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The lonely tech post thread.

two sheds said:
I used a display to set it up but it seems to be chugging away happily now without the display. I'm hoping I can explore the raspberry pi a bit rather than getting another one by connecting it to one of my displays while it's still working as a pi-hole.
Click to expand...

It occurs to me that I've still got one of those tiny low power HP's that I found a box of when I was tasked to clear the office if you wanted another device to play with (can't remember if I've offered this to you before). I've given most of them away now, including sending one to Africa. :D
 
UnderOpenSky said:
That's some pretty awesome redundancy. I've no idea what would happen if one of our hosts went down at the Zen datacenter, but it wouldn't be pretty. What I do know is it would be me dealing with the phone calls. :(

I wish my attic space didn't get so hot and I could actually put a rack of servers up there to play with stuff like this, but I'm limited to my office and I truly hate fan noise.
Click to expand...
It took a lot of convincing to get the specs to the point where we could run single-site. But it's proven itself 5x over since then. Explained many times there's no point in keeping everything up if it all runs so slow that it's unusable. And because it's multiple departments using the infrastructure there is not a chance in hell you'd get them all to agree on what constitutes an "essential service", so best to just aim for keeping everything running.
 
UnderOpenSky said:
It occurs to me that I've still got one of those tiny low power HP's that I found a box of when I was tasked to clear the office if you wanted another device to play with (can't remember if I've offered this to you before). I've given most of them away now, including sending one to Africa. :D
Click to expand...
ta for offer, errrm what does HP stand for (I'm presuming not a Hewlett Packard)? :)

As I say I was hoping that I could play around with the raspberry pi while I'm using it as a pi-hole. I've set up a switch so I can connect to my second display, and a 4-connection usb hub so I can use my mouse and keyboard. It don't work though :(

It works as pi-hole still but the display is blank. I've actually had problems throughout trying to connect up the raspberry pi only to find out the problem was a hardware connection, either usb or HDMI but it doesn't seem to be that. I'm tempted to get a raspberry pi version 4 to play around with although I'm not sure I can really justify it without a particular purpose in mind.
 
two sheds said:
ta for offer, errrm what does HP stand for (I'm presuming not a Hewlett Packard)? :)

As I say I was hoping that I could play around with the raspberry pi while I'm using it as a pi-hole. I've set up a switch so I can connect to my second display, and a 4-connection usb hub so I can use my mouse and keyboard. It don't work though :(

It works as pi-hole still but the display is blank. I've actually had problems throughout trying to connect up the raspberry pi only to find out the problem was a hardware connection, either usb or HDMI but it doesn't seem to be that. I'm tempted to get a raspberry pi version 4 to play around with although I'm not sure I can really justify it without a particular purpose in mind.
Click to expand...
You might need to reboot the pi with the display port plugged in. Sometimes it won't notice it unless it's in when it's booting.
 
Aaah ta - and it will still work as pi-hole when I'm playing around with it? Also, won't that mean that I have to just cut the power supply which I'd understood it doesn't like?
 
two sheds said:
ta for offer, errrm what does HP stand for (I'm presuming not a Hewlett Packard)? :)

As I say I was hoping that I could play around with the raspberry pi while I'm using it as a pi-hole. I've set up a switch so I can connect to my second display, and a 4-connection usb hub so I can use my mouse and keyboard. It don't work though :(

It works as pi-hole still but the display is blank. I've actually had problems throughout trying to connect up the raspberry pi only to find out the problem was a hardware connection, either usb or HDMI but it doesn't seem to be that. I'm tempted to get a raspberry pi version 4 to play around with although I'm not sure I can really justify it without a particular purpose in mind.
Click to expand...

Yup, it's, Hewlett Packard. They make quite a lot of business PCs. It's only got the Celeron with 2GB, but think that's still more powerful then a pi for most stuff. I still wouldn't put any version of windows on it, but it runs lightweight Linux fine.

HP 260 G2 Desktop Mini PC Specifications | HP® Customer Support

Specifications page for HP 260 G2 Desktop Mini PC.
support.hp.com support.hp.com

Silly question but does the pi work if you attach things direct, as in is the kvm switch your using or the pi itself?

two sheds said:
Aaah ta - and it will still work as pi-hole when I'm playing around with it? Also, won't that mean that I have to just cut the power supply which I'd understood it doesn't like?
Click to expand...

Yes, pi hole will just run in the back ground. You shouldn't just cut power to PCs in an ideal world as you run the risk of corrupting data, but sometimes you've just got to it.
 
two sheds said:
Aaah ta - and it will still work as pi-hole when I'm playing around with it? Also, won't that mean that I have to just cut the power supply which I'd understood it doesn't like?
Click to expand...
The specific problem with Pi hardware and power loss is that, in some circumstances, it can be easy to corrupt the SD card image, resulting in an unbootable system, and (sometimes) a bricked SD card. This is less of a problem with PC-architecture solid state drives.
 
existentialist said:
The specific problem with Pi hardware and power loss is that, in some circumstances, it can be easy to corrupt the SD card image, resulting in an unbootable system, and (sometimes) a bricked SD card. This is less of a problem with PC-architecture solid state drives.
Click to expand...

