So I went to the dump a couple weeks ago and came back with something pretty cool. I was dropping off a box of old electronics (which they take for free), and I spotted an Apple product in the pile. Despite being gold in color, I pulled it out and brought it home. After charging it up, I learned that the screen was damaged, probably because the previous owner closed something in the hinge. Otherwise, it functioned perfectly. I wiped out the previous owner’s data and got macOS installed so I could get to About This Mac. I picked up a 2015 12″ MacBook; the base model with a 1.1 GHz Core m processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. Definitely not amazing specs, but it runs Firefox and ssh sessions just as well as anything else. Plus it was free.
I bought a used display assembly on eBay for $120 and used OpenCore Legacy Patcher to get Monterey installed. I’m pretty pleased with my find. I was originally planning on selling it, but it’s only worth about $250, so I think I’m going to use it until the keyboard stops working (this was the first device with Apple’s infamous butterfly keyboard) and then sell it for parts. If finances allow I’ll probably pick up the then-current MacBook Air when that happens.
I have a perfectly good HP laptop with a Ryzen 4500U, but I hate the form factor. It’s a 15″ laptop with a 16:9 display, which is just too damn wide, and the 1080p resolution is barely adequate for a display that size. The trackpad is awful, especially coming from the Surface Book I had previously. Two things Apple laptops do better than anyone else are displays and trackpads. All their displays are 16:10, which strikes a nice balance between width and height, although I think I might prefer 3:2 or 4:3. Apple trackpads are second to none in my opinion. Large, but not too large, and the force touch thing is fantastic. The whole trackpad clicks, so you never have to move your fingers off their target to make a click.
I’ve been making trips to the dump here and there since I got a truck (which is another post I should write), so hopefully the next dump trip has another diamond in the rough waiting for me.
Dang, about five months since my last update. In my defense, I’ve been pretty busy. I got my first real career job as a help desk tech at a school district. It’s been about three months in this job so far and I think it’s going fairly well. I’m probably 90% up to speed now; I know most of what I need to know and the rest is relatively minor stuff. I felt a little bit of imposter syndrome in the first couple weeks because I’ve never been a tech support person in a professional setting before. Getting a ticket and just going there and clicking around on someone’s computer until the problem is solved and getting paid for it was kind of surreal. I’m used to it now. I think I could probably communicate a bit more confidence to the people I’m helping; I don’t want to say I can fix something immediately for sure until I see the problem, but “I’ll see what I can do” isn’t the best thing to say to someone who really needs their computer to work normally so they can do their job. I might have to see if I can come up with another way to under-promise and over-deliver. Or maybe I should just say “I’ll come over and fix it.”
A lot of IT people, or maybe even most, start out on the help desk. It’s a good learning experience, it’s usually not too difficult as long as the customers are nice, and someone has to do the job. The pay isn’t horrible, but it’s not great either. Help desk staff are definitely the lowest-paid employees under the IT umbrella. I don’t want to stay on the help desk forever (no one does) and help desk has nothing to do with my degree, which is in networking. I’d be much more interested in a network engineer or network admin type job, but I need some experience and probably a certification first.
I’m getting more experience by the day, I have a degree (just an associate’s, but that’s better than nothing), but I don’t have any certs yet. The classes I took in college align roughly with the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) cert. This is the entry-level networking cert, but combined with the degree and a modicum of professional and personal experience, I think getting this cert will open up the next tier of IT jobs, and thus salaries, to me. I’m planning on studying up this summer and hopefully taking the test by the fall. Afterwards, I’ll have to see what jobs are out there. I’m hoping for a 40-50% salary increase with my next jump.
Somewhat longer-term, in the next year or so I’d like to get at least one more cert. The Red Hat Certified System Administrator (for Linux) or the Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate (for Windows), or maybe even both. I’m more interested in Linux personally, but the Windows cert might open more jobs in my area. Maybe I’d wait to move jobs until I can get either of those, but it never hurts to throw applications out there.
Longer-term than that, my career goal for right now is to make $100,000 a year by the time I’m 40-years-old. I have 13.5 years to go. I think it’s probably attainable with some luck and hard (ish) work.
