54： Ultimate Off-Site Setup _transcript.txt

[0.00 --> 3.70]  I'm looking out tonight over a beautiful Norfolk sky.
[3.92 --> 6.52]  I'm finally, finally back in England.
[6.84 --> 10.80]  Oh, that must feel amazing after having to wait with the whole pandemic and everything.
[11.00 --> 14.82]  And how ironic is it that now that I'm back in my studio, you're traveling.
[15.38 --> 16.06]  I know, right?
[16.48 --> 21.34]  And I'm talking to you over a 4G LTE connection because the house I'm staying in at my mother-in-law's
[21.34 --> 25.38]  is so rural, she can only get two meg down on DSL.
[25.56 --> 27.56]  Well, now the shoe's on the other foot.
[27.56 --> 29.94]  But I'm with the good connection and you've got cellular.
[30.74 --> 30.92]  Yeah.
[31.10 --> 31.94]  How was it though?
[32.04 --> 37.14]  I mean, traveling with the baby plus, that's no short flight from, even from the East Coast
[37.14 --> 37.86]  to London.
[37.96 --> 40.76]  That must have been six hour flight, something like that.
[41.06 --> 47.50]  It's seven going to Europe because you're with the wind, what they call the jet stream.
[47.98 --> 49.80]  But coming back, it's an hour longer.
[49.80 --> 51.28]  I guess it must be uphill or something.
[52.26 --> 53.58]  Oh, so, right.
[54.18 --> 55.36]  It's story time.
[55.90 --> 56.34]  All right.
[56.44 --> 57.28]  It's story time.
[57.56 --> 59.58]  I was a colossal idiot.
[60.36 --> 61.24]  Let's put it that way.
[61.44 --> 61.92]  No.
[62.56 --> 67.94]  The night before our flight to England from the States, I was logging onto the American
[67.94 --> 72.82]  Airlines website, putting in all my passport information and I put in my wife's passport
[72.82 --> 75.84]  information and my daughter's passport information.
[76.02 --> 76.78]  It was all fine.
[77.28 --> 78.20]  Got to mine.
[78.40 --> 79.50]  And, you know, I have both.
[79.50 --> 81.68]  I have the British and the American one.
[82.62 --> 86.30]  And I put in my British one and then it said, you don't have a visa for this passport.
[86.48 --> 87.84]  Please enter your US one.
[87.96 --> 89.04]  I'm like, okay.
[89.24 --> 92.58]  I was going to enter Britain on my British one, but sure.
[92.78 --> 93.00]  Fine.
[93.62 --> 95.32]  Went to get my US passport out the drawer.
[96.04 --> 97.14]  It expired in July.
[97.68 --> 98.50]  Oh, no.
[98.94 --> 99.30]  Uh-huh.
[99.50 --> 101.80]  You can't just get that taken care of like overnight.
[102.00 --> 102.86]  Like that's a process.
[103.10 --> 103.20]  No.
[103.30 --> 104.02]  And bear in mind.
[104.14 --> 107.90]  So we were due to fly out on Labor Day, which is like a bank holiday in the States.
[108.66 --> 109.76]  You know, this was Sunday night.
[109.76 --> 114.28]  I found out for a Monday night flight on Labor Day.
[114.40 --> 116.86]  So the entire government was closed on the Monday.
[117.32 --> 123.86]  So I just had to sit there stewing in my own filth and shame for an entire day, explaining
[123.86 --> 127.70]  to my entire family why they weren't going to get to meet their granddaughter on time
[127.70 --> 129.50]  and yada, yada, yada.
[130.12 --> 133.82]  I mean, that does feel like a quintessential dad experience where like you're, you're so
[133.82 --> 136.04]  worried about like, how are we going to fly with a baby?
[136.46 --> 137.36]  What do we need to do?
[137.36 --> 141.22]  Like, do we have devices to entertain ourselves, sync the media, pack everything?
[141.42 --> 144.30]  You think of all that stuff except for your own passport.
[145.06 --> 151.12]  Do you know what makes this absolutely asinently stupid is that we had to apply for my daughter's
[151.12 --> 152.76]  first passport in August.
[152.90 --> 155.20]  So she had her appointment on August 8th.
[155.80 --> 160.36]  We paid for the expedited processing and it was there by August the 22nd.
[160.46 --> 162.78]  That was pretty fast, I think, for a first passport.
[162.78 --> 167.32]  They used my American passport in that application.
[167.84 --> 172.98]  And at no point did anybody say to me, hey, Mr. Kretschmar, your passport's expired.
[173.48 --> 174.48]  Hey, man, just so you know.
[174.58 --> 175.20]  Just so you know.
[175.40 --> 176.54]  Looks like you might be preparing to travel.
[176.80 --> 181.08]  I mean, look, it's totally my fault and I hold my hands up that I screwed up.
[181.82 --> 185.78]  But there were a couple of opportunities where other people could have helped me as well.
[185.78 --> 186.86]  Oh boy, no kidding.
[187.40 --> 189.94]  Well, you can always help yourself by going to a Cloud Guru, eh?
[190.04 --> 192.52]  The leader in learning for Cloud, Linux and other modern tech skills.
[192.86 --> 197.92]  And right now, everyone can get into the game with discounts on learning plans.
[198.06 --> 202.08]  Hundreds of certification courses, thousands of labs and hands-on learning and free cloud
[202.08 --> 203.46]  sandboxes to develop your skills.
[203.72 --> 205.20]  A CloudGuru.com.
[205.20 --> 211.02]  So the Tuesday morning rolls around and I end up calling the State Department and booking
[211.02 --> 213.30]  an appointment, an emergency passport appointment.
[213.70 --> 217.22]  The only one they have within two weeks is in Chicago.
[218.50 --> 220.50]  And of course, you're in North Carolina.
[220.64 --> 222.58]  So that's a bit of a track.
[222.68 --> 223.46]  Well, actually, I tell a lie.
[223.52 --> 225.06]  They had one in Buffalo as well.
[225.06 --> 230.18]  But given the size of O'Hare in Chicago, I figured actually what we'd do is we'd fly
[230.18 --> 230.82]  out to Chicago.
[231.38 --> 233.92]  I'd go and get my emergency passport taken care of.
[233.92 --> 236.44]  And then they give it to you within two or three hours.
[236.82 --> 238.60]  And then we'd just fly to London from Chicago.
[238.78 --> 243.36]  So in the end, my wife got her birthday in Chicago and she got to go around all the art
[243.36 --> 244.64]  museums, all that kind of stuff.
[245.00 --> 247.80]  And then we flew out to Heathrow direct from O'Hare.
[247.98 --> 252.20]  We went on one of those really nice new Dreamliners, those Boeing Dreamliners.
[252.56 --> 253.06]  Oh, really?
[253.46 --> 253.70]  Yeah.
[253.92 --> 255.10]  Lives up to the hype, man.
[255.20 --> 259.34]  I tell you what, they say they pressurize the cabin at 6,000 feet, not eight.
[259.34 --> 264.26]  And I was super comfortable on that plane, even with a mask on.
[265.04 --> 268.46]  It's hard to explain, but I just didn't feel as fatigued at the other end.
[268.70 --> 270.88]  Boy, if you're going to go on a long flight, that seems like the way to go.
[270.98 --> 273.22]  And how nice is that for the wife lady?
[273.30 --> 277.80]  She got to spend the anniversary in Denver during our meetup and the birthday in Chicago.
[278.02 --> 278.90]  Yeah, I know, right?
[279.36 --> 281.26]  After a year and a half of not traveling.
[281.58 --> 282.36]  It's a bit strange.
[282.36 --> 288.14]  So anyway, here I am sat in my mother-in-law's house in England, and it's actually pretty
[288.14 --> 290.94]  much three years to the day since I emigrated.
[291.72 --> 291.74]  Wow.
[292.06 --> 293.12]  A lot to catch up on.
[293.32 --> 298.42]  There's so much that's happened in that three years from, you know, new career, new houses,
[298.80 --> 299.56]  new baby.
[301.08 --> 306.50]  You know, the weird thing is, is that when we emigrated, child, having a child was just
[306.50 --> 308.28]  not something we were even thinking about.
[308.34 --> 311.50]  And here we are coming back the first time with her in tow.
[311.50 --> 312.40]  It's very strange.
[312.98 --> 313.14]  Wow.
[313.44 --> 317.44]  Well, you're getting that baby adapted to travel early, which I hear is the way to do
[317.44 --> 317.64]  it.
[317.76 --> 319.80]  So hopefully she'll be a travel pro.
[320.04 --> 320.46]  Hopefully.
[320.66 --> 321.48]  You know, right away.
[321.72 --> 325.18]  You know, the weirdest thing, though, you'd think after three years, it would feel weird
[325.18 --> 330.60]  to come back to a different country that drives on the correct side of the road, that measures
[330.60 --> 331.48]  everything correctly.