Are you one of those people who eject usb drives? :p
 
I really miss how simple it was to just use powershell.

Graph api has more fucking permissions than can possibly be sensible so I’ll probably end up just giving the app god access
 
Artaxerxes said:
I really miss how simple it was to just use powershell.

Graph api has more fucking permissions than can possibly be sensible so I’ll probably end up just giving the app god access
Click to expand...

I think I've fucked my PowerShell environment so badly on my work laptop that even following actual MS guides for somethings don't work anymore. It's coming on two years and I knew even less then I do now when I was trying to follow along with training sessions for whatever internal tool the boss had decided to code.

We're changing company names and emails and stuff soon so I'm waiting for that moment to give the poor thing a proper format and start again.
 
UnderOpenSky said:
Yup, it's, Hewlett Packard. They make quite a lot of business PCs. It's only got the Celeron with 2GB, but think that's still more powerful then a pi for most stuff. I still wouldn't put any version of windows on it, but it runs lightweight Linux fine.

HP 260 G2 Desktop Mini PC Specifications | HP® Customer Support

Specifications page for HP 260 G2 Desktop Mini PC.
support.hp.com support.hp.com
Click to expand...

My word a proper pc then thanks for the offer :eek: I have two working puters though, I'm just looking at having a poke round the raspberry pi.

UnderOpenSky said:
Silly question but does the pi work if you attach things direct, as in is the kvm switch your using or the pi itself?
Click to expand...
I've so far just plugged the keyboard/mouse straight into the raspberry pi but I'm now using that usb to connect into the router. So I've got a 4-1 usb hub and a 2-1 HDMI switch and am going to try them.
UnderOpenSky said:
Yes, pi hole will just run in the back ground. You shouldn't just cut power to PCs in an ideal world as you run the risk of corrupting data, but sometimes you've just got to it.
Click to expand...
Good stuff, ta, will try that tonight :thumbs:
 
existentialist said:
The specific problem with Pi hardware and power loss is that, in some circumstances, it can be easy to corrupt the SD card image, resulting in an unbootable system, and (sometimes) a bricked SD card. This is less of a problem with PC-architecture solid state drives.
Click to expand...
ok ta - I've actually got a spare SD card so not too much of a problem if it gets bricked.
 
two sheds said:
My word a proper pc then thanks for the offer :eek: I have two working puters though, I'm just looking at having a poke round the raspberry pi.


I've so far just plugged the keyboard/mouse straight into the raspberry pi but I'm now using that usb to connect into the router. So I've got a 4-1 usb hub and a 2-1 HDMI switch and am going to try them.

Good stuff, ta, will try that tonight :thumbs:
Click to expand...

Well proper is a bit of stretch, it was probably woefully underpseced when bought many years ago, which is why I found a box of new ones shoved on a shelf. But runs stuff like pi-hole fine and only draws 15w.
 
In my boring homelab stuff, what should be a really simple task, but is pissing me off is the faff in making myself some unattended Win10 images. I want to use them so can set up VM templates with that don't need to go through OOBE. Weirdly when I've run sysprep on server, it's not issue. I was looking WSIM but that seem way complex, even starting with the fact you can't just point it at iso. Thought I'd found a good website which creates an unattended.xml and I used 7-zip and ImgBurn to add it to an ISO, but I'm clearly doing something wrong as VMware won't boot from them. I think I might abandon the project for a bit and just manually set up a few to play with Intune, Group Policy & Sharepoint a bit. One problem with working for a company with mostly small, stable clients is I just don't get to do this stuff for real very often.

I've not given up, but have slowed right down on studying for AZ-800. I wish I could have done the older MCSA for Windows Server. This has been super helpful in helping me learn more about AD and other server roles, but I feel a lot has been cut out of the old one to make room for the cloud stuff. We use Azure AD and SharePoint for some clients, but don't really do much with a true hybrid environment and that bit will only get worse in AZ801. Part of what puts me off is that I've got the test tenancy with loads of licenses, but you still have to pay to use Azure resources. I've got 30 days of credit I can use, but that won't be long enough.
 
existentialist said:
The specific problem with Pi hardware and power loss is that, in some circumstances, it can be easy to corrupt the SD card image, resulting in an unbootable system, and (sometimes) a bricked SD card. This is less of a problem with PC-architecture solid state drives.
Click to expand...
Yes, in theory. Though in over a decade of using many different RPis , in various roles, I've yet to brick one through power loss (have avoided really cheap SD cards, besides, when very occasionally I really want the 'HA' I'll make sure to pop the box on a clean supply).
 
