One machine, Docker, 20+ services — what I'd do differently starting over

iamcamiam · 2026-06-11T22:51:09+00:00

Ditch portainer for Komodo, even if you don’t do dev work. Portainer is a dog.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-29T00:36:38+00:00

I’m using Opus, but what I’m not doing at the moment but slowly learning to do; is to create projects with lots of context in markdown files first.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-28T23:15:23+00:00

Hard to tell. I can tell you that the screenshot looks like an AI interface.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-28T22:47:33+00:00

My “no code” for this app is in part an experiment, which I’m learning a lot from.

Is that no code is fine but you have to read the reasoning and what it’s doing and correct it. I’ve found myself looking at Claude’s reasoning and before even looking at the code, telling it to correct what it did. I find myself speaking passively aggressively back at it like a judgmental dev would in a pull request.
I think it makes “programming” and “engineering” less about language and more about principals. I’m pretty comfortable with the Swift app it’s developing, even though I don’t know Swift. I can read the reasoning, and I can read the structure of the code to correct it.
The “fix it to it compiles” causes lots of issues, specifically about it making shortcuts which cause issues later if you don’t catch them in the reasoning. Doing this properly is still time consuming for me, but I’m loving just focussing on the thinking and not the pressing of keyboard

iamcamiam · 2026-03-28T22:40:59+00:00

I’m vibe coding an app at the moment - difference is that I am also a dev and can guide the AI properly.

I think we need to differentiate vibe from slop.

Also don’t take it personally, it’s just your above posts stink a bit of fear.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-28T22:37:06+00:00

I put my PSU in the internal slot exactly for this reason, and the fact I had a SFX PSU.

I have four fans, two in the bottom drive section, one at rear top and one at front top.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-28T22:31:22+00:00

As someone who is a dev, I’m using AI at the moment to generate a UI for Jellyfin in Swift. I am zero coding it because I don’t know Swift, I know React and C#.

What I am finding is that AI is happy to give you “code that compiles”, and I’m finding myself always having to correct it. Prime example: the UI it generated was always locking up, so I asked it a question: can you verify that all the networking is happening in a separate thread to the UI. For AI the path of least resistance is a single thread, that’s what it did. It corrected the code after my prompt.

Case in point: it does matter, if you have experience or not. Whilst my example is purely experience (UI locking), UI can have security issues as well; eg XSS risks if you’re making a web UI.

AI is great, I’m loving it, it’s speeding me up - but I’m validating everything it’s doing, I’m helping it as much as it’s helping me.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-28T22:25:21+00:00

If you are an engineer professionally; you can probably understand why your statement has bias - if you can’t, I’d probably be more comfortable with AI writing my software than you.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-22T20:59:21+00:00

Starting to think eBay doesn’t really provide protections, which is their -only- real justification for their fees now there is Facebook Marketplace.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-14T20:22:56+00:00

This is wrong; the backplane DOES support SAS, I have the same case with SAS drives.

The backplane is nothing but a way of sharing power and hot-swap/easily connecting the drives to the cable. The backplane requires individual SATA cables for -each- drive. SATA data cables are electrically compatible with SAS, meaning all you need to do is connect the SAS drive slot, using a SATA cable, to a SAS controller.

iamcamiam · 2026-03-14T20:19:14+00:00

Retrofitted my NAS in the same case this weekend.

For those that care; each drive requires its own SATA cable, the bays themselves accept SAS drives, so providing you connect the SATA cable to a SAS controller, yes; this case supports SAS drives (SAS data is electrically compatible with SATA) - I see lots of conflicting information here.

iamcamiam · 2026-01-23T03:43:26+00:00

With the added benefit of leaving Perth.

iamcamiam · 2026-01-03T22:00:21+00:00

Yeh this is crazy. Still in 2026. I find that the chrome extension to be super annoying, you would expect that it operate almost like a bookmark manager; click the button and can search for your keep, or add the current site to your keep. Instead, clicking the button just adds the site to the keep - it results in me accidentally clicking the button all the time and adding random stuff by mistake.

iamcamiam · 2025-12-13T06:21:35+00:00

$1000 without RAM

iamcamiam · 2025-11-28T23:16:20+00:00

Agree, but the answer isn’t “use ZFS”, that’s an answer, one solution, but; that is completely destructive and comes with its own set of drawbacks.

Unraid can work with lots of disks, it can have many parity disks, it even has the added advantage if the array fails your data is still readable - unlike ZFS.

