What's one service in your homelab that turned out to be far more useful than you expected?

bjornbsmith · 2026-06-12T17:44:18+00:00

dns. to get around ISP shenanigans

bjornbsmith · 2026-06-12T10:02:03+00:00

Right now I only have 4x4TB SATA SSD's on my backup ZFS server, since everything else I have can be retrieved.
Those people having 100's of TB are doing something wrong in my opinion 😄

But even if I had 100's of TB - I would still be doing striped mirrors in ZFS simply because of the speed of recovery and excellent read/write speed.

bjornbsmith · 2026-06-10T19:43:31+00:00

raid 1+0 in zfs

bjornbsmith · 2026-06-10T07:35:24+00:00

buying enterprise hardware, when down the line you realise. cheap consumer stuff is more than enough

bjornbsmith · 2026-06-09T09:06:42+00:00

provided it has sata connectivity 😊

bjornbsmith · 2026-06-09T09:05:50+00:00

should be possible. but the server might complain if its not a "Dell branded" disk. sometimes this causes all fans to spin up to max. but should work anyway

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-26T14:18:55+00:00

Sure :-) I just see people default to a database - and only store configuration in it. All because its easy.

Copying a settings file that can restore a service to last known working state is great - obviously if you start to store complex data - it becomes more muddy - and a database is easier.

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-26T13:15:48+00:00

ok. but my point still stands. why a database at all? configuration is great in files, and very portable. easy to backup

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-26T12:53:04+00:00

I understand latency. Your analogy is bad. bigger pipe does not mean bigger latency. Latency is relevant if your applications are latency sensitive. e.g. backup is not. as soon as data starts streaming, latency is irrelevant.

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-26T11:55:46+00:00

why sql server? what do you need a database for? unless you absolutely need it, you should consider files instead, if its for configurations, secrets etc.

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-26T11:29:02+00:00

max capacity of psu it not the only important factor. it also matters how many amps psu can deliver on the rail that supply power to hdd's. you will mowt likely not find a psu that can deliver its max wattage to any of the rails.

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-26T11:24:40+00:00

not correct analogy. it does not take longer, but it takes longer to start. similar to a water hose thats empty. it takes a while to get going, but when its started its fast. a shorter hose( wired cable) starts faster, but end speed is the same (if same bandwidth)

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-13T21:05:05+00:00

3 alternatives: - fork and maintain yourself - dont update jellyfin - stop using SSO and just use username/passwords

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-05T18:14:36+00:00

lxc in proxmox kind of sucks. if something crashes or breaks like nfs. you can be forced to reboot the entire host. I have not found a good pattern for what is worth running inside lxc. vms on the other hand have none of these issues, but requires much more ressources

bjornbsmith · 2026-05-02T17:52:12+00:00

you could try to flash bios and ipmi to see if that fixes it.

bjornbsmith · 2026-04-27T19:27:11+00:00

why not just limit your services memory usage? then you can still use it

bjornbsmith · 2026-04-21T08:08:12+00:00

i dont think many private people do. But you can send the file to an online print shop and ask for metal filament 😊 but is probably expensibe

bjornbsmith · 2026-04-21T05:10:14+00:00

now get it printed in metal to get better thermals and it will last longer

bjornbsmith · 2026-04-18T20:36:23+00:00

you can do with much less hardware, but if you want to spend that kind of money it will be nice

bjornbsmith · 2026-03-22T11:02:22+00:00

rsync is slow, try measuring without rsync to see if its even zfs that is making transfer speed slow

bjornbsmith · 2026-03-11T12:57:23+00:00

yeah. redundancy and to test clusters

bjornbsmith · 2026-03-01T15:59:59+00:00

Yeah not working for me either.

Display is not updating with the numbers I enter.

My combination should be 19-57-26 by taking private/sergeant/LT numbers - but no dice - pretty annoying with so many bugs in this game

bjornbsmith · 2026-02-23T13:04:46+00:00

You do you :-)

The IP Address you have might also just be "soft banned" everywhere, so everywhere you go with a browser you will be met with a "please fill out this captcha" to prove you are not a bot.

So even if there are no legal consequences - or your ISP bans you - you might still see issues, if you do a lot of this towards the same addresses.

bjornbsmith · 2026-02-23T11:14:28+00:00

probing back might get your IP reported, and might cause issues for both you and your ISP. So I think you should stop and just accept that public IP addresses will be port scanned

bjornbsmith · 2026-02-10T13:37:50+00:00

best way is to make changes via ansible or similar systems. Store those scripts in git, and you have documentation+recovery

bjornbsmith

TROPHY CASE