[0.00 → 3.68] Well, I'm pleased to welcome back to the show, Mr. Chris Fisher. Welcome back, Chris.
[3.92 → 7.34] Thank you, Alex. I just got done drying everything off only a few moments ago.
[7.64 → 12.78] We missed you, man. So it's story time. I need to stay a while and listen.
[13.24 → 19.18] Yes. And first, thank you to Morgan for filling in. I, at the last minute, had to jump
[19.18 → 26.16] out when I realized that my laptop had got soaked, and I didn't want to turn it on. And so I told
[26.16 → 31.14] Alex, you got to find somebody to fill in for me. All right. So I was setting up to go camp out in
[31.14 → 35.66] the woods, brief story. And I wanted to get out to the woods and get set up in time for the show.
[35.86 → 41.12] And so I was in a bit of a rush and I thought, because I'm an idiot. I thought, Hey, you know,
[41.12 → 46.44] it'd be a great idea is I'll do some updates on this laptop. And I've got this ancient 2013
[46.44 → 52.20] MacBook that runs Arch Linux, by the way. And so it's, for me, it's like this thrill to boot it up
[52.20 → 57.16] about once every six months and see if when I do an update, if the installation explodes or not.
[57.16 → 61.36] Right. So I thought, well, I'm running around packing up the RV. I'll set this thing to do
[61.36 → 65.86] some updates just so I can, you know, have like a little thing to do for my ADD brain
[65.86 → 71.08] and check in on it. And so I'm packing up, and I go around, and I collect all of my electronics
[71.08 → 75.58] because I, my kids and I had been going through some stuff. And so we had, the fire tablets were
[75.58 → 80.38] down off the wall that we use to control home assistant, our front end and some game controllers
[80.38 → 84.02] were out, and we're going down the road, and we want to get there quick. So I just took this basket
[84.02 → 88.76] and like a good little boy, I picked up everything and put it in my basket. Now, of course, I don't
[88.76 → 94.70] want that basket to spill. So I, I set it in the back in the bathroom and finished up my laptop and
[94.70 → 100.62] closed the lid and went about packing up the rest of the RV. I'm driving down the road for probably
[100.62 → 106.74] 20, 25 minutes. And I realized I should probably get gas because I'm going to be off grid for a while.
[106.74 → 110.02] And if for some reason we don't get good solar, I'm going to need to be able to run my
[110.02 → 115.62] generator. So I, I, I pull up to a gas station and I start to pull in, which is a downhill kind
[115.62 → 120.44] of turn in. And as I pull into the gas station and begin to decline down into the parking lot,
[120.56 → 126.48] I hear like, like a wave sound behind me. Like, I'm like, is there a noisemaker on? And I,
[126.56 → 131.76] I turn around and look over my shoulder, Alex, and I see this wave of water coming down the middle
[131.76 → 137.88] of the hallway of my RV. It sloshes down into the, into the, into the step. Well, it's all over the
[137.88 → 141.22] place. It's coming down into my feet while I'm driving. It was everywhere.
[141.68 → 147.94] How tight did your asshole pucker when you saw that Alex in like one motion, I like grabbed the
[147.94 → 152.62] radio and I radio to my wife. Because she's chasing me in the car behind there. You got to get in here
[152.62 → 159.96] quick. We got an emergency. I throw the radio down. I parked the RV stand up, and I began just walking
[159.96 → 166.22] straight to the back. And as I approach the back of the RV, I hear a sound. I immediately recognize
[166.22 → 175.78] it's my water pump, and it's pumping, and it's pumping, and it's pumping. It shouldn't be on,
[175.84 → 182.52] but in our rush to leave, I had left it on and didn't notice. And so I flip it off as I opened
[182.52 → 188.06] the door and I look right at the sink or where I just instinctively knew the problem was going to be
[188.06 → 193.84] somehow I knew. And I could immediately see the entire chain of events. I had left that big old
[193.84 → 200.58] heavy MacBook on the counter. And when I went down the road, it slid down the counter, slid just right
[200.58 → 208.86] and fell into the sink. And as it fell, it turned the faucet on, which is where my basket full of
[208.86 → 215.30] electronics was sitting. Oh, no. That be turned that, that Alex, it turned into a bathtub. Alex, it was,
[215.40 → 220.62] it was so bad, Alex. It soaked everything. And then proceeded to spill out from there into the rest
[220.62 → 227.48] of the RV at about, about, about 17, 17, 15, 20 gallons is. It's hard to say. Yeah. Got the
[227.48 → 233.24] laptop, got all the fire tablets, got the game controllers, got all the charging bricks, everything,
[233.36 → 241.16] not to mention flooded the RV. I, I, I had to act quick. And so thankfully I was able to position the
[241.16 → 245.56] RV in such a way that it kind of tilted it. So I could just get all the water to pour out into one
[245.56 → 251.44] direction. And then I just spent like two hours drying it up. And then we moved out to our spot
[251.44 → 256.54] in the woods and then spent another couple of hours trying to dry it all out. I lost a lot of devices.