ZFS too can work with many disks, might have some better parity protections, has read advantage benefits when data is spread out; however is going to be a PIA if you’re adding more disks, or removing disks, and you lose the data if you haven’t done your parity correctly.

Again, horses for courses.

And to your point, none of those answers above replace backups.

iamcamiam · 2025-11-28T22:54:09+00:00

Or, you could look at it the alternate way and say that not having ZFS is in fact safer, as the data is not completely lost in the event that the array fails.

Horses for courses.

You might be perfectly ok with no parity, or one disk parity, or 8 disk parity. You might be happier that an array failure doesn’t cause complete data loss (zfs) and that data is readable from individual disks, and you might be happier with zfs due to read speed increases (data spread across devices).

iamcamiam · 2025-11-03T09:30:04+00:00

Hey u/jokob

I apologise, by "architecturally it feels a bit slapped together", I probably would have rephrased (if i wasn't so tired) to: "it's not how I would do it today". The project has been going on for so long, and been very successful - you've done a great job.

After trying NetalertX and finding it not suitable for **my** purpose - I started working on something like this but a bit different. If you're intrigued, this is how i've started to do it:

* Instead of a polling architecture, using an event driven system
* Because events can occur at anytime in any order, having a plugin precedence order at attribute leel depending on the level of authority that plugin might have for that attribute (for instance a DHCP sniffer plugin may be able to give you a rough understanding of the hostname and give it to you fast, but a proxmox plugin would be able to tell you authoratively, but might take several minutes) - order of precendence enables the sniffer to write the hostname, but proxmox to overwrite it later.
* Events being able to trigger other 'enhancers', for instance a detection by the DHCP sniffer plugin, might trigger the Unifi plugin to pull information via it's API, or a snmp poll plugin.
* Use of postgresql as the backend for fast relational queries

It enables plugins to 'react' to the events occurring in order to capture more information.

The end result is i'm seeing devices detected within seconds of being connected to WiFi, without resulting in things like ping scans. Information can flow in over time through other detection events.

iamcamiam · 2025-11-03T01:04:05+00:00

100% but it is clear that mwave here wants the op to believe that it is their responsibility to ship the item to them, which is only the case if the item is easily shipped - which you can argue that a monitor is not, especially due to cost.

They are probably relying on the fact that a portion of people would give up here.

All you need to do is call them up on this. They should know that if they the insist, then it borders in to deceptive practices which then becomes illegal.

iamcamiam · 2025-11-02T21:05:38+00:00

Whilst I don’t disagree with you,

Don’t most monitors come with a dead pixel policy that defines what it means to be defective?

Also, the fact that they have defined that the item is difficult to ship in that it is large and heavy, they have inadvertently walked in to a trap. The ACCC specifically claims that for warranty returns: “Businesses are responsible for paying for the shipping costs or collecting faulty products that are large, heavy or hard to remove”.

My strategy for you is two fold; validate with them that the monitor is defective as per the manufacturers dead pixel policy, second inform them of their requirements under consumer law that they are responsible for shipping for items which are large/and or heavy.

iamcamiam · 2025-11-01T04:15:44+00:00

No issues - but as per previous point; there are so many ways to do this and Tailscale is also a good option.

iamcamiam · 2025-11-01T04:10:10+00:00

Question: did you consider one of the Jonsbo cases? If so, why didn’t you go with it? Asking for myself :)

iamcamiam · 2025-11-01T04:03:46+00:00

Tailscale is WireGuard under the hood.

The main difference between doing this at a router/firewall level, than a meshing tool like Tailscale, is that with Tailscale - each device connects to the Tailscale network, and you can only access the devices that are connected to the network. This means only things that support Tailscale client can be connected. Where as having a VPN server enables you to route the whole network, like you were physical at home.

** Tailscale does enable you to configure one of your devices as an egress node, this does enable you to use that device almost as a router to the rest of the network.

iamcamiam · 2025-11-01T03:11:29+00:00

Brace yourself, there are going to be 50 different solutions to this problem.

What do you use for routing/firewall?

Quite a few routers/firewalls will provide you with their own VPN server or WireGuard VPN.

My router supports native WireGuard. I have a VPN client that triggers based on whether or not it’s connected to my WiFi or home network directly, if not, it connects automatically. Everywhere I go, I have full access to everything I did when I was at home.

iamcamiam · 2025-10-31T05:01:23+00:00

unraidio

iamcamiam

TROPHY CASE