[332.18 --> 335.84]  But, you know, the weirdest thing actually is that it doesn't feel weird at all.
[335.94 --> 337.72]  It doesn't even feel like we ever left.
[338.12 --> 341.26]  It's just picking right back up where we left off.
[341.26 --> 342.62]  It's bizarre.
[343.22 --> 346.58]  For me, you know, just even after this road trip, we were gone for about 40 days.
[346.78 --> 351.68]  For the first two days that I was back in the Seattle area, it felt a little strange,
[351.74 --> 354.04]  like, oh, this doesn't quite click anymore.
[354.30 --> 357.54]  But now that I've been here for, you know, a little bit more than a week, it just feels
[357.54 --> 359.22]  totally normal back into the swing of things.
[359.26 --> 360.02]  Is it kind of like that?
[360.28 --> 360.44]  Yeah.
[360.70 --> 360.92]  Yeah.
[360.92 --> 364.52]  I mean, I've still got a couple of British bank accounts, so I've got all the correct
[364.52 --> 366.72]  credit cards to pay for things with.
[366.94 --> 368.96]  You know, I can just pay for petrol and it's no problem.
[369.36 --> 371.48]  And you're no longer the one with the accent anymore.
[372.54 --> 374.20]  It is so nice.
[374.32 --> 377.72]  I can't lie to just not have that be a talking.
[377.94 --> 378.72]  Oh, my God.
[378.72 --> 379.78]  I love your accent.
[380.44 --> 380.84]  Yeah.
[381.16 --> 381.38]  Yeah.
[381.42 --> 383.78]  I bet you get that all the time, especially in the South.
[383.82 --> 384.90]  That must be very common.
[385.16 --> 385.96]  Oh, my gosh.
[385.96 --> 390.52]  Of course, my go-to line to them is, well, you're the one with the accent.
[391.40 --> 395.82]  And you can just see people stop and look at me like, oh, yeah, I suppose I do have
[395.82 --> 396.92]  an accent to you, don't I?
[398.52 --> 405.42]  I imagine, much like myself, you must go through a lot tech-wise and with your home setup to
[405.42 --> 406.60]  get ready for a trip like this.
[406.78 --> 407.20]  Well, yeah.
[407.26 --> 410.70]  I mean, I've got three years worth of tech debt that I wanted to try and address on this
[410.70 --> 410.98]  trip.
[411.58 --> 414.14]  A bunch of stuff to my old UK server.
[414.14 --> 419.66]  I wanted to try and improve things for my parents as well, who have a bunch of old laptops
[419.66 --> 424.76]  that are just sat around gathering dust that they'd love to get the data off of and find
[424.76 --> 430.98]  ways to manage all their photos, all this kind of stuff, and try and bring some of the
[430.98 --> 437.32]  self-hosting stuff that I've learned over the last three years since I left back with
[437.32 --> 439.50]  me and try and improve their setups.
[439.50 --> 445.06]  I imagine it's an opportunity for you to also maybe rethink your off-site backup because
[445.06 --> 446.06]  you're at these machines now.
[446.18 --> 449.30]  If you want to change something when it comes to any of that kind of stuff, this is kind
[449.30 --> 449.96]  of your opportunity.
[450.12 --> 450.60]  This is it.
[450.76 --> 451.08]  Exactly.
[451.26 --> 451.42]  Yeah.
[451.56 --> 455.92]  I mean, we will be coming back next summer because of my sister's wedding, but it's not
[455.92 --> 456.40]  often.
[457.54 --> 458.28]  Who knows?
[458.34 --> 459.40]  Maybe there'll be another COVID.
[459.80 --> 460.80]  God, I do hope not.
[460.80 --> 463.76]  But you just don't know when you're going to get these opportunities.
[464.10 --> 470.32]  So I've gone ahead and replaced the motherboard in my UK server that was six or seven years
[470.32 --> 471.24]  old when I left.
[471.54 --> 473.96]  So now it's knocking on the door of being 10 years old.
[474.10 --> 474.44]  Oh, yeah.
[474.50 --> 481.10]  It's a really old Supermicro 1366 LGA socket Xeon, I think.
[481.52 --> 482.00]  Good box, though.
[482.02 --> 482.72]  That's a good board.
[483.08 --> 483.78]  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[483.78 --> 491.02]  But it ran IPMI through Java, so I had to have a special VM around just for that, which
[491.02 --> 491.98]  was a pain in the ass.
[492.44 --> 492.52]  Yep.
[493.34 --> 494.92]  So I've gone ahead and replaced that.
[495.00 --> 499.72]  I put a link in the show notes to the ASRock Rack motherboard that I've picked out.
[500.52 --> 506.62]  And I picked this one out for a few reasons, mostly because I actually already had an i5-8500
[506.62 --> 509.30]  CPU lying around.
[509.30 --> 514.68]  And I had that because of all the experimentation I did in January with the GVTG stuff.
[515.58 --> 518.26]  So that's just been sat on a shelf gathering dust for a little while.
[518.76 --> 521.54]  I mean, this looks like a board that should last you a good number of years.
[521.54 --> 524.32]  And especially if it's one you already had, that's a major win.
[524.42 --> 526.70]  And I'm impressed that you've already got the work done.
[526.90 --> 527.82]  You got right to it.
[528.68 --> 531.68]  You know, I waited to decompress and de-jet lag for a couple of days.
[532.00 --> 533.64]  And then I got to swapping out the motherboard.
[534.26 --> 535.92]  And, you know, there's a few nice upgrades.
[536.02 --> 537.34]  I put an NVMe drive in there.
[537.34 --> 539.86]  The i5 that's in there obviously has QuickSync as well.
[540.04 --> 544.96]  So if there's any, you know, I use that server for a lot of TV streaming.
[545.12 --> 549.62]  So like when the Olympics were on, when the World Cup is going to be on next year, the
[549.62 --> 550.90]  Euros, all that kind of stuff.
[551.00 --> 554.62]  I watched the BBC coverage through Plex from my UK server.
[555.12 --> 555.42]  I see.
[555.52 --> 555.84]  I see.
[556.26 --> 559.12]  So you don't even have to pop in over WireGuard because you're using Plex.
[559.22 --> 560.40]  You can just bring up Plex.
[560.78 --> 561.14]  Correct.
[561.34 --> 561.50]  Yeah.
[561.56 --> 562.54]  Just for the TV.
[562.54 --> 564.18]  And it works really nicely.
[564.36 --> 569.94]  But the old Xeon, when it was transcoding, that content would suck down the juice, which,
[570.26 --> 571.48]  you know, it's not my electricity bill.
[571.56 --> 577.24]  So I'm trying to be a good citizen and replaced it with a more power efficient system with the
[577.24 --> 578.34]  Intel QuickSync stuff.
[579.66 --> 583.24]  But this motherboard in particular has a couple of really interesting things.
[583.24 --> 586.96]  I think if you're looking at a media server motherboard, you should be aware of.
[587.64 --> 590.90]  First of all, it's a micro ATX board, which may not be for everybody.
[591.58 --> 591.62]  Yeah.
[591.74 --> 599.14]  But it does have three PCIe expansion slots on it, plus one NVMe drive slot.
[599.38 --> 602.26]  So there's plenty of expansion options in there should you need it.
[602.96 --> 610.20]  It also has a really very, very nice HTML5 based IPMI implementation, which is really nice.
[610.20 --> 617.18]  So I've got OpenSense running on an APU2 at my dad's, and then I use that as my WireGuard endpoint.
[617.60 --> 624.26]  So once I've got the site-to-site VPN up and running, or just connect through the client
[624.26 --> 630.02]  on my laptop to that site, I can then just access it through an IP address directly in
[630.02 --> 630.42]  the browser.
[630.66 --> 632.04]  There's no Java crap needed.
[632.24 --> 633.66]  It's really, really nice.
[634.30 --> 635.88]  Oh, that's going to be great, Alex.
[635.88 --> 640.96]  I mean, it really sounds like a great ideal board and setup for what you're doing.
[641.08 --> 646.82]  My only knock against it would be, it's kind of a bummer it only has one NVMe slot, because
[646.82 --> 650.22]  it would be really nice to have, you know, maybe in a mirror or something like that, like
[650.22 --> 652.16]  a couple of drives and have that speed still.
[652.48 --> 657.76]  Well, it would, but luckily the primary PCIe port supports by FUcation.
[657.76 --> 665.78]  So what I've been able to do is buy an M.2 NVMe PCIe card that has four NVMe slots on it
[665.78 --> 672.70]  and split that up, split that port up essentially into not four, unfortunately, but three extra
[672.70 --> 673.70]  NVMe slots.
[674.08 --> 680.86]  So I don't need it for this server in the UK, but for my server back at home in the US, I'm
[680.86 --> 681.40]  going to do this.