To this end, I’ve started getting some more stuff going on my server to practice for these things. One thing that seems to be pretty important for IT jobs is experience in Active Directory. At the help desk, there isn’t much need for techs to delve into AD for anything other than a password reset. Setting up users, groups and OUs isn’t really under the purview of the help desk; it’s a systems administrator’s job to do all that. To help me get some experience, I got a Windows Server domain controller going and joined a couple virtual machines to it. I’m practicing things like deploying software, creating network shares, using Group Policy settings, and I’m getting a bit of experience with PowerShell. That last one is pretty important for a good sys admin. Windows doesn’t have any built-in bulk import tools or tools for regularly updating user groups, so it has to be done with PowerShell scripts. So far I’m mostly copy-pasting, but I’ll probably check out a Udemy class sometime to learn more.
So that’s basically it. Mostly job stuff these days. I’m going to try to post here once in a while to record what I’m doing. It might make me look like a great candidate for a new job some day.
Last I left off, I was going to put an extra manifold gasket on my Triumph. I did that, and it definitely fixed the sucking noise issue, but I still didn’t have any luck with the idle problem. More expensive and pressing car problems came up, so that’s where things are still sitting. I haven’t driven the car in a few weeks. Before the summer is over, I’m going to get new diaphragms for the bypass valves and a new ground wire for the distributor. I have a friend with a shop that will soon be able to do state inspections, so I’ll have him inspect it when he’s able, and maybe I’ll borrow his compression tester while I’m there to see how the engine is doing inside. But after that, I’m done spending money on the car for the season. I have other things that need my money and time, and an annoying car can be put on the back burner.
In tech news, my Ceton TV tuner died about a month ago. Just overnight, poof, it didn’t work. There was no obvious damage to the hardware or software, and I spent two hours with Verizon support diagnosing the problem. I initially ordered another used Ceton tuner from eBay, then decided to return it and get a new HDHomerun Prime for about the same price. The HDHomerun is a sort of re-run of a tuner that originally came out like 10 years ago, so it only has three tuners to the Ceton’s six, which is a disappointment. On the bright side, it actually works, has a warranty, and the company still exists. Plus, it works with whatever software, so I don’t need to run a whole Windows VM just for CetonProxy anymore. Which brings me to my next item:
I finally plugged my server into a Kill-a-Watt, and (probably unsurprisingly) it uses a ton of power at idle, which is most of the time. Right now it only runs a couple of fairly light VMs, so processor utilization is almost always in the low single digits, but it uses 200 watts of power. I explored a few options to get rid of the whole server, including hosting Jellyfin on a Raspberry Pi, but it’s just impossible to beat the cost per terabyte on the big server. My six 3TB hard drives in a ZFS array give me 12TB of usable storage, and a failure tolerance of up to three disks (or two, I can’t remember now). Anyways, even getting just 6TB of total storage (two 6TB drives with RAID 1) would cost about $300 for new ones, and I’m still left with only half the storage space that I have now. And while that Raspberry Pi runs Jellyfin very nicely (thanks to the hardware accelerated video playback), NextPVR can’t take advantage of that same acceleration, so web browser viewing of live TV is impossible. So I’d have to purchase new hardware. Prices for crap office desktops are seemingly up from last year, which bites. Factoring in selling the server components, I’d probably come out about even switching to lower power consumer hardware. So rather than do all that stuff, I bought some different processors, a pair of Xeon E5-2450Ls, the 65 watt version of my current 95 watt 2450s. This should give some decent power savings I think, plus I’m going to take out the graphics card that I never could get working for transcoding. The processors should be in by early next week, so I’ll make an update when I get them installed.
It’s been almost a month since my last post, so I figured an update is due. It felt like nothing worth reporting has really happened in the last month, but after thinking about it there are three things that are worth a mention at least. First, and least interesting, I started my second to last college semester and things are going fine so far. There is a good bit more group work than I’d like, but it seems that most everyone else in my classes is interesting in pulling their own weight.
Secondly, I have a totally new TV set up in the living room:
A terrible picture of the new TV, speakers and other equipment.
