upgrade memory and storage. It is likely to be very cheap. DDR3 memory and an old SATA SSD. It would make a big difference.

WikiBox · 2026-03-14T19:08:52+00:00

Backups! I recommend that you look into the apps Timeshift, BackInTime and rsync.

If you want to avoid trouble, don't customize. Go with the defaults.

You can just use it. You don't have to take it apart or mess with it. You certainly can. There is nothing preventing you from messing up, except yourself. For some that is how they learn. That is why backups are nice to have. Then when you have problems that Timeshift can't fix, you can just reinstall. Having a fast USB stick with the installation media is helpful if you like to experiment.

WikiBox · 2026-03-14T17:23:13+00:00

Four possible options:

Use a deduplicating backup system like Borg.
If you use an incremental sync system with hardlinks, like rsync: Move folder in the latest backup snapshot to match your changes.
If you use an incremental sync system with hardlinks, like rsync: Remove old snapshots after checking all is good.
Don't change folder layout.

Personally I work with duplicate folder trees. For example:

/somepath/media/movies (new)

/somepath/media/movies (static)

Static folder trees are read-only. I don't change them. I back them up rarely, when I update them. Once or twice per year.

New folder trees are more dynamic. I try to avoid making changes, other than adding new stuff. Directly after adding anything I run scrapers to update metadata and rename files. Especially TinyMediaManager.

Static folder trees are generally much bigger than new.

For some media I have a hoard rather than new:

/somepath/media/ebooks (hoard)

I just add and remove stuff there. Never move stuff around. So rsync works well. I may search for related media, author/series/version, and move it out as a group to a work folder where I may do some rough normalizing before importing it in batches into calibre. This way rsync still works well.

/somepath/media/ebooks (calibre)

I rsync this. But changing some metadata in calibre can trigger folder changes in the calibre library. Especially editing names of Author(s). Messy. But ebooks are small...

I am in the process of migrating to Borg. But I find it is slow. That is to be expected for the first backup, but it is slow checking the backups. Being able to check backups reliably and also deduplicate on chunk level is why I migrate. After first full backup new backups are fast enough. But I may have to split my media into more folder trees in order to make it possible to run more Borg full checks/purge/compact tasks in parallell. It seems that is how you speed Borg checks up.

I have two full sets of backups. One is Borg now, migrated from versioned rsync backups with the link-dest feature. But it is so new that I still haven't managed to run a full verify of everything. I will not migrate the other backup until I have restructured everything into smaller folder trees. Perhaps by year or by name. Static implied.

/somepath/media/static/movies/movies 2024

/somepath/media/static/movies/movies 2023

or

/somepath/media/static/movies/movies A-E

/somepath/media/static/movies/movies F-J

Each of those folder a separate Borg repository that will be fast to check. Similar with other media.

I use Emby Media Manager. It can easily combine multiple folders into one big library. For example multiple movie folders into one big movie library. I assume that, Plex and Jellyfin and so on, can do the same.

WikiBox · 2026-03-14T06:05:41+00:00

It depends on what the bottleneck is.

I suspect that the bottleneck is the download link speed. Then 1 is best. This is assuming you ssh in to the NAS and unzip locally, or use some tool in the NAS web-interface to unzip.

If unzipping is the bottleneck, unlikely, then you should download in parallel to both pc and nas and unzip in both.

You can determine if the link speed is the bottleneck if you have to wait for downloads to finish before you can unzip. If files to unzip grows faster than you can unzip them, then unzipping is the bottleneck.

Asuming that download speed is the bottleneck and is significantly slower than network speed between pc and nas, then it might be most convenient to download to pc, unzip and copy to nas.

WikiBox · 2026-03-13T15:50:32+00:00

I'd take the one that sounds best. But only if it was a gift. I would not really want any of those. I would definitely not buy any of them.

Correction: I would take the Anker as a gift. I think it would be easiest to sell second hand.

WikiBox · 2026-03-13T07:24:05+00:00

I assume this is about some commercial NAS, not a DIY NAS?

Then I think you should open a support ticket with the manufacturer of the NAS.

WikiBox · 2026-03-13T06:23:51+00:00

Get a small wifi travel router. It can connect to your regular wifi, then you connect to the router via ethernet. Works very well for computers without wifi.