[681.52 --> 685.02]  I'm going to, I've been testing it for the last few weeks and it works pretty well.
[685.02 --> 690.12]  Now, the main slot supports eight by four by four.
[690.46 --> 695.66]  So what that means is it splits that 16X link into three segments.
[695.90 --> 703.16]  So I can just have effectively three of the four slots on that NVMe card will work just
[703.16 --> 705.14]  as if they were plugged directly in through the motherboard.
[705.62 --> 705.78]  All right.
[705.82 --> 706.30]  That's pretty cool.
[706.36 --> 709.90]  I'll toss a link to that, although it might be sold out on Amazon right now, but I'll put
[709.90 --> 712.26]  a link to it in the show notes if people want to see this Asus.
[712.42 --> 712.64]  Yeah.
[712.70 --> 713.30]  What isn't?
[713.30 --> 714.02]  Yeah, really?
[714.02 --> 717.44]  That's part of why it was nice that you could use a board you already had, really.
[717.78 --> 719.12]  Well, I didn't, I didn't already have the motherboard.
[719.22 --> 719.88]  I had the CPU.
[720.44 --> 725.66]  I think I bought the boards through Newegg because, you know, in the US and brought them
[725.66 --> 726.38]  over with me.
[726.66 --> 727.04]  I see.
[727.14 --> 727.90]  Much cheaper that way.
[728.00 --> 730.44]  Also, I could do all the testing at home where I have all my gear.
[730.72 --> 732.80]  So you brought this motherboard through TSA?
[733.46 --> 733.82]  Yes.
[733.94 --> 736.74]  I also brought a Synology NAS, which I'll come on to later.
[737.14 --> 737.58]  Ah, okay.
[737.76 --> 743.12]  The guys in Raleigh didn't care about the Synology, but the guys in Chicago gave me the 20 questions
[743.12 --> 743.66]  about it.
[744.80 --> 746.12]  It's a bomb and an ass.
[747.38 --> 750.48]  Well, they were, they were saying, so what is this thing?
[750.62 --> 751.58]  What do you need it for?
[751.64 --> 752.66]  I'm like, it's a computer.
[752.84 --> 754.30]  And they said, what does it do?
[754.32 --> 755.90]  And I said, it stores data.
[756.48 --> 757.68]  And they went, what data?
[757.68 --> 760.72]  And I said, movies, TV shows.
[760.86 --> 764.86]  And they looked at me, looked at each other and just went, yeah, whatever.
[765.26 --> 766.16]  And just let me go.
[766.98 --> 768.66]  Thank goodness they didn't ask any more questions.
[769.04 --> 769.22]  Yeah.
[769.30 --> 774.00]  Like I was kind of thinking, so where do you get these movies and TV shows from, sir?
[774.70 --> 775.58]  I'll be like, hmm.
[776.26 --> 778.88]  Uh, yes, I legally rip all of these things.
[779.22 --> 779.64]  Wink, wink.
[779.64 --> 783.66]  Uh, it's all Creative Commons content, actually.
[783.76 --> 784.58]  Let me tell you about.
[784.66 --> 785.80]  Yeah, it's all Big Buck Bunny.
[786.56 --> 787.92]  And then going to, yeah, yeah, right.
[788.00 --> 789.68]  Just lots of different rips of Big Bunny.
[789.74 --> 792.96]  And then you just go into like a whole explanation of Creative Commons and hope they just glaze over.
[793.40 --> 793.64]  Yeah.
[794.60 --> 798.54]  So going back to the motherboard briefly, one other thing that was really difficult to find
[798.54 --> 803.64]  out before I purchased that's actually really important is this motherboard is one of the only,
[804.10 --> 811.08]  or one of the few that I could find that actually supports IPMI and IGPU at the same time.
[811.16 --> 816.12]  So what that means is the graphics card that's built into the CPU, which is where QuickSync lives,
[816.80 --> 823.30]  some IPMI implementations grab that monitor and then don't let you use it for QuickSync.
[824.24 --> 828.30]  Basically, you need to go into a secret BIOS menu on this ASRock board.
[828.30 --> 831.10]  And enable IGPU multi-monitor support.
[831.74 --> 834.24]  Once you've done that, it just works.
[834.38 --> 838.84]  You get a BIOS screen through the terminal window in the browser.
[839.26 --> 846.04]  And you also get QuickSync support, hardware transcoding support through Plex and Intel GPU top as well.
[846.54 --> 848.48]  Oh, I could really use something like that here in the studio.
[848.70 --> 853.54]  You know, the server went down, the studio server went down about a week and a half,
[853.84 --> 855.08]  two weeks, three weeks into the trip.
[855.14 --> 855.56]  I can't remember.
[855.56 --> 861.98]  But basically, the last two weeks of the trip, I didn't have the server and it drove me crazy not to be able to see the console.
[862.38 --> 862.44]  Yeah.
[862.70 --> 865.92]  I love that it supports IGPU and IPMI at the same time.
[866.50 --> 872.54]  I mean, when you're looking at all the stuff this thing does, especially if you add that ASUS PCI NVMe expansion card in there,
[873.00 --> 875.42]  I mean, it's $260 for this board on Newegg.
[875.50 --> 875.62]  Yeah.
[875.62 --> 883.00]  I mean, that's kind of, it's expensive, but a good motherboard right now during a parts shortage, not that bad, really.
[883.10 --> 883.60]  $260.
[884.04 --> 884.50]  Exactly.
[884.72 --> 887.26]  COVID has me reframing what is expensive.
[887.26 --> 895.88]  And if it's $50 more than what I'm comfortable spending, I mean, I was looking for something under $200, ideally.
[897.52 --> 905.52]  But if it's in stock at this point in history, that extra $60 is kind of worth it, right?
[905.90 --> 908.62]  Well, and it really kind of, it depends on how you frame it, too.
[908.62 --> 912.26]  If you think of it as a server motherboard, it's a pretty good price.
[912.40 --> 918.68]  If you think of it as like a gaming PC desktop motherboard, that's just sort of an average motherboard, it's expensive.
[919.00 --> 920.16]  But it doesn't have any LEDs.
[921.12 --> 923.00]  So gamers aren't interested.
[924.70 --> 931.38]  I mean, it's not like it's, it's not like it's the be all end all server solution, especially because it's a, you know, it's a micro ATX.
[931.58 --> 933.90]  But, geez, it's pretty great.
[933.90 --> 940.06]  And the fact that you have iGPU, you get QuickSync, and you have IPMI, that's a great choice, Alex.
[940.12 --> 942.50]  I mean, that seems like a board that's going to run a box for you for years.
[942.50 --> 947.72]  And that if you ever have any troubles, you're going to be able to remotely figure out what's going on through IPMI.
[948.10 --> 948.18]  Yeah.
[948.22 --> 952.22]  And the nice thing is, I think I'm going to have that board in the UK and the US.
[952.30 --> 954.92]  I'm going to have hardware parity between two systems.
[956.38 --> 963.60]  32 gigs of RAM in the UK and 64 in the US, just because, you know, at home, I do a lot more stuff than I will do.
[963.90 --> 965.56]  With a remote backup box.
[966.04 --> 968.08]  And then are you doing Proxmox as the host OS?
[968.22 --> 969.84]  I am actually in both places, yes.
[970.04 --> 984.30]  And the reason being is I've run into a couple of issues, and I do only mean a couple, where I use ZFS, as you all know, to do my remote backups and Jim Salter's Syncoid tool to kind of manage the snapshot replication.
[984.30 --> 991.54]  I've run into a couple of issues where, when I had the old server set up, it was running Ubuntu.
[991.92 --> 999.74]  And therefore, the version of ZFS that was shipping in there wasn't exactly the same as the version that was running on Proxmox on my US server.
[999.74 --> 1008.56]  And so I ran into a couple of issues where Syncoid failed because it was trying to send across a data set with feature flags that didn't exist on the target system.
[1009.10 --> 1017.92]  And so just having Proxmox in both places means that I'm a lot less likely to run into any idiosyncrasies like that between the two systems.
[1017.92 --> 1025.18]  The other thing as well is that I've been trying to get my dad on the home automation train for a long, long, long time.
[1025.88 --> 1035.40]  And I think when I arrived, he gave me a whole rundown of how to turn off all the lamps in his kitchen, which is where we all hang out in his house.
[1036.52 --> 1037.78]  You mean like for all the switches?
[1038.26 --> 1042.96]  Yeah, there were six individually switched lamps I'd have to walk around and turn off one by one.
[1042.96 --> 1050.86]  You know, having to walk somebody through how to use physical switches makes me feel a little bit better about walking people through how to use the automated home assistant system.
[1051.22 --> 1054.60]  Yeah, I mean, we're talking I would have to walk to each different corner of the room.