I was browsing Slickdeals mindlessly late at night a few weeks ago, and I saw a deal on this set of speakers. It was a five-speaker package of Jamo’s best speakers for $379 at Adorama. After some quick research, I decided it was a reasonable deal and ordered them. I think $379 was a good price, for an average of about $76 each. The normal price for the package at Adorama was a little over $1,000, which I think says more about the markup on home theater products than the quality of the speakers. I think there’s definitely $379 of sound here, but I would never spend $1,000 on these speakers, or probably any speakers for that matter. Which brings me to a little rant/ramble.
I mostly listen to music through Spotify, which while compressed, sounds totally fine to my ears. I really doubt that I could tell the difference between high-quality Spotify and a lossless source, and even if I could, I think it would be impossible to hear the difference between a $400 set of speakers and a $10,000 (or more) set. “Audiophiles” are probably the only group of people who are worse than camera people. I definitely love cameras and taking pictures, but I don’t have the best gear and I definitely don’t have all the skill. It’s very easy to feel inadequate in the photography world when it feels like every review or forum post or comment is talking about how you just have to have this new super sharp $5,000 lens for your vintage Leica so you can take make amazing pictures photographs/the next great American “photo essay” (whatever that is) in some lush tropical destination. Anyways, it’s a tough community to be in and deal with. Audio equipment feels about the same. If you don’t have a $10,000 Marantz amp connected to 50 different $2,000 speakers from a brand you’re not rich enough to have even heard of are you even watching the movie? Or if you’re not playing a 5000 gram vinyl record through a vintage grass-fed organic tube amp are you really listening to the music? Both hobbies can easily make the regular Joe feel like it’s not worth bothering getting started if they don’t have an unlimited budget.
With that out of the way, I knew I was going to need a new receiver to work these speakers. I already had two receivers, but neither was up to the task. First, I have a late 1980’s JVC quadraphonic receiver, which works perfectly fine, but is just too old to be relevant anymore. I also have a mid 2000’s era JVC 5.1 channel receiver, but it can only work with Dolby Digital signals from a single optical input (no HDMI or anything like that) and the buttons on the front are messed up and don’t work properly anymore. Initially, I was willing to spend a little extra money to get a new receiver that can handle variable refresh rate through its HDMI ports, has Spotify built in and can do Dolby Atmos. After reading some reports that suggest all recent VRR capable receivers have a hardware problem, I decided to get something cheap for now and then maybe upgrade in a few years.
I settled on a refurbished version of Denon’s least expensive receiver, the AVR-S540BT. It can do all the normal Dolby Digital and DTS formats except Atmos or similar, it has five HDMI inputs and two optical inputs, with five speaker channels and two subwoofer outputs. It switches sources automatically when possible and chooses the correct output mode 99% of the time. I’m very happy with it, and I really doubt a more expensive receiver could give me better sound quality. I am interested in an Atmos setup at some point though.
I knew I was also going to need a subwoofer, and in a bid to save some money, I grabbed an old unused JVC sub from my parents’ place (it came with the 5.1 JVC receiver). My parents retired this one for the same reason I eventually did: it has an automatic sleep/power saving function, but it’s much too eager to enter the sleep state. This means the bass cuts in and out almost constantly and always very noticeably. After a couple days I decided to get a new subwoofer. The internet says the Dayton Audio SUB-1200 is the one to get if you don’t want to spend a ton of money, so that’s what I got. Just like the speakers, I’m sure there are better ones out there, but to my untrained ear it sounds fantastic. I could foresee upgrading to the 15 inch version of this sub if space allows in the future, but the 12 inch is an incredible upgrade over anything from a home theater in a box.
I got the receiver set up with my five-ish year old Vizio 4k TV via the HDMI ARC connection. This presented a problem right off the bat. The TV is old enough (and cheap enough) that it only has one HDMI input capable of 4k at 60 Hz. Having a refresh rate of at least 60 Hz is totally essential to using a computer on any screen, and at least strongly recommended for everything else. Unfortunately, the HDMI port with ARC is not the one with 4k 60 Hz capability, so I had to keep all my video sources plugged into the TV and then rely on ARC for audio output to the receiver. This got the job done, but I was plagued by the video from any source cutting out and flickering for about ten seconds at unpredictable intervals. On the PS4, I could just pause the game, but watching TV though the computer was frustrating. The cut would happen at really inopportune times and occasionally the audio would return but the video would not, so I’d have to stop and restart playback. My assumption was that this was due to conflicting HDMI versions between the TV and receiver, but I didn’t put too much effort into solving the problem. Instead, I set my sights on a new TV, one that I’ve had my eye on for a year.
