Homelab
I have upgraded my home lab from a simple wall mountable rack to a media / network rack. Which I then added a wood top to use as desk space for a 3D Printer. Other changes include: A second Nighthawk I had laying around and made it a network wide VPN using DD-WRT. 5 Rack mounted Raspberry Pi 4s. Netgear 16 Port POE Switch to power the Pis. Dell Optiplex running OPNSENSE firewall...
Continue Reading...Klipper the Gateway Drug to Voron
I bought my first 3D Printer at the beginning of 2019. An Ender 3 Pro. I played with it for a few months. Installed OctoPrint on a Raspberry Pi and then quickly lost interest. About 2 years later I decided to dust it off and upgrade it a bit. The first upgrade was a CR Touch Auto Bed Leveling Sensor. This required a 32 bit board. My Ender 3 Pro is an older printer so it came with an 8 bit board...
Continue Reading...Raspberry Pi 4 Firmware Upgrade
Raspberry Pi 1 - 3 contained all of their firmware on the SD Card. This has changed with the Raspberry Pi 4. The device now has onboard upgradeable firmware stored on an EEPROM chip seperate from your storage. Updating this firmware is very important as the newer updates reduce power usage, which in turn reduces how hot it gets. Theres a new utility called rpi-eeprom...
Continue Reading...Raspberry Pi 4 Kubernetes Cluster
Kubernetes Cluster with Simple NodeJS Kubernetes deployment. Requirements: At least 2 Raspberry Pi 4 boards, with some way to power each one. I will be using 4 in this example. A decent speed SD card per Pi. Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS Installation Flash each SD card with Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS using something like balenaEtcher..
Continue Reading...Dell PowerEdge T620 Server
I finally got a real server to play with. I bought a used Dell PowerEdge T620 Server. It came with dual Xeon 8 Core Processors, 32gb of ram, 4 600gb SAS drives and dual 750w power supplies. I purchased this server to mess with virtualization environments. I wasn't really going to use it for anything serious so I decided to run the SAS drives in RAID 0 and I got 2 Samsung EVOs...
Continue Reading...Next Unit of Computing
I like to mess with computers. This hobby could get pretty expensive. So I often scour places like craigslist, offerup, eBay and the facebook marketplace for deals. I recently picked up 2 Intel NUCs. I was looking for something small to use as a home server. I have used Raspberry Pis for this but I kind of wanted something a bit more powerful. The Intel NUC is a small form factor...
Continue Reading...Raspberry Pi 4 Cluster
Raspberry Pi 4 Cluster originally built this Raspberry Pi Cluster to learn how to use Kubernetes. It's built with 4 Raspberry Pi 4 8gb boards and currently running Kubernetes with MicroK8s on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS. I had been looking for a way to power all 4 with one PSU, instead of 4 separate ones. At first I thought about using some sort of powered USB hub but I don't think I would be able to get consistent power...
Continue Reading...Repurposed Dell T5600 Precision Workstation
I picked up a Dell T5600 Precision Workstation to use for home automation / virtualization, but hadn't really done anything with it. Today I decided to make it run my Plex Server, some services and some minor home automation like lights, and all this will run within containers. First I needed to upgrade the boot drive from a 500gb hard drive ...
Continue Reading...ThinkPad T14 Linux Workstation
I'm starting to like to develop on Linux, instead of on macOS. Only issue I have with Linux is the lack of Adobe support when I have to open any Adobe files. I have a 2018 MacBook Pro but I wanted a new Linux laptop. I've always heard about how wonderful the ThinkPad keyboards were. I really dislike the MacBook's butterfly keyboard and the XPS keyboard isn't great either. Both are chicklet style.
Continue Reading...I picked up a Pinebook Pro
Picked up a Pinebook Pro over the weekend. It’s currently running Manjaro ARM - KDE Plasma. So far so good, even got it looking like Gnome so I feel right at home 😂. I wouldn’t replace my laptop with it that’s for sure, but it’s not aimed at doing just that. It’s a device aimed at hobbyists and tinkerers. Overall it’s pretty cool for its inexpensive hardware design. I think I might keep it 🤔.
Continue Reading...In Search For a Linux Developer Laptop
A few months ago I began looking for a laptop to be used as an all Linux Developer laptop. I came across laptops from System76, Purism and Dell. I ended up picking up a Dell XPS 13 because I wanted something portable, it really is “the world’s smallest 13-inch laptop”. It originally came with Windows 10 pre-installed, but is also available with Ubuntu LTS ...
Continue Reading...Is multi-booting still a thing?
The most essential component of a computer is its operating system. Why should you have to choose just one? To multi-boot or not multi-boot? That is the question. Dual-booting or multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a single computer, and being able to choose which one to boot. The most popular combination is Windows / Linux although that may be starting to change with WSL2...
Continue Reading...The Raspberry Pi
What's a Raspberry Pi? No you can't eat it. The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or tv. It was originally developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote teaching of basic computer science in schools and developing countries...
Continue Reading...How to install Arch Linux
Arch Linux, as the name implies, is a Linux distribution. Most of the more popular Linux distributions offer some sort of installer, graphical or CLI. Arch does not, what you do get are a set of scripts. The installation ISO contains a very basic system with the basic tools required to install a new system..
Continue Reading...Love for Linux
If you know me you know I love Linux. Maybe more than I should. I just love the idea of it, who wouldn't, who doesn't love freedom. Using Linux makes me feel free, it's hard to explain it and yeah sometimes stuff doesn't work but making it work is partly what attracts me to it...
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