[1054.68 --> 1057.38]  It's not even like it's six switches on a single panel next to each other.
[1057.94 --> 1061.68]  So as you can imagine, I was like, hmm, I can do better than this.
[1062.08 --> 1069.96]  So I went on to our sponsor, My Local Bytes, and hit him up and he gave me a discount code, self-hosted, by the way, it's a discount code on that.
[1070.54 --> 1072.66]  And I ordered some gear from him.
[1072.66 --> 1076.80]  I ordered six smart plugs, a Zigbee transmitter, and a couple of Zigbee buttons.
[1077.94 --> 1087.88]  And my dad now has all of his lights in his kitchen, well, the lamps anyway, turn on 45 minutes before sunset automatically, and they turn off at midnight.
[1088.10 --> 1091.72]  But I also thought it would be nice to give them a button to control these things.
[1092.82 --> 1100.38]  So I'm running the VM for Home Assistant on the UK server, on Proxmox, much like I do back in the US.
[1100.38 --> 1103.36]  And running their whole OS stack?
[1103.66 --> 1104.48]  Yeah, yeah.
[1104.56 --> 1105.84]  I actually really like it.
[1105.94 --> 1113.34]  I know conceptually and fundamentally I have some issues with people making their own operating systems, but damn, is it convenient.
[1113.82 --> 1114.02]  Right.
[1114.08 --> 1117.20]  The supervisor, the snapshots, all of that is, it's really great.
[1117.26 --> 1120.38]  And it makes it super easy to restore if something goes wrong.
[1120.44 --> 1120.84]  I get it.
[1120.84 --> 1122.96]  I think running in a VM is the way to go.
[1123.52 --> 1126.56]  And so now he has a couple of Zigbee buttons that are magnetic.
[1126.70 --> 1137.30]  I went to Ikea, actually, just down the road from where he lives, and bought a couple of the trad-free Ikea Zigbee buttons, paired them up with the Zigbee stick that I got from my local bytes.
[1137.30 --> 1140.20]  And it just worked.
[1140.32 --> 1147.76]  You kind of pick out this, it's like a MAC address, but it's like an ID that looks like a MAC address on the Zigbee network that's created.
[1148.36 --> 1158.08]  And the ZHA plugin that's built into Home Assistant picks up the Zigbee device, and then you just create an automation that is triggered by that button press.
[1158.38 --> 1159.64]  And you went Zigbee, not Z-Wave.
[1159.68 --> 1160.72]  I think that's a good call.
[1160.72 --> 1166.92]  Was it just because that's what was available, or did you actually actively choose Zigbee over Z-Wave or Wi-Fi devices?
[1167.32 --> 1171.40]  Well, I guess I did actively choose it, but not through much research.
[1171.50 --> 1177.08]  I was just speaking to the guy behind my local bytes, and he said, you know, we sell Zigbee buttons, right?
[1177.48 --> 1177.66]  Yeah.
[1177.90 --> 1179.12]  I think Zigbee's the way to go.
[1179.28 --> 1184.84]  And I think they're more reliable than Wi-Fi devices, and you can take down your Wi-Fi network, and that stuff all still works.
[1184.84 --> 1192.60]  And, of course, I'm a fan of Zigbee because it's an open protocol, and it's what they use on Mars to communicate between the rover and the helicopter.
[1193.06 --> 1194.14]  It is, absolutely, yeah.
[1194.90 --> 1200.42]  It's, you know, those trad-free buttons from Ikea, they're six pounds a pop.
[1200.54 --> 1203.28]  I think they're about eight or nine dollars in the U.S. each.
[1203.62 --> 1203.72]  Yeah.
[1203.90 --> 1207.56]  You know, for that price, I could have 20 in my house without really much thought.
[1207.56 --> 1215.60]  I think there's two philosophies when it comes to home automation, and I think one philosophy is design it in such a way that you never have to touch it.
[1215.74 --> 1220.08]  Like, the whole thing's automated, and you should really never need to interfere with it.
[1220.12 --> 1221.10]  If you ever do, there's a dashboard.
[1221.60 --> 1227.74]  But then the other, I think, very valid approach to home automation is using buttons for stuff.
[1227.74 --> 1236.80]  And I think that's why there are some brands out there that specifically sell solutions where there's still switches, and that's why you and I have looked into devices that we can install on the wall so we can still use switches.
[1236.98 --> 1243.36]  Because when you have physical controls, it adds a whole other dimension of what you can do with these buttons.
[1243.46 --> 1249.20]  Like, you can set things so that if you three-tap that button, it could do a totally different set of functions.
[1249.20 --> 1253.44]  And you have all of this kind of flexibility when you add physical buttons.
[1253.44 --> 1258.70]  And people have written into the show and laughed, like, you guys, you automate all this stuff, and then you add buttons back in there.
[1258.80 --> 1260.38]  Because I've talked about this in Lady Joops.
[1260.80 --> 1265.22]  And it's like, nah, man, you add it where it makes sense, and you remove it where it doesn't make sense.
[1265.36 --> 1269.02]  And, you know, your folks are going to be used to buttons.
[1269.10 --> 1271.42]  They've had buttons their entire life in their home.
[1271.42 --> 1280.64]  And so if you left that place and didn't put those things in, they'd probably rip it all out and just go back to using buttons again and turn stuff off and the automation be screwed up.
[1280.76 --> 1283.46]  And it just wouldn't work because they're used to it.
[1284.08 --> 1289.90]  I'm comfortable with pulling a phone out my pocket and opening an app and swiping and swiping and tapping.
[1290.32 --> 1294.44]  Or shouting to an assistant in the air, you know, hey, hey, tube, turn on this light.
[1294.52 --> 1295.78]  I mean, you could do that too.
[1296.16 --> 1296.32]  Yeah.
[1296.46 --> 1299.34]  And also, you know, think about the Home Assistant cloud subscription.
[1299.50 --> 1301.10]  I pay that at home out of my own pocket.
[1301.10 --> 1308.46]  I don't necessarily want to have to do that for my parents as well to get the Google Assistant support put in there.
[1308.66 --> 1310.88]  And neither do I want to open up their firewall.
[1311.74 --> 1317.40]  Even port 80 or 443, whatever, would be required to make that work for Google that way.
[1317.56 --> 1321.84]  So whilst all those things are possible, I haven't enabled Google support for them.
[1322.04 --> 1323.86]  I kind of don't want to either.
[1323.94 --> 1325.18]  I want to keep it super simple.
[1325.30 --> 1327.30]  Like you push this button, your lamps turn off.
[1327.92 --> 1329.08]  I mean, it's that simple.
[1329.08 --> 1339.00]  You know what I appreciate about you, Chris, is that I woke up on British time to a bunch of messages in our private JB chat team chat that we have.
[1339.36 --> 1342.68]  And I know your Hollywood server has been offline for a couple of weeks.
[1342.82 --> 1343.12]  Yeah.
[1343.12 --> 1345.76]  You'd been home for, what, an hour?
[1346.06 --> 1347.42]  And you'd fix that bad boy.
[1347.84 --> 1348.38]  That's right.
[1348.46 --> 1351.84]  We basically got our RV lady Joops parked.
[1352.12 --> 1353.64]  We got her hooked up to power.
[1353.86 --> 1355.44]  And then I jumped in the car.
[1355.82 --> 1357.20]  I ran down to the studio.
[1357.28 --> 1358.56]  I'm like, what's going on?
[1358.58 --> 1359.72]  And I think, you know, I don't know, Alex.
[1359.76 --> 1363.92]  It's like maybe it's the ex-server admin in me from years past.
[1363.92 --> 1368.16]  But just knowing that my server's down drove me nuts.
[1368.20 --> 1380.48]  Even though, like, I had taken steps to replicate the essential functionality, just knowing it was down and not knowing what state it was in and was in some weird state where the fans were blasting or what, you know?
[1380.48 --> 1383.44]  And so I very much wanted to solve it.
[1383.54 --> 1385.40]  And I clearly have to get rid of it.
[1385.64 --> 1387.14]  And I think I have a plan.
[1387.28 --> 1389.20]  I'm still waiting to put all the pieces together.
[1389.34 --> 1395.64]  But I feel like in the next month or two, I'm probably going to build or buy a new server and go through this whole process.
[1395.64 --> 1400.54]  And then I got to ask myself, like, do I want to put Arch back on there?
[1400.66 --> 1402.88]  Do I want to do Proxmox like you're doing?
[1403.70 --> 1406.82]  Do I want to put WireGuard on a separate machine?
[1406.82 --> 1410.12]  So that way, when my server goes down, I can still get into the network.
[1410.48 --> 1411.88]  A lot of things to think about.
[1411.96 --> 1413.26]  So I'm just starting that process.
[1413.84 --> 1414.58]  What went wrong with it?
[1414.94 --> 1416.82]  There was a power outage at the studio.