This time last year, in the before times, I was very interested in a new TV, and TCL had just what I was after. They had just debuted their 2020 line, which included a 55 inch QLED TV, with HDR, variable refresh rate and Roku built in, for an excellent MSRP of $699. I kind of forgot about to thanks to the turbulence of the world, but it popped into my head a few times and I read the reviews, all of which just about said it was the best bang for your buck TV in 2020. Thanks to this glowing reception and manufacturing problems due to coronavirus, supplies were short and demand high for much of 2020. I decided I was going to buy one from Best Buy once they had stock available near me, preferably at my local store. I also opened up Walmart and Amazon pages for the TV to up my chances of snagging one. And it’s a good thing I did, because one afternoon I refreshed the Walmart page on a whim, and found the TV on sale for $578, well below the usual $650-$700 price. I grabbed it before it could disappear.
It showed up on Friday, and just like the speakers and receiver, I’m sure there are better TVs out there for more money, but I don’t know that I could see the difference, and I don’t think the performance per dollar is beatable. Even the regular SDR picture is an enormous improvement over my old Vizio, the built-in Roku apps are great as usual and the modern HDMI inputs on the TV mean I can route all my stuff through the receiver first, then into the TV. To be honest, HDR (both HDR 10 and Dobly Vision) isn’t as life changing as I expected, but after watching a few episodes of Our Planet and Planet Earth II in 4k HDR, SDR content just feels like it’s missing something. It’s kind of like cooking without salt. It’s alright and it works, but just a dash of salt takes things to the next level. This TV has a 120 Hz panel and will do VRR, but unfortunately I don’t have anything to take advantage of that. My living room computer has a GTX 1080, but it can’t quite make 1080p at 120 fps, and Nvidia is stupid and doesn’t support VRR over HDMI on cards older than the 3000 series. Forza Horizon 4, my typical couch game, looks amazing in 4k 60 fps with HDR. I suspect playing at 60 Hz on a 120 Hz panel has some benefit because the action looks much smoother than my 4k 60 Hz monitor in the office. The PS4 Pro, in contrast to contemporary Xbox models, has no VRR capabilities. It will do a sort of fake 4k at 60 fps and it’ll do HDR, which I’m satisfied with.
I’m really pleased with my new set up and the value it offers. It’s just nice. My third thing worth mentioning will come in my next post, and is a lot more interesting than this I think.
It feels like forever ago that I mentioned I ordered a new laptop. I was expecting to get it before Christmas, and initially at least, the post office agreed. It quickly made its way from Long Island to a post office distribution center in New Jersey. Where it then sat for almost two weeks. It appeared to be lost in transit. Eventually, someone must have tripped over it and got it on the right truck, because it showed up on Saturday. It’s pretty much what I was expecting so far.
I picked an excellent condition open-box option, which saved about $70. The computer arrived in its original box, and appeared to include all the original items, which was just the charger and a couple papers. My HP Envy x360 15″ is equipped with and AMD Ryzen 4500U, 8 GB of RAM, a 256 GB NVMe SSD and a 250 nit 1080p display. I ordered a 16 GB RAM kit which should be in some time next week. I picked a Ryzen system to take advantage of the excellent on-board graphics capability, and I’ve been pleased with that so far.
I’ve only tried out Civ 6 and Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but both have been completely playable at 1080p on medium settings, getting 30-45 fps with no trouble. Neither of those are terribly intense games though, so I’ll have to try out something heavier in the near future. I should also try them out on the old Surface Book to see what a big leap it is.
Other things I like: the keyboard is excellent, and it has a number pad which is nice. It has a little cover for the webcam that’s electronically controlled. The display takes up almost the entire lid. The battery life is good, and it’s very quiet. It’s a new computer, so of course it’s still speedy and uncluttered. I almost love the trackpad. Its clicks are great, and it’s a nice large size. It would be perfect if it was glass instead of plastic.