Chrome down on mobile seems to be a pretty big deal?

ETA: Turns out it is not all users but I am one of them.

ETA more: Fix was to uninstall Chrome and it must have removed the last update.
 
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I got the HP workstation to play nice with NVMe in a PCIe slot. Turns out I just needed to change the bifurcation settings in BIOS. I still only vaguely understand what that means, but at least the noise has gone. :D

I've few months to wait before I can buy any more tech toys, but I think the next upgrade will be to take it 128GB. I'll match the RAM as closely as I can, but have a nasty feeling their might be headaches along the way.
 
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I've have a total fear of databases or at least them getting corrupted after recently spending a week with Sage popping up new errors everyday until I had to admit defeat and roll back a week and get them to re-enter data. I spent hours on the phone to sage and even built new VMs, including a file server along the way.

So imagine my joy when a customer asked if I could help set up their very specialist database so other people in the office could use it, like at his old company. Turns out it's the front end to an access database. Its now abandonware with the install files being left in a drobox and very little documentation. The website is gone. At the last company we supplied them them with a VDI, active directory, proper file server etc. New company has a workgroup with no file shares setup.

I've got it working in a couple of VMs as a test environment, but I'm pretty scared to set this up for the customer, I guess all I can do is stress the importance of backups. It's just a well we don't charge by the hour.
 
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I've been meaning to set up a VPN to access stuff at home when out and about for a while, but have been putting it off. However I read about tailscale and it makes it so stupidly easy. I'm not sure there's much learning gone on here. :D

The same can not be said for docker. I had a quite afternoon at work, so thought I'd have a crack at it. I've got portainer up and running, but I can see a lot more reading is going to be needed with this one.
 
Docker, and especially Kubernetes, is one of those things that makes absolutely no sense until it does. Despite the popularity of it, it's actually pointless for a lot of workloads. Until it isn't, and then it makes lots and lots of sense. The problem is that it's hard in the lab to come up with a good use case - the real use cases are all big workloads that need to scale up and down a lot, which isn't really something you run into in the lab.

So you end up making up a use case, and then you do it and think "That was pointless, it would be easier/faster/better managed without this nonsense". But you kind of have to do it just to get experience with it. I did an ELK stack as my tutorial, but it never worked that well and when I actually deployed it I just ran all the components on one server and it worked a lot better. :D
 
Chz said:
Docker, and especially Kubernetes, is one of those things that makes absolutely no sense until it does. Despite the popularity of it, it's actually pointless for a lot of workloads. Until it isn't, and then it makes lots and lots of sense. The problem is that it's hard in the lab to come up with a good use case - the real use cases are all big workloads that need to scale up and down a lot, which isn't really something you run into in the lab.

So you end up making up a use case, and then you do it and think "That was pointless, it would be easier/faster/better managed without this nonsense". But you kind of have to do it just to get experience with it. I did an ELK stack as my tutorial, but it never worked that well and when I actually deployed it I just ran all the components on one server and it worked a lot better. :D
Click to expand...

Thanks. Like many projects I start I realize that I'm also missing lots of other bits that underpin it, which then makes working it all out that much harder. Maybe one days things will start to fit together. What I find the hardest when I'm starting something really new is literally not knowing what to google.

There's lots of homelab type stuff that seem to fit nicely with Linux but with my very limited knowledge I don't want to have to much running on one VM in case I break everything, so the isolation of docker appeals. I thought portainer would make it easier. I never thought that just connecting the web gui of my dockers would cause so much head scratching. :D

Out of interest do you manage all from the command line or do you use a gui type interface to mange them?
 
I was all command line, but I haven't looked at that stuff in a few years so there may be something better. I'm a proper unix greybeard though, so I'm probably always going to prefer the CLI unless there's just not enough documentation for it over the GUI. Lookin' at you, Citrix Netscaler. Grrr. To be fair, there comes a point where just being able to scroll up and down makes a gui better, like with VMWare.
 
So... 59p for a pack of pencils and sticky tape (the type you can easily tear).

Cut pencils to length, one pencil per gap (in two bits), a smidgeon of blutack to hold the pencils in place. Stack one on the other, tape round to stabilise, put under monitor stand. :)
 
Chz said:
I was all command line, but I haven't looked at that stuff in a few years so there may be something better. I'm a proper unix greybeard though, so I'm probably always going to prefer the CLI unless there's just not enough documentation for it over the GUI. Lookin' at you, Citrix Netscaler. Grrr. To be fair, there comes a point where just being able to scroll up and down makes a gui better, like with VMWare.
Click to expand...

I hope one day to be super comfy with command line and aspire to to title of greybeard. :)
 
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