[1417.16 --> 1418.38]  So there's two power supplies.
[1419.10 --> 1422.50]  And one is plugged into a UPS and one is plugged into the wall.
[1422.56 --> 1425.58]  And there's a funky old tech debt reason why.
[1426.28 --> 1432.46]  And I think when the power went out, it got in some sort of funky state where one power supply was down, but the other one stayed on for a while.
[1432.46 --> 1435.82]  But then eventually the UPS ran out of power and it shut off.
[1436.50 --> 1437.80]  Or maybe it didn't shut off.
[1437.92 --> 1439.52]  I'm not exactly sure because I wasn't here.
[1439.52 --> 1442.52]  But when I got back, it was frozen.
[1442.76 --> 1451.14]  The system was locked up and it was just a constant beep, an air message, just a solid air message, like a hardware air.
[1451.46 --> 1453.36]  And there was a red light on the front of the chassis.
[1453.48 --> 1454.18]  It's a super micro.
[1454.92 --> 1457.12]  And when I turned it off, the beep persisted.
[1457.24 --> 1462.92]  So I actually physically unplugged the power supplies and then I plugged them back in and then booted it back up.
[1463.56 --> 1464.48]  And it's been fine.
[1464.48 --> 1466.52]  And I just think it's dying, slow death.
[1466.72 --> 1472.62]  And so it has been unreliable for about five to almost six months now.
[1472.82 --> 1477.54]  And so I think this is just part of a old server's slow death.
[1478.28 --> 1484.10]  You know, what's funny is we were talking to Matt last episode about high availability and redundancy and all that kind of thing.
[1484.10 --> 1490.44]  And it's interesting, you know, you have dual power supplies in there, presumably for that exact reason.
[1490.44 --> 1492.56]  And yet you suspect that might be the issue.
[1492.88 --> 1493.38]  Who knows?
[1493.78 --> 1500.32]  We don't really have like great like intel or information from the system logs because everything that was happening was external to the box.
[1500.32 --> 1504.12]  But yeah, that's going to be a project for sure.
[1504.48 --> 1505.88]  And so you mentioned WireGuard.
[1506.12 --> 1510.32]  I'm going to walk you through what I've been doing in a minute with WireGuard and TailScale.
[1510.52 --> 1513.00]  But before I do, what are you planning on doing?
[1513.14 --> 1516.56]  Or suppose I should ask, what do you do for a firewall at the studio now?
[1516.56 --> 1519.30]  We have a Comcast business router that's the firewall.
[1519.50 --> 1520.18]  It's nothing special.
[1520.60 --> 1526.06]  I have thought in the past about replacing it with like a PFSense box or something like that.
[1526.06 --> 1530.94]  However, as time has gone on, I've really found it fairly acceptable.
[1531.66 --> 1533.00]  So I haven't replaced it yet.
[1533.50 --> 1539.30]  You know, the only thing I would say is go ahead and do OpenSense or PFSense for a little bit.
[1540.06 --> 1549.96]  There is a community plugins repository maintained by the same guy, I think, that writes the WireGuard plugin for OpenSense that lets you put AdGuard home directly on the firewall as well.
[1550.54 --> 1551.88]  So that's what I've been doing for the last few weeks.
[1551.88 --> 1556.96]  So I've been running AdGuard home on the same box as OpenSense as the primary DNS server.
[1557.06 --> 1562.66]  So I've disabled Unbound on OpenSense and I'm now just using AdGuard home and it works fine for me.
[1563.04 --> 1572.72]  But the real advantage, the real advantage is I've got my DNS, my DHCP and my VPN endpoints all on the same box.
[1572.82 --> 1579.66]  Now, I suppose you could argue it's a very large single point of failure, but it's actually incredibly convenient.
[1579.66 --> 1581.88]  Oh, for sure. And you don't need 100 boxes.
[1582.32 --> 1586.10]  I'm a little done running a separate Raspberry Pi that has Pi Hole.
[1586.20 --> 1587.54]  I love it. I think Pi Hole is great.
[1587.66 --> 1589.70]  I actually like it a little better than AdGuard myself.
[1590.26 --> 1598.66]  However, it's drawing power and I just don't need three Raspberry Pis running 24-7 when I'm running off a battery.
[1599.16 --> 1601.66]  And I would much prefer to consolidate that down here.
[1601.72 --> 1604.84]  Now, at the studio, power is not as much of a consideration.
[1605.38 --> 1608.16]  It's then just more about functionality and flexibility.
[1608.56 --> 1609.40]  Stability, surely.
[1609.40 --> 1611.40]  And stability, and stability for sure.
[1611.54 --> 1615.12]  I have been thinking about moving WireGuard off on its own device.
[1615.70 --> 1623.64]  And if I did do an OpenSense box, and it'd be pretty nice to have AdGuard on there too, and then also do WireGuard, I'd be checking a few boxes.
[1624.16 --> 1625.54]  So I think I may consider it.
[1625.92 --> 1629.14]  I was actually originally planning to set up a Raspberry Pi.
[1629.70 --> 1636.38]  And I was even thinking of trying to come up with some sort of failover capability for the Raspberry Pis to do WireGuard, which I think would be particularly tricky.
[1636.38 --> 1637.10]  All right.
[1637.14 --> 1640.28]  Well, here's another idea for you to bounce around your noodle.
[1640.28 --> 1643.78]  I've been looking at something called TailScale for the last few weeks.
[1643.88 --> 1650.50]  Now, this is born out of a requirement to run on a Synology box, which, as I'm sure you know, are quite restrictive.
[1650.84 --> 1655.66]  And they're not full Linux, but they're sort of kind of Linux, and they sort of kind of do some things.
[1655.66 --> 1661.98]  And anyway, it's a bit of a mess, to be honest, as a Linux guy to try and come and make this system do what I want.
[1663.08 --> 1670.98]  They run Docker, so I can run, you know, Minio to do autorestick backups, all that kind of stuff to Synology remotely.
[1671.30 --> 1675.48]  But that's no good if I can't connect to the damn thing over some kind of a secure tunnel.
[1675.48 --> 1683.44]  So I've been taking a look at something called TailScale, and this project is absolutely awesome.
[1684.44 --> 1689.56]  It has clients for Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, you name it.
[1690.14 --> 1701.48]  And this thing, I got further in about 10 minutes connecting up all of my different devices and servers than I had in, I don't know, a year plus of trying to futz around with WireGuard configs.
[1701.48 --> 1708.66]  And this thing lets you advertise different routes and different subnets, just with one simple command on the command line.
[1709.10 --> 1716.06]  So, for example, I'm sat in Raleigh, and I want to connect to a host that's in my dad's network in England.
[1716.88 --> 1723.28]  I don't have a direct connection from my laptop to that host, but what I can do is I can bounce the traffic through my UK server,
[1723.56 --> 1727.94]  which routes through the TailScale network using something they call Magic DNS.
[1727.94 --> 1730.18]  And then it pops out the other side.
[1730.48 --> 1737.78]  The remote server then goes, oh, yeah, you've allowed access to 192.168.whatever the subnet is in that LAN.
[1738.56 --> 1745.18]  And it lets the traffic out from my local laptop to the device on the network in the remote side.
[1745.40 --> 1749.20]  I can also then advertise what's called an exit node.
[1749.20 --> 1755.28]  If I want to route my traffic over the internet to come out in England rather than the US, for example, for iPlayer,
[1756.30 --> 1760.62]  I can just, with a click of one button in the TailScale client on my laptop,
[1761.04 --> 1763.62]  change between the different endpoints that I'm exiting at.
[1764.20 --> 1767.04]  It's really, really simple and really slick.
[1767.12 --> 1767.80]  You should give it a look.
[1768.18 --> 1771.02]  So is it essentially then creating a mesh network between your machines?
[1771.38 --> 1771.58]  Yep.
[1771.96 --> 1772.38]  Aha.
[1772.98 --> 1776.26]  And do they have a server component that they're running that is involved?
[1776.82 --> 1778.34]  It uses WireGuard under the hood.
[1778.34 --> 1779.68]  This sounds pretty slick.
[1779.78 --> 1786.28]  So they must have a component that is doing some of the client negotiation, maybe key exchange.
[1786.38 --> 1789.92]  They must have a server side to this that's involved to help coordinate all of this?
[1790.18 --> 1790.62]  They do.
[1790.82 --> 1791.96]  It runs on their servers.
[1792.34 --> 1800.08]  And it's an intermediary that you have to trust, I suppose, as part of the product that comes out of the box.
[1800.08 --> 1809.92]  However, there is an open source self-hosted implementation of these third-party witness nodes, whatever you want to call them, called HeadScale.
[1810.04 --> 1811.60]  We'll put a link to that in the show notes.
[1811.80 --> 1813.06]  And you can self-host this thing.