Which brings me to things I don’t care for: The overall construction, while solid, appears to only use metal on the lid exterior and it doesn’t feel nearly as nice as the Surface, or my wife’s old Lenovo Yoga, which are both all-metal. The screen, which does have nice colors, seems kind of dim to me, but it’s not problematic indoors. This particular laptop has the lowest-end 250 nit display, and there are 300, 400 and 1000 nit versions available. I couldn’t find a 400 nit version anywhere for a reasonable price. Maybe some day in the future I can swap in a used one. The display is of course in the 16:9 format, which frankly sucks for a laptop. It’s way too wide. The 3:2 of the Surface is maybe a tad narrow, but it’s so much better than 16:9, especially for writing. My Surface pen works perfectly with this computer, but with the screen so narrow and ridiculously long in portrait mode, it’s almost pointless to write on it. I don’t think there are any Windows laptops other than the Surface line with a 3:2 screen, and they’re just too expensive now. Dell offers a 16:10 format on there higher-end stuff, but they’re a little too expensive for me. Personally, I think the 4:3 format of the iPad is probably the ideal for non-television screens.
Anyways, I really like it so far. I’m eager to get the new RAM installed and see if that makes any difference to gaming. Task manager showed that all 8 GB were used with Lego Star Wars going. Despite it’s foibles, I think it would be hard to do better for the price.
Over the last couple days, I’ve acquired a whole bunch of TV shows with the HEVC codec. Not really a problem, but a lot of devices, like a Roku or Fire TV thing, can’t play it directly. That means it has to be transcoded. I use VAAPI in Jellyfin to trancode, but it doesn’t really work with HEVC. I found out the drivers that Debian provides are version 18.something, and I need at least version 20.1 for VAAPI to transcode HEVC video on an AMD graphics card. Those drivers are available in the testing repositories, but the dependency requirements are a little too complicated to make installing them worthwhile. I also put together a VM with Ubuntu 20.10, which has those drivers as standard, but it failed to boot up when I had the GPU passed though to it. The LTS version worked, but like Debian, the drivers are too old. Hopefully the newer drivers make it to Debian’s stable repos sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I’m fine for two reasons: First, I usually watch stuff through Kodi on a computer, which means I can direct play everything; second, my CPU can handle transcoding a couple streams at once, so it’s not a huge problem.
In other news, I ordered a new laptop today. I was eyeing a few during the black Friday week things a couple weeks ago, but decided against it. Today, I was at my parents’ house taking care of some school work. I had my Surface Book (first gen) hooked up to a 1080p monitor for some extra work space. I had Excel, Word, about a dozen Firefox tabs open while playing music on Spotify. It felt a little sluggish and not as responsive as it should be. In fact, when I scrolled though my RSS feeds, the music skipped when it was loading images. CPU usage was 80-95% when watching a 1080p Youtube video with the other stuff open in the background. This isn’t something I do often, and this semester is coming to an end, but I still have two more to go, and it is nice to take my work with me if I want to.
The touch screen on the Surface has also been broken since the summer. It sometimes experiences phantom touches along the bottom inch of the screen. That’s disappointing, but livable. I don’t really use the touchscreen. More unforgivable though, is the stylus situation. It won’t work along the edges of the screen, even after repeated calibrations, rendering it useless. I bought an iPad and Apple Pencil in September to pick up this slack, but I haven’t used it much. I haven’t felt the need to take notes in my classes. It feels like I kind of wasted the money on that, but eBay shows that I should be able to sell the stuff for almost as much as I paid for it if I want.
These issues got me looking for laptops this afternoon. I first turned to Slickdeals to see if there were any good deals out there today. First, I found an HP Pavilion that seemed like a good deal. It had a Ryzen 4700U CPU, 8GB RAM 128 GB NVMe SSD and a 1080p display for $450. Someone left a comment comparing it to a similar Dell. The Dell seemed like a better deal, with a better charging system, two M.2 slots, and 1x 8GB RAM stick (making the upgrade to 16GB easier). I found out from another Slickdeals post that there was 12% off Dell stuff with a sign up at a third-party site. I did that and was ready to order a 15″ Inspiron 5000 for about $500. I read and watched a few reviews, and decided the display and build quality would be too big a step down from the Surface, so I moved on.