[256.86 → 264.96] A lot of good devices died that day, Alex, but not that stupid old MacBook. It's still kicking,
[265.10 → 268.40] even though it got water in the event in the vents and all of that, it's still kicking.
[268.40 → 274.10] So the device that caused the problem just ran away going, tee, not today.
[274.28 → 278.44] It's doing great. Yep. Although its power adapter bit the dust. So I don't know exactly
[278.44 → 279.80] what its long-term plan was.
[279.90 → 282.00] That's like cutting your nose off to spite your face, isn't it?
[282.16 → 286.50] That's why you should plan and plan to learn. Visit our sponsor, Cloud Guru,
[286.64 → 289.18] the leader of learning for the cloud, Linux, and other modern tech skills,
[289.52 → 293.74] hundreds of courses, and thousands of hands-on labs. Get certified, get hired,
[293.82 → 295.78] get learning at a cloudguru.com.
[295.78 → 301.82] That story just hurts me so deeply because water and electronics, you just have this
[301.82 → 308.52] pathological thing that they don't go, they just don't mix. I've probably missed out on
[308.52 → 312.30] several experiences in my life because I had a phone in my pocket. I'm like, well,
[312.48 → 317.14] I'm not going to go and run in the ocean or whatever it is because I've got a phone in my pocket.
[317.54 → 323.36] And so many devices, obvious statement time, but I really was feeling this. So many devices
[323.36 → 326.78] have the battery built in. And so there's just nothing I can do.
[326.98 → 329.40] Yeah. Damn, man. I feel your pain.
[329.62 → 330.24] I really do.
[331.50 → 335.44] It was rough. It was rough. And so now I have to selectively choose what I'm going to replace
[335.44 → 337.24] and what I'm just going to try to live without.
[337.62 → 339.04] Oh yeah. And you just missed Prime Day.
[339.94 → 344.12] I know. I crossed my mind because I had a couple of fire tablets in the mix.
[344.62 → 344.90] Gone.
[345.54 → 346.36] Womp.
[346.36 → 349.74] All right. So you got something to cheer me up.
[350.12 → 354.46] Well, I was watching YouTube the other day, as is often the case in my household. And I was
[354.46 → 360.60] watching a video by Techno Tim, and he did an Thalia introduction. It is a single sign on
[360.60 → 368.64] service that basically allows you to have one login cookie get set, which then allows you to log into
[368.64 → 374.62] all the services that you select through a set of rules that you configure to say, right, if I want
[374.62 → 381.82] to access Nextcloud, as long as I've got this token set, then I'm all good. And then you could do it for
[381.82 → 388.10] a wiki or any of the services that are running on your system. And the really nice thing is it's
[388.10 → 394.14] configured with a single line of Docker Compose configuration. So you just add a single line to
[394.14 → 398.34] declare that you want to use Thalia as what's called a piece of middleware in the traffic
[398.34 → 402.26] configuration. And you're good to go. And that's it.
[402.88 → 408.54] I see. So it is, first, we should mention its open source. And it essentially takes
[408.54 → 414.14] authentication requests using Nginx and provides the authorization for those authentication requests.
[414.84 → 419.92] Yeah, not just Nginx, it supports traffic as well as a bunch of others. And it actually,
[420.20 → 425.30] more recently, supports Kubernetes ingress controllers, which is nice as well.
[425.62 → 427.88] All right, I'm checking it out right now. And it actually looks like it has a pretty
[427.88 → 435.42] good interface too. So this will have linked in the show notes, or you can go to A-U-T-H-E-L-I-A.com.
[435.58 → 439.78] Yeah, you don't really need a whole bunch of interfaces for a login client. Essentially,
[439.86 → 444.00] what happens when you have a service that's backed by this, let's say I go to wiki,
[444.40 → 449.30] my personal wiki, my tiddly wiki, traffic will detect that I've set that piece of middleware as
[449.30 → 454.56] part of the chain of traffic that it wants to go through. And so Thalia will then pop up a
[454.56 → 459.26] standard web form. I'll type in my username and password. It does support two-factor authentication.
[459.72 → 465.94] So even for services that don't have 2FA natively, I can use Thalia to add
[465.94 → 472.74] 2FA to those services as well. And then just transparently, that token lasts for the length
[472.74 → 477.08] and duration of your session. You can figure how long it is. I think it's five minutes by default.