[1813.28 --> 1817.20]  And this will become something you would, for example, run on Linode.
[1817.20 --> 1822.32]  And then all of your different devices would talk back to that central host for discovery.
[1822.64 --> 1825.48]  And then from there, they do all their clever routing between each other.
[1825.48 --> 1829.90]  And it looks like the way the system works is the private keys are generated on each node.
[1830.02 --> 1832.00]  So it's not like they have access to those private keys.
[1832.08 --> 1836.20]  And then it's using WireGuard as the backend implementation.
[1836.44 --> 1839.96]  And it looks like on some operating systems or maybe all they're using the WireGuard Go client.
[1840.62 --> 1841.90]  I mean, all that's really solid.
[1841.98 --> 1846.50]  And I find WireGuard to be extremely trustworthy and very performant as well.
[1846.58 --> 1847.50]  So that's kind of a win-win.
[1847.64 --> 1850.58]  So it's tailscale.com to see more.
[1850.58 --> 1854.10]  I would have accidentally locked myself out of my US network a few days ago.
[1854.26 --> 1856.46]  I was working on the site-to-site WireGuard VPN.
[1857.12 --> 1861.14]  And for some reason, when I brought up the interface in Raleigh on OpenSense,
[1861.68 --> 1867.38]  the second WireGuard interface would cause the primary WireGuard interface to go down.
[1867.64 --> 1869.20]  I still haven't figured out why.
[1869.98 --> 1875.62]  But without tailscale running on a VM inside my network, I would have been totally locked out.
[1875.92 --> 1877.98]  There would have been nothing I could have done.
[1877.98 --> 1882.10]  But luckily, I was able to route all my traffic through the tailscale system,
[1882.62 --> 1885.60]  get shell access back to OpenSense, and then fix it from there.
[1886.12 --> 1886.78]  Nicely done.
[1886.92 --> 1888.48]  That's a good little score, Alex.
[1888.78 --> 1890.62]  Tailscale, I'll have a link to that in the show notes.
[1890.64 --> 1892.84]  And I think I'm going to try it out after the show today because
[1892.84 --> 1896.34]  they have a ARM version for Linux on the Raspberry Pi.
[1896.56 --> 1898.72]  I knew you'd like it just because it has Raspberry Pi support.
[1898.90 --> 1900.36]  You know, you're a cheap date.
[1901.26 --> 1902.48]  You do know me well.
[1902.64 --> 1903.46]  That's very true.
[1905.26 --> 1907.08]  linode.com slash SSH.
[1907.08 --> 1910.66]  Go there to get $100 in 60-day credit on a new account.
[1910.76 --> 1912.68]  And of course, you go there to support the show.
[1912.80 --> 1915.36]  And we love using the cloud where it makes sense.
[1915.44 --> 1917.06]  We're all about self-hosting on the show.
[1917.26 --> 1919.50]  But there's clearly a role for cloud.
[1919.96 --> 1924.72]  And we just practically make use of that whenever it seems like the way to go.
[1924.80 --> 1927.44]  And Linode is always the place we deploy.
[1927.78 --> 1929.32]  They have super fast infrastructure.
[1929.52 --> 1933.22]  In fact, they've just recently invested more in the infrastructure.
[1933.22 --> 1939.52]  And in their block storage, they've put in brand new screaming fast MBME drives.
[1939.94 --> 1941.50]  They are their own ISP.
[1941.64 --> 1945.48]  So they own the links between their 11 data centers around the world.
[1945.60 --> 1951.36]  On their dedicated CPU rigs, they have super high-end AMD EPYC processors that kick the butts
[1951.36 --> 1952.76]  of all the other cloud providers.
[1952.76 --> 1956.30]  I mean, they take the infrastructure really seriously.
[1956.62 --> 1961.02]  And I had a server outage here at the studio, our physical server here in the garage.
[1961.28 --> 1963.20]  And I knew things were looking kind of bad.
[1963.38 --> 1967.82]  So I just set up a Linode with the very bare essentials that this box does.
[1967.94 --> 1969.64]  I just set it up ready to go powered off.
[1969.64 --> 1974.86]  And sure enough, turned out, like, it sat there for a few weeks.
[1975.10 --> 1976.90]  And I thought, oh, maybe I'll go through this whole road trip.
[1976.94 --> 1977.88]  I don't ever need to fire it up.
[1978.06 --> 1982.72]  But no, the last two weeks of the road trip, I ended up signing to my Linode dashboard and
[1982.72 --> 1983.92]  firing up that backup machine.
[1984.00 --> 1985.74]  And I was so thankful I had it.
[1985.76 --> 1990.36]  And when you look at Linode's pricing, 30% to 50% cheaper than, like, the big duopoly
[1990.36 --> 1993.18]  hyperscalers, that's a great value.
[1993.64 --> 1997.02]  And if you want to deploy Nextcloud, for example, and you want to see if it works for you, and
[1997.02 --> 2002.30]  maybe you don't want to spend several days learning how to set up the entire Nextcloud stack.
[2003.04 --> 2006.94]  Well, if you go to linode.com slash SSH and you create an account and you get that $100
[2006.94 --> 2009.56]  credit, you could deploy Nextcloud in seconds.
[2009.66 --> 2011.64]  They have, like, a one-click deployment for Nextcloud.
[2011.96 --> 2015.46]  They have one-click deployment for Discourse if you want to go build a community.
[2015.92 --> 2019.34]  Or maybe you're looking at replacing Zoom with something self-hosted.
[2019.60 --> 2021.92]  They have a one-click deployment for Jitsi as well.
[2021.92 --> 2026.92]  And I think you'd be shocked at how great a self-hosted Jitsi instance is and how
[2026.92 --> 2028.68]  much better it can be than using Zoom.
[2029.16 --> 2032.90]  And it's way cheaper if you want, like, the pro Zoom stuff and you're in control.
[2033.14 --> 2036.88]  They have a lot, way more than I could ever list, just one-click stacks.
[2037.06 --> 2038.64]  Or you can go the DIY route.
[2038.76 --> 2039.76]  It's up to you.
[2040.14 --> 2041.62]  Development tools, game servers.
[2041.76 --> 2043.32]  Linode makes it easy to get going.
[2043.66 --> 2047.32]  And then they have a bunch of great services like S3-compatible object storage, which is
[2047.32 --> 2051.48]  fantastic for backups, DDoS protection, VLAN support, a powerful DNS manager.
[2051.48 --> 2053.92]  I mean, on and on and on, you guys.
[2054.60 --> 2058.38]  So I'll just leave it to you to go figure it out, to go try it for yourself, because I
[2058.38 --> 2059.26]  know that's how I learn.
[2059.58 --> 2065.14]  So go to linode.com slash SSH, get that $100 in 60-day credit on your new account, and you
[2065.14 --> 2065.78]  support the show.
[2066.26 --> 2068.58]  Linode.com slash SSH.
[2070.66 --> 2074.78]  So after road trips, I always like to ask you what your learnings have been and stuff like
[2074.78 --> 2074.96]  that.
[2075.02 --> 2079.04]  And I would imagine the primary theme from this trip was managing heat.
[2079.04 --> 2080.64]  Oh my goodness, yes.
[2081.12 --> 2086.82]  When you were on your way to Chicago, I was trapped in Tucson, where I think every day
[2086.82 --> 2088.60]  was at least 105 degrees.
[2089.00 --> 2092.44]  It just, you know, maybe we'd get down to 88 Fahrenheit at night.
[2092.86 --> 2096.84]  It was so brutal, Alex, that we would go 5,000 feet up.
[2097.12 --> 2101.46]  We would drive up Mount Lemmon, and we would stay at the top of Mount Lemmon, where it would
[2101.46 --> 2103.90]  be about the temperature of the Pacific Northwest.
[2104.58 --> 2107.02]  We would just sit there and wait for the data pass.
[2107.70 --> 2108.84]  It was really hot.
[2109.04 --> 2110.10]  How tall is that sucker?
[2110.50 --> 2112.56]  I think it goes all the way up to 8,000 feet.
[2113.04 --> 2115.24]  Oh, I bet that was really nice in that climate too.
[2115.60 --> 2115.90]  Yeah.
[2116.38 --> 2117.02]  Oh man.
[2117.10 --> 2120.98]  Because at the bottom, it would literally be 105, and at the top, it'd be like 66 degrees.
[2121.18 --> 2124.86]  Did you do that thing where you got in the car at the top of the mountain with the AC
[2124.86 --> 2125.22]  running?
[2125.32 --> 2129.68]  And then when you get out at the bottom of the mountain, you're like, oh my god, what is
[2129.68 --> 2130.10]  this?
[2130.78 --> 2131.14]  Boom.
[2131.38 --> 2132.66]  Hits you in the face too.
[2132.66 --> 2135.44]  And they were also experiencing record humidity as well.