I gave Best Buy a look and set my only criteria to an AMD processor and a 1080p display. Another HP popped up, but this time it was an Envy x360 (that means the screen flips all the way around). This one was equipped with a Ryzen 4500U, 256GB NVMe SSD and 8GB RAM for $629 new. I learned in the Best Buy questions and through some research that the RAM and SSD are able to be upgraded, and it’s compatible with an active stylus, like the Surface pen. The upgradability is a must-have for me, and the stylus compatibility is a huge plus. I waffled for a couple hours, but decided to buy an excellent condition open-box one for about $570. It should be in by December 22 they say, but of course I’m hoping it arrives earlier. The AMD processor bests more expensive Intels and has pretty good integrated graphics. I should be able to run some games at 1080p medium settings. It totally murders the i5 6300U in the Surface Book (11,286 passmark score vs. 3,269). The Verge called the 13″ version the best sub-$1000 laptop. I think I’ll probably keep the 256GB SSD for now, but I’ll definitely be upgrading to 16GB RAM as soon as possible. I’m really looking forward to it, and I’ll update when it comes in.
As I said a couple weeks ago, I got my DL380 server going. At least for a little while anyways. I started testing some services on it like WordPress and Grocy (the latter of which will be a post of its own in a couple weeks). I was satisfied with the web services, so I decided to try getting my stupid Ceton TV tuner card set up in the server. I got Proxmox ready to do a PCI passthrough of the card to a Windows 10 VM and then installed the card. To do so, I had to detach the SAS cables from the RAID card. Unfortunately, the server won’t boot up correctly with the tuner card installed. So I took the tuner out, which means I detach and reattach the SAS cables again. I made sure to connect them to the same ports as before. But, to my annoyance, when I started the server, it couldn’t boot from the hard drives anymore. I don’t know if disconnecting the cables ruined my arrays, or maybe I mistakenly connected the cables to the wrong ports on the RAID card, or what. This enterprise server seems so touchy. I guess part of that might be because I’m not really using it as it was intended. Anyways, I’m going to cut my losses and use some of the parts to put together my own “white label” server.
I should have built my own to begin with, but I couldn’t find any parts that could beat the price to performance ratio of the DL380 on paper. I think part of the reason for the DL380’s excellent price/performance is the relatively unloved socket LGA 1356 for the processors. LGA 2011 is from about the same era, but was used in a lot of servers and desktops. The processors and motherboards, even many years later, are decent amount more expensive than similar LGA 1356 parts. At the beginning of this, I was unaware of the relative rarity of 1356 parts.
I found a dual-socket Intel motherboard that should do the trick. I’m teaming that with a Dell H310 RAID card that I’ll be flashing for use in IT mode so I can use ZFS and an HP NC365T NIC. This motherboard has enough slots to accept my TV tuner card, so hopefully it’ll boot with it installed. There’s also a PCIe x16 slot, so if I’m really lucky I might be able to put my RX 480 GPU in there too. The motherboard is a CEB size, which the internet tells me is between a regular ATX and E-ATX in size, and uses the same IO shield size and screw holes as ATX. I picked an Antec P101 case to hold everything. It says it should hold an E-ATX board and eight 3.5″ hard drives. Plus, it has a 5.25″ drive space on the outside, so I can move my Blu-Ray drive from my desktop over there and set up an automatic ripper.
Right now the only part I don’t have on order is a power supply. I want something that’s at least 750 watts, and I’d probably go up to 1000 watts. I definitely want something 80+ Gold efficiency at the least, and I have to have two CPU power connectors for the dual socket board. This narrows down my selection, but not severely so. Both EVGA power supplies I have in my house right now meet those criteria. Unfortunately, it appears coronavirus has totally wrecked the supply of power supplies. Hardly anything is available, let alone decent power supplies, and what is available is two to three times more expensive than usual. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for reasonably priced used ones, but I may have to wait a while before I get this server going. I’ll update when I get it built.