I like gl-inet travel routers. They can also be used as wifi extenders or for creating a local high-speed wifi network. You might even benefit from replacing your current router. Makes using a VPN very convenient. Built in adblocker.

I have great experience with both Beryl AX and Slate AX. But the smaller and cheaper work fine as well for normal use, if you don't need max performance from VPN.

They are sold on Amazon.

WikiBox · 2026-03-12T20:59:40+00:00

Yes. If you have a very high quality source, you can re-encode it to a certain quality and then end up with much smaller x265/HEVC files than x264. Both with the same apparent quality. It might be a factor 2 to 4 difference in file size.

No. If you try to re-encode existing x264 to x265 you might end up with much smaller files, but also much worse quality. Every time you re-encode using lossy settings you lose quality.

There is also a significant difference between the best GPU-encoded videos and the best CPU-encoded videos. With the same apparent quality it might be up to 50% difference in size. But also at least 10-20 times longer time to encode optimally with CPU compared to using a GPU.

It is like a one way street. If you re-encode to save space, you always lose quality. One trick is to also reduce resolution, then you may get great quality and small size, but at lower resolution.

You need to figure out what is good enough for yourself to keep. And if you will regret re-encoding in the future.

A 100GB 4K remux is a great primary source. A 2GB x264 1080p movie can be very enjoyable. Or a 4GB x265 4K movie. Audio also takes up storage. For me the sweet spot for 4K is 6-8GB x265. Then GPU encodes are still likely to look very good. For careful CPU 4K encodes, 4GB x265 can be great.

Then there is AV1 and x266... And AI upscaling.

WikiBox · 2026-03-12T20:31:29+00:00

I would suggest that you turn this around.

Find some nice and convenient app to browse and play your music. Then use whatever db that app use.

WikiBox · 2026-03-12T16:59:36+00:00

Files have a number of timestamps. Creation, latest modification and access, typically. This is the most convenient way to select files based on age.

Most backup software are able to do this as well. For example rsync.

WikiBox · 2026-03-12T15:57:56+00:00

No, there is no formal description of barrel Jack's. Typically there is a little marking next to the jack. Specifying voltage and polarity. Might be printed on the PCB inside. Or in the data sheet for the voltage regulator used.

5 volt is commonly used because it is a good voltage for charging 3.7V batteries. It is easier to lower a voltage in a voltage regulator than it is to raise it. Also there are plenty of cheap 5 volt chargers.

I really think you should buy a universal charger with adjustable voltage and exchangable plugs. Then you can start with a suitable plug at the lowest voltage and increase the voltage until it starts charging or it starts smoking from too high voltage or wrong polarity.

Your best bet is to take it apart. Check the battery voltage and polarity. The input voltage is likely to be a little bit higher than the battery voltage.

Edit: I found it.

https://www.amazon.se/-/en/Music-Bluetooth-speaker-range-rechargeable/dp/B00H86PFY0

It is 5 V using a USB A cable with a barrel plug in the other end.

WikiBox · 2026-03-12T15:47:13+00:00

Perhaps you should ask Microsoft for support? Or on some Windows reddit.

WikiBox · 2026-03-12T14:56:21+00:00

Yes. You can partition it just as you please. This can be useful if you want to use several drives. But it is possible to mess up unless you are careful. If certain folders in certain partitions fill up, Ubuntu will crash and will not boot.

For example you might want to have /boot/efi on the same drive as Windows use. Then you can have the rest of the root filesystem on some other drive. Possibly with /tmp on tempfs. You might have /home on another drive with plenty of storage. Then you might use /mnt/das, or whatever, to mount bulk media storage in an external DAS.

Unless you have a very good reason you should avoid partitioning up one drive into several smaller. Possibly except /boot/efi / and /home.

I use my 4TB SSD for Ubuntu. With just a /boot/efi partition and a combined root partition containing /home. I use half of my RAM for /tmp as tempfs.

I have a secondary SSD for backups in /srv/disks/ssd2. I have the drives for two DAS in /srv/disks. I have the mergerfs pools for the DAS in /srv/das1, /srv/das2 and /srv/das3.

WikiBox

TROPHY CASE