[2136.04 --> 2137.84]  So it was just gross.
[2138.18 --> 2141.70]  And all of my automations around heating had to be disabled.
[2142.02 --> 2143.08]  Everything had to go.
[2143.78 --> 2149.70]  And I realized this was an opportunity to kind of redo how I automate heat with Home Assistant.
[2149.70 --> 2155.80]  So traditionally, I've had a series of automations that would have conditions like sunset and
[2155.80 --> 2156.38]  sunrise.
[2156.76 --> 2161.48]  And then depending on the state of the sun, they would either kick on or they would kick
[2161.48 --> 2161.82]  off.
[2161.82 --> 2168.44]  And this also kind of fell apart because I don't yet actively update Home Assistant's
[2168.44 --> 2170.58]  location when I'm going down the road.
[2170.80 --> 2172.04]  I need to do that.
[2172.40 --> 2174.96]  I have a couple of different ways I could solve that problem.
[2175.46 --> 2181.98]  But right now, when I'm in Denver, Home Assistant still thinks I'm in the Pacific Northwest.
[2182.36 --> 2185.10]  And when I'm in Tucson, it thinks I'm in the Pacific Northwest.
[2185.10 --> 2189.36]  So it is going by the state of the sun in the Pacific Northwest.
[2189.36 --> 2194.00]  And so all of my automations were offset around heating for that reason as well.
[2194.18 --> 2196.08]  I realized I needed more control.
[2196.58 --> 2199.70]  And over time, my wife has said sometimes she's like, you know, the automations work really
[2199.70 --> 2199.94]  well.
[2200.02 --> 2203.08]  But sometimes I'm just in a mood where I just want it really toasty in here.
[2203.28 --> 2207.06]  And I find it hard to do that because the system will turn off the heaters once it reaches.
[2207.42 --> 2211.98]  I have like a 75 degree cutoff where all the heat turns off an automation for that.
[2212.34 --> 2216.58]  So I decided to take this opportunity after I disabled everything while we were on the road and
[2216.58 --> 2222.36]  definitely did not need heat to instead of reimplement the traditional automations I created
[2222.36 --> 2227.86]  almost two years ago now, I would instead replace them with the Home Assistant generic
[2227.86 --> 2229.28]  thermostat entity.
[2229.52 --> 2232.84]  And this is something the audience has written in and told me to do for a while.
[2232.96 --> 2234.16]  I've been intending to do it.
[2234.20 --> 2237.48]  And I am so, so glad I did this.
[2237.80 --> 2241.18]  It's like I have my own homemade Nest thermostat.
[2241.18 --> 2246.14]  Now, all it requires is you need a sensor to give it an input.
[2246.28 --> 2247.42]  And I have sensors in every room.
[2247.80 --> 2252.26]  And so you tell it which sensor to monitor and which what numbers you want.
[2252.36 --> 2255.62]  You know, when the sensor returns this number, turn it on and turn off.
[2256.26 --> 2258.96]  And what smart switch you want it to flip on and flip off.
[2259.10 --> 2261.34]  So you need a sensor and a smart switch.
[2261.54 --> 2262.08]  That's it.
[2262.16 --> 2265.84]  And then anything that you plug into that smart switch will get cycled on and off.
[2265.84 --> 2271.86]  And so I have oil heaters, these really nice, small, portable, compact oil heaters that
[2271.86 --> 2274.04]  give off this wonderful radiant heat.
[2275.26 --> 2281.28]  And Home Assistant now monitors the temperature and it gives you an interface that is a thermostat
[2281.28 --> 2281.70]  interface.
[2281.82 --> 2285.02]  And you set what you want the temperature to be.
[2285.26 --> 2289.90]  And it will cycle the power to the heaters to maintain that.
[2289.96 --> 2294.30]  And you can define things like make sure the minimum cycle length is 90 seconds.
[2294.30 --> 2296.08]  So they're not just flipping on and flipping off.
[2296.44 --> 2300.72]  And then you also have a really nice interface to just turn them off completely.
[2301.16 --> 2305.90]  Sometimes in an RV specifically, when you're cooking and you've got a lot of high voltage
[2305.90 --> 2310.92]  appliances going, maybe a toaster oven and a slow, you know, an instant pot.
[2311.00 --> 2314.12]  And you got a toaster that is, you know, pulling a thousand watts.
[2314.16 --> 2315.70]  You got an instant pot that's pulling a thousand watts.
[2316.10 --> 2319.74]  You don't necessarily want your space heater kicking on that also pulls a thousand watts because
[2319.74 --> 2320.50]  you'll trip a breaker.
[2320.50 --> 2326.46]  And so now in Home Assistant, we have a tab in the dashboard that is just all of the
[2326.46 --> 2328.12]  thermostats, which are there are four of them.
[2328.44 --> 2333.90]  And you can turn them off so they do not automatically cycle, which was never really an option that
[2333.90 --> 2337.22]  my wife had before because she wasn't familiar with going into the automations and turning
[2337.22 --> 2338.42]  automations on and off manually.
[2338.88 --> 2343.16]  So now she can just hit the little button to make sure the heaters don't automatically
[2343.16 --> 2344.86]  cycle on, which is great.
[2345.08 --> 2346.88]  She also has a nice UI to turn up the heat.
[2346.88 --> 2353.12]  But then the brilliant thing about Home Assistant is if you connect it with HomeKit, you really
[2353.12 --> 2356.30]  take things up to the next level for all of the users in your home.
[2356.84 --> 2364.50]  So now Home Assistant automatically publishes these thermostats to HomeKit on all of our devices
[2364.50 --> 2366.16]  that are in an iCloud family plan.
[2366.60 --> 2372.44]  So my wife, the moment I turned these on, had those buttons on her iPhone.
[2372.72 --> 2374.30]  She just pulls down the control center.
[2374.94 --> 2376.02]  There's the thermostat buttons.
[2376.02 --> 2378.14]  I mean, it just made it crazy easy for her.
[2378.64 --> 2383.92]  Additionally, now all of those things are verbally addressable with Siri.
[2384.38 --> 2389.94]  So she can say, Siri, set the bedroom heater to 75 degrees.
[2390.08 --> 2392.42]  Or Siri, what is the bedroom heater temperature?
[2393.28 --> 2396.68]  And Siri will read back the sensor information to her.
[2396.74 --> 2397.72]  It's very simple.
[2397.84 --> 2403.14]  And it displays the temperature now in her control center on her iPhone when she pulls that down.
[2403.14 --> 2404.10]  Right there.
[2404.24 --> 2405.14]  She taps on it.
[2405.20 --> 2408.84]  It gives her this really nice UI because it's a HomeKit UI.
[2409.04 --> 2413.74]  So it's all built in to manage the thermostat temperature with colors for when it's getting
[2413.74 --> 2415.00]  hot and all that kind of stuff.
[2415.46 --> 2418.62]  And she doesn't even have to touch the Home Assistant dashboard if she doesn't want to.
[2419.26 --> 2424.30]  And anyone now in the family can ask the Siri tube to make it warmer for them.
[2424.30 --> 2428.12]  I didn't even consider that when I set up this generic thermostat, but it's great.
[2428.46 --> 2430.10]  But then I capped it all off.
[2430.60 --> 2436.18]  And I would love the audience's feedback on how they do this with two automations that monitor
[2436.18 --> 2437.96]  the sun, sunset and sunrise.
[2437.96 --> 2445.78]  And so two hours after the sun rises, the automation sets all of the thermostats to 65 degrees.
[2446.98 --> 2454.80]  And then an hour before the sun sets, the automation sets all the thermostats to 71 degrees.
[2455.36 --> 2458.38]  So that way during the day, we're not running the heat more than we need to.
[2458.86 --> 2460.88]  And I'm thinking about layering on top of that.
[2461.04 --> 2464.80]  Once I get accurate location information, I'm thinking about layering on top of that.
[2464.80 --> 2468.14]  When we're away, just turn them off, those kinds of conditions.
[2468.56 --> 2471.12]  But Alex, there's lots of thermostats.
[2471.34 --> 2476.10]  There's lots, lots of different integration options, lots with thermostats and Home Assistant.
[2476.10 --> 2482.16]  But this generic thermostat is so flipping brilliant because all you need is a switch,
[2482.90 --> 2485.30]  a smart switch and a temperature sensor.
[2485.58 --> 2486.58]  That's all you need.
[2486.62 --> 2490.42]  And you can turn anything into essentially like a Nest-like heater.
[2490.80 --> 2493.92]  So my thermostat already has an API that I could call via curl.
[2494.80 --> 2501.12]  Can I use the generic thermostat thing paired with those Xiaomi sensors that I have?
[2501.44 --> 2501.74]  Sure.
[2501.96 --> 2507.24]  If you, when you curl it, if you get the temperature and you can parse that and pass that through
[2507.24 --> 2509.58]  as sensor data, you absolutely could.