I’ve acquired a everything I need to start my set up and I’ve been playing with it for about a week now.
The HP server is great so far, except for the noise. I know enterprise servers are probably designed with no thought given to noise levels, but Jesus, this thing is ridiculous. During the entire minute-plus POST process, the six fans run at their maximum speed of something like 12,000 rpm. It’s loud. If I was near a rack full of them all day, I’d definitely be wearing some ear protection. Once the fans settle down to 35-40% when the thing is idling, they’re bearable, but still too loud to have on an open shelf in the office. I’ve decided to make a redneck “rack” to suspend the server and the switch vertically in the office closet. I’ll be making it this week, so I’ll be sure to post some pictures. In other news, the server turned out to take 3.5″ drives, not 2.5″, which really pleases me. I found some used 3TB HGST SAS drives and got six of them, plus some drive trays. I’ll be doing a RAID 6 array, so I should have 12TB of total storage while being able to recover from two drives failing simultaneously.
I got a Cisco 3560G 48-port switch to connect everything. I decided I had to update it, and killed it somehow. The flash memory appears to be wrecked. I used the web admin page to try to update it, and that image might have been too large for the flash memory. I tried to format the memory and install a new OS over the serial connection, but I had no success. So I bought another switch. The same model, but this one has already been updated to the latest supported version of IOS and it has a one year warranty. I won’t even be thinking about updating this one.
The SFF HP desktop as a router is coming along just fine. I dug up an old hard drive from a MacBook Pro I flipped a few years ago to use as the storage for that. At 250GB, it should be more than plenty. The system came with only 4GB of RAM, so I ordered another 4GB stick that should be in this week. I could probably get by on 4GB, but why not double it for like $12? I installed an HP NC365T NIC to give that computer a total of five gigabit ethernet ports. I’ll be using the built in port for the Proxmox admin console, then three of the four ports on the HP card for pfSense and Pi-Hole. I also need to get a VPN running, and I’d like to use WireGuard, which I may be able to do right in pfSense. If not, I’ll get a third VM going on this router box to handle VPN duties and use up the last ethernet port.
I’ll be running some wires to get wired internet and cable TV from the basement to the second-floor office. It shouldn’t be too difficult, but I’ve never run wires on the outside of a house before. Theoretically, all I need to do is add a couple holes to the area where the electric service and cable/fiber connections enter the house from the outside, put the wires through there and then drill a couple holes in a wall of the office. I’m hoping to not have to terminate my own ethernet cables because it’s a real pain. Monoprice has some outdoor rated cables with RJ45 connectors already attached for a great price, so I’m going to try to drill a hole big enough to let the connector through. The coax cable for the TV signal is no problem though, I’ve used compression-fit connectors on those a million times.
I’ll be ordering all my cables early in the week, so hopefully I can get drilling on the weekend.
A little while ago, I stumbled upon the r/homelab subreddit. There, users gather to discuss their home network setups, often used for experimentation like a laboratory. I finally have enough money to get started on a modest set up, so I ordered some pieces this week to get started.
I’m currently taking classes to get a degree in computer networking. One class is an introduction to computing class that has us using virtual machines for something. Another is a networking class that should prepare me for the Cisco CCENT certification exam. I’ve become a lot more interested in the subjects thanks to the classes. At the same time, my home network needs have changed and I could use some more power and storage.