[477.62 → 482.94] Any other service that has the same rule on your system, it will reuse that authentication token.
[482.94 → 486.14] So if you're switching between a bunch of different services on your system,
[486.92 → 490.50] log in once, and you're logged into all of them all at once automatically.
[491.10 → 494.10] Boy, that does seem nice. It has a lot of great features in here.
[494.72 → 499.20] All right. Well, it sounds like something to check out. We talk about this kind of stuff. Also,
[499.40 → 504.00] when we talk about things like hosting your own password manager or hosting your own email,
[504.26 → 507.72] I wonder if there's an audience and I wonder if you out there too, I wonder if there's a portion of
[507.72 → 514.74] the audience that thinks, I'd never want to host this. This crosses a line. These breaks and things
[514.74 → 520.52] get hosed. And so I wonder if there isn't just a discussion to be had there, Alex, about where
[520.52 → 524.28] that line is for us. And if we ever consider dropping something and saying, you know what,
[524.40 → 526.20] I'll just go with a commercial service for this.
[526.20 → 533.16] Is this grumpy old man, Alex, coming out here? But my tolerance for stuff breaking,
[533.94 → 541.26] be it an update, be it a dodgy power cable, whatever the reason, my tolerance is so low these days.
[541.62 → 546.48] And a couple of episodes ago, I mentioned I had my server on the desk next to me because I was
[546.48 → 551.60] troubleshooting some issues with hard drives failing. Turns out it wasn't the hard drives failing.
[551.60 → 557.76] And I wasted maybe three weeks on trying all sorts of different drives and cables and disc controllers.
[558.22 → 563.90] No, it was the power cable from the power supply to the drives. No kidding. I wasted three weeks on
[563.90 → 569.38] that damn thing. And that just left me with a huge bitter taste in my mouth. And, you know,
[569.40 → 575.76] I'm not going to stop self-hosting. Don't, don't worry, audience. We're okay. But there were just
[575.76 → 581.16] moments in that three-week period. I was like, screw this. I just want to throw the towel in and just be
[581.16 → 586.24] done and just pay Netflix or whoever it is. Wow. You know, in that same period of time,
[586.28 → 590.18] I think you also had a certain Home Assistant update not go so well, too. So you were really
[590.18 → 594.76] getting it from both ends. Yeah, that's the thing. And, you know, this week, another example is
[594.76 → 601.08] Nextcloud just stopped working for some reason. I have no idea why. I've been sat on Nextcloud 19
[601.08 → 607.98] for the last year plus. I haven't touched it. Furthermore, I pull in the regular updates that they provide
[607.98 → 616.08] to the 19 branch through Docker Hub tagging. But I don't update major versions on Nextcloud unless I
[616.08 → 621.38] have a good reason to because I don't want all the new stuff. I just use it for documents. That's
[621.38 → 625.48] pretty much it. Right. I actually figured this out because I got a notification on my phone
[625.48 → 630.26] because photo upload stopped working. It said this server is in maintenance mode. And I'm like,
[630.64 → 637.34] OK, yeah, I remember. I've had this before. So you Google it. First result says go into the config file
[637.34 → 644.26] and edit a single line that says change maintenance mode from true to false in the config.php file.
[645.42 → 651.62] So I did that. It was already set to maintenance mode false. So I'm like, OK, well,
[651.62 → 656.64] clearly something's going on here. So I then start looking into the Nextcloud container logs.
[657.40 → 666.12] And then it said something about character encoding, UTF-8 char sets. And I just at that point,
[666.16 → 671.30] I was like, oh, no, here we go. This is going to be a long evening. Long story short, I ended up
[671.30 → 679.40] having to go into the MySQL container itself with a Docker exec command, get into the MySQL nitty-gritty
[679.40 → 687.52] details, delete and change a couple of data types from Var char to text fields and all this, you know,
[688.12 → 694.18] stuff that's way over the head of most people doing self-hosting unless this is your day job.
[695.04 → 700.44] And I just thought to myself, who is this stuff targeted at? If I was paying for Nextcloud as a
[700.44 → 707.72] hosted service, I mean, these things exist. Like Google Drive is similar. OneDrive, you know,
[707.72 → 713.24] all these different cloud file repositories. If these things broke, and I had to jump through all
[713.24 → 718.94] these different hoops to fix them, I would just migrate to a different service. And yet, because
[718.94 → 726.54] I feel a certain sense of obligation, partly because of this show, but also partly because of my beliefs
[726.54 → 733.94] towards self-hosting in general, I power through it. But sometimes I just want to throw the towel in,
[733.94 → 738.24] you know. Did you ever get to the root of why that Nextcloud issue just cropped up?