[2510.12 --> 2510.52]  Interesting.
[2510.78 --> 2512.64]  Well, I will give that a try when I get back home.
[2512.64 --> 2515.18]  I'm going to do this in the studio for the smart.
[2515.58 --> 2521.46]  I have fans in the windows that are connected to smart plugs and I just manually turn them
[2521.46 --> 2525.02]  on and off with Home Assistant, but I can manually turn them on and off.
[2525.42 --> 2526.70]  This would be great to have a temperature.
[2527.26 --> 2530.44]  Just swipe down from your control center and use it home kit, darling.
[2530.76 --> 2530.94]  Right?
[2531.36 --> 2531.56]  Yeah.
[2531.56 --> 2539.06]  Now, if you're looking for a great place to go and get some self-hosting smart gear pre-flashed
[2539.06 --> 2544.38]  with Tasmota, check out our sponsors, cloudfree.shop and mylocalbytes.com.
[2544.66 --> 2549.20]  Both of these guys are listeners of the show who have started small businesses and we want
[2549.20 --> 2551.58]  to help support them running these small businesses.
[2551.58 --> 2554.82]  They have a whole bunch of gear pre-flashed with Tasmota.
[2555.24 --> 2559.88]  Like I said earlier in the show, I actually this week bought a bunch of stuff from mylocalbytes.com
[2559.88 --> 2564.94]  to kickstart my father's home automation desires.
[2565.86 --> 2571.94]  Spent less than £100 and I was able to automate a good chunk of his kitchen lighting experience.
[2572.42 --> 2574.96]  It's well worth taking a look at this stuff and it's running Tasmota.
[2575.66 --> 2579.28]  So, you know, there's no setup or configuration required out the box.
[2579.28 --> 2581.70]  It's broadcasting a Wi-Fi access point.
[2581.80 --> 2582.54]  You connect to that.
[2582.80 --> 2587.46]  You put in your Wi-Fi information, your MQTT broker information and boom, you're off to
[2587.46 --> 2587.82]  the races.
[2588.36 --> 2593.36]  So go over to mylocalbytes.com and cloudfree.shop and check out what those guys have to offer.
[2593.84 --> 2597.60]  Don't forget to use the coupon code self-hosted so that you get a simple discount off your
[2597.60 --> 2599.34]  order and that they know that we sent you.
[2601.02 --> 2604.96]  You mentioned it earlier, but it sounds like you were doing some work on that Synology to
[2604.96 --> 2605.84]  get ready for the trip too.
[2605.90 --> 2606.48]  What'd you do there?
[2606.48 --> 2610.84]  The Synology box is going to my mum's house, which will be yet another off-site backup.
[2611.34 --> 2617.82]  But the reason I wanted to do this was I have ZFS doing its thing, you know, snapshots and
[2617.82 --> 2619.04]  replicating to the UK.
[2619.82 --> 2625.10]  If for some reason that whole ZFS system goes tits up, I thought to myself, it would be nice
[2625.10 --> 2630.10]  if I had a completely separate versioned backup that's in a totally separate ecosystem.
[2630.10 --> 2633.90]  And so I've been looking at the project Autorestick.
[2634.04 --> 2639.52]  Well, actually, technically, Autorestick is a wrapper around Restic, which is a tool to
[2639.52 --> 2644.28]  do remote backups and versioned backups to a whole bunch of different endpoints.
[2644.54 --> 2651.56]  But the one that I'm going to be using is called Minio, which is a local S3 API server,
[2651.78 --> 2652.12]  effectively.
[2652.30 --> 2654.82]  So I'm sure you've all heard of S3 storage on Amazon.
[2654.82 --> 2660.26]  It's, you know, what Linode calls, I forgot the name, S3 compatible object storage.
[2660.64 --> 2661.76]  Oh, well, that's a good name, isn't it?
[2661.84 --> 2662.02]  Yeah.
[2662.12 --> 2663.06]  I wonder why they came up with that.
[2664.20 --> 2666.32]  Digilotion, all the rest of them have that kind of thing as well.
[2666.44 --> 2670.74]  So most people offer some kind of S3 compatible API.
[2671.34 --> 2676.72]  Essentially, what it means is it stores data in objects, small little blocks of data.
[2677.40 --> 2681.80]  Now, I wanted this data to be encrypted on the remote endpoint and Restic handles that
[2681.80 --> 2682.92]  totally transparently.
[2682.92 --> 2689.08]  But the really nice thing about Autorestick is using a simple, probably about 20 line YAML
[2689.08 --> 2695.56]  file, I've been able to configure the rotation policies, the pruning policies, all the different
[2695.56 --> 2697.44]  data sets that I want backed up.
[2697.68 --> 2703.36]  And it's not a data set in Restic land, it's just a directory that I wanted backed up to
[2703.36 --> 2704.08]  the remote system.
[2704.36 --> 2710.72]  And then I'm running Minio as a container behind traffic on the Synology, which is running
[2710.72 --> 2711.60]  DSM-7.
[2712.24 --> 2716.98]  And I've written a blog post, which I'll put in the show notes about how to configure
[2716.98 --> 2720.34]  traffic to do a whole bunch of stuff with Synology DSM-7.
[2721.36 --> 2726.44]  So I've got Minio running through traffic on the Synology, which I then have a DNS entry
[2726.44 --> 2732.52]  on my US server through Tailscale, which is then able to route all the traffic and punch
[2732.52 --> 2738.18]  holes through NAT, all the way through to the Synology box that's living at my mom's house
[2738.18 --> 2738.46]  now.
[2739.10 --> 2745.88]  And so I just have two separate UK, totally separate UK backup systems on totally different
[2745.88 --> 2746.90]  paradigms.
[2746.90 --> 2752.98]  Alex, that might be the ultimate offsite setup with when you consider you have both locations
[2752.98 --> 2756.60]  and one location is like an exact hardware match.
[2756.78 --> 2761.34]  And so you can do A-B testing and another location is a totally different ecosystem that
[2761.34 --> 2764.04]  still well managed, going to run forever.
[2764.38 --> 2767.76]  Like, yeah, you are set for years, I think.
[2768.12 --> 2768.70]  It's one of those things.
[2768.78 --> 2774.26]  I think I'm probably over-egging the pudding at the likelihood of Basingstoke and Lancaster
[2774.26 --> 2779.32]  and Raleigh all going, you know, south at the same time is probably very unlikely.
[2780.44 --> 2783.96]  But if it happens, I'll be okay now.
[2784.72 --> 2786.98]  You can go find our friends at CloudGuru on social media.
[2787.08 --> 2791.78]  They're just slash a CloudGuru everywhere, like YouTube and Twitter and the Facebook and
[2791.78 --> 2793.10]  pretty much anything that's a social network.
[2793.60 --> 2794.10]  Go find them.
[2794.48 --> 2795.52]  Social network slash a CloudGuru.
[2795.96 --> 2799.70]  Now, I know I've been banging on about it all episode, but I'm back in the UK this week
[2799.70 --> 2801.16]  and it is glorious.
[2801.16 --> 2805.10]  So I'm actually going to be meeting up with a couple of listeners in the Norwich area,
[2805.28 --> 2810.50]  a place called Breckland Lodge on the A11 just outside Attleborough near Norwich.
[2811.04 --> 2816.28]  We're going to be doing that on Tuesday, the 28th of September at 6pm UK time.
[2816.86 --> 2820.68]  So if you want to come say hi to me, Gary, who was on Late Night Linux a couple of weeks
[2820.68 --> 2824.48]  ago, a couple of other people said they were already going to be there.
[2824.60 --> 2825.98]  It's a bit of an impromptu meetup.
[2826.06 --> 2828.84]  We hope it'll be nice and small just for COVID safety, that kind of thing.
[2828.84 --> 2833.48]  But if you want to come say hi, I'll be there and I'll be wearing my Chris and the Badger
[2833.48 --> 2833.84]  t-shirt.
[2834.46 --> 2834.70]  Nice.
[2834.88 --> 2837.32]  Boy, you guys have the best names for places over there.
[2837.48 --> 2838.26]  They're so adorable.
[2838.64 --> 2842.58]  We'd love to hear your feedback, your ideas, anything that caught your attention.
[2842.86 --> 2844.34]  Self-hosted.show slash contact.
[2844.54 --> 2845.84]  That's the place to get in touch with us.
[2846.30 --> 2847.90]  And of course, you can find me on Twitter.
[2848.02 --> 2849.18]  I'm at Chris LAS.
[2849.66 --> 2851.14]  And I'm there at Ironic Badger.
[2851.30 --> 2853.10]  And as always, thanks for listening, everybody.
[2853.32 --> 2855.62]  That was self-hosted.show slash 54.
[2855.62 --> 2855.74]  Cool.