Enter the homelab. Following some guidance from the r/homelab wiki, I decided on a basic set up. For hardware, I decided to get an HP DL380e Gen8 server, a Cisco Catalyst 3560G 48-port switch, and an HP ProDesk desktop. The plan is to use a hypervisor (probably Proxmox) on the ProDesk so it can act as a pfSense router, Pi-Hole ad blocker, VPN (hopefully with WireGuard), and reverse proxy (probably Caddy) all at the same time. This router will be connected to the Cisco switch, where I may set up some virtual LANs. I’ll have to see how everything works together. I got the DL380e as a barebones thing, so the specs were up to me. I decided to go with dual Xeon E5-2450 processors, and I’ll be getting 48 GB of RAM (the maximum is 384 GB). These are both pretty cheap options. I think I found a good deal on some 1TB 2.5″ SAS hard drives, so I will probably start with six of them in a RAID 6 configuration and add more as needed. I’m not totally certain about this though. The server will be home to a few virtual machines. I’ll be moving my TV tuner card there, so there will be at least one Windows 10 VM. I’m also going to be running my normal website from there, and I’ll probably run an OctoPrint setup so I can control my 3D printer, so I’ll need at least two Linux VMs for that. I’ll probably also throw in one for Arch Linux, just because I like to tinker with it. Beyond that, I’m not sure what else I’m going to do with it yet. Maybe host some game servers for Minecraft or something or get a media library going. I’d really, really love to put my spare RX 480 graphics card in it and stream some games. This is totally possible, but I need a very specific PCI riser card to fit a double slot graphics card, plus a power wire adapter and maybe an extra power supply. We’ll see how it goes and maybe I’ll try to track down the special riser in the future.
There’s no real purpose to doing this other than I want to. The experience with Cisco networking and virtual machines might help me get a job some time in the future. It’s not super expensive at least, and it’ll be fun to have a ton of computer power at my disposal.
After a couple false starts, we got our FiOS service going on Thursday. We got the gigabit internet and lifestyle and reality custom TV package. The download speeds have been a tad disappointing at about 330 mbps, while the uploads are an excellent 700 mbps. The download is three times better than we had before, but I’d like it to at least match the upload. I’m not sure what’s causing that problem, but I’ll have to try a few things to fix it this coming week.
The TV side of things is going very well so far. The Ceton PCI tuner is working just fine for now, but I’ll still probably upgrade to the new HD Homerun Prime when it comes out. I have the Ceton card in my living room computer, connected to the TV. It runs NextPVR which contains a client for local use and a server that other devices on the network can connect to. It’s a very powerful program, with lots of options for customization. In the living room, we just use the local NPVR client. I didn’t realize that cable TV services don’t transmit program guide data like the over-the-air service does. The Schedules Direct service is supported by NPVR, with fairly easy set up. It costs $25 per year, but, to me, that’s very reasonable for the convenience.
I was originally planning to use Emby with the NPVR plugin on the server side and the Emby Roku app on the client side. Quite frankly, it sucked. It just dumped all 1200 channels the tuner card sees into a menu with no options to sort or filter them. When I clicked a channel to watch, it didn’t work either. It’s a small caveat, but to use the live TV function of Emby, you have to pay a subscription fee of $4.99 per month, $54 per year, or $119 for life. So I had to go back to the drawing board.
I decided to try out Kodi on my Raspberry Pi server. I installed the NPVR add-on and adjusted some settings. It kind of worked. The guide was perfect, but playback was a little wonky. The audio was fine, but the video would stutter or freeze. I figured it was good enough and I could fix the problem. I ordered a new Raspberry Pi 3B+ and set it up with OSMC. OSMC is a fork of Debian with Kodi preinstalled. I installed it on the Pi, and then velcro’d the Pi to the back of the TV. After a little bit of setup, it was working perfectly. The guide looked just like NPVR, live TV worked without any catches and watching recordings was great. I’m extremely satisfied with the setup.
There’s only one small thing left to do; add a remote control. In the living room I have a Logitech K400+ couch keyboard, which is great for changing app settings, launching games and light web browsing, but it’s really clunky and unintuitive for watching TV. A regular remote control would be ideal. I remembered the new computer my dad got for Christmas 2006. It was a Dell XPS 410, which had a novel for the time TV tuner card. This meant it came with Windows XP Media Center Edition, and a remote control. The remote had every button you need, but none you don’t, with a very solid and high quality feel. To my surprise, I was able to track down two new in box examples on eBay. Set up with NPVR should be a breeze, because it has native support for these media center edition remotes. I also discovered Kodi has an MCE remote add-on, so hopefully set up should be easy there too. The first one comes tomorrow, so I’ll find out soon.
While the internet service so far is a tad disappointing, I’m totally thrilled with the TV. This setup with a cable card tuner inside an HTPC with client computers around the house is something I’ve wanted since not long after we opened that new computer over a decade ago.