[738.90 → 743.26] I think it was because of the character encoding. So what I ended up doing as part of the
[743.26 → 746.64] troubleshooting process was like, right, okay, well, I'm in the weeds here. I may as well go to
[746.64 → 748.22] Nextcloud 22 whilst I'm here.
[748.66 → 750.48] Yeah, that would be my line of thinking too.
[751.38 → 756.82] Yeah. And then I thought it didn't start because I thought, oh, some database schema changes have
[756.82 → 763.30] probably happened, and it's just not tested properly on 19. Okay, fine. I'll go to the next major release.
[763.30 → 769.66] That's stable. Yeah. And so like I said to you, I had to drop to the MySQL command line,
[769.96 → 776.14] delete a couple of tables that were failing the repair because there's an OCC command. So you can
[776.14 → 783.94] log into the Nextcloud container and run, there's like a shell, like a CLI tool built into it called
[783.94 → 790.42] OCC. OwnCloud Client, I would imagine is what it stands for. Don't quote me on that. And you can do a
[790.42 → 793.66] bunch of maintenance stuff, like you can turn maintenance mode on and off, you can repair
[793.66 → 797.96] things, et cetera, et cetera. And it kept failing on this line item to do with news articles,
[797.96 → 802.42] which is a plugin I don't even use anymore. I think I enabled it for testing and then forgot
[802.42 → 808.74] about it. And much like my Home Assistant update, I probably missed it in the logs because I don't
[808.74 → 815.18] necessarily look at the logs every day because I've got other stuff to do. And yeah, once I deleted the
[815.18 → 820.44] news, once I'd gone into the correct database table and then deleted the three or four lines
[820.44 → 825.92] that were causing the schema migrations to fail, then the upgrade proceeded and it was all fine.
[826.04 → 827.54] But it took me a couple of hours.
[828.00 → 833.46] I've had those moments where I thought maybe like a server was dead and gone. And I thought,
[833.56 → 838.96] I don't, I don't know if I, I don't know if I ever want to rebuild this. And then thankfully
[838.96 → 841.78] they came back, and then I thought, okay, I better get my backup game.
[841.78 → 846.86] I better get my backup figured out. Yeah. Because I mean, you really got it. I mean,
[846.88 → 850.74] you got a hardware failure in your server. You got a software failure in Nextcloud,
[851.14 → 856.38] a Home Assistant, a pretty dramatic Home Assistant failure based on some deprecation and changes.
[856.80 → 863.38] I mean, you got it one after another. I recently also had a Home Assistant update go south when the
[863.38 → 868.82] OS update didn't complete correctly. The system locked up and then rebooted. And then it couldn't
[868.82 → 874.08] get an IP until I had fiddled with it for quite a while. And for a brief moment, I thought to myself,
[874.08 → 879.52] should I just bail on this and maybe just go back to a traditional server and Home Assistant core
[879.52 → 884.34] container and just keep it simple. And then it gets working again. And then I think, okay, no,
[884.40 → 889.42] this is better. And I like this. And I think to myself in the grand scheme of things, this is the
[889.42 → 895.92] cost of having full control over these services. And, and it does give me a better appreciation of the
[895.92 → 902.64] value that the cloud providers are offering. And it makes me also understand how valuable my data
[902.64 → 908.10] must be if they can pay for these services based on mining my information. Like, wow, there must be
[908.10 → 913.76] some real value there because it's not cheap. And to keep something reliable like file services for,
[914.18 → 918.04] you know, a 10-year streak actually takes an incredible amount of effort.
[918.38 → 922.40] Yeah, you're not wrong. I mean, these, these guys, they're our entire jobs, you know,
[922.40 → 928.18] site reliability engineers. That's the name of our, you know, supporters club that we have. And
[928.18 → 935.26] there's an entire job dedicated to keeping things up and stable and reliable. And these guys,
[935.36 → 940.30] they write software, they write scripts, they do all sorts of ninja magic to keep these services online.
[940.88 → 945.50] I think part of it, Alex, is giving yourself, and you've done this, you know, the ability to rebuild
[945.50 → 950.66] fairly quickly. Like you do that. You make, you make, if you adopt something, you make sure that
[950.66 → 957.84] you can redeploy it as necessary. And those kinds of things, I think they help a lot. But I think
[957.84 → 962.70] this show should ask more often, is there a cloud service that could do this?
[963.16 → 968.00] And if there is, why are we not choosing to use it? Because it is a big trade-off every time.
[968.34 → 972.66] And the more critical the service is to you, I think the more serious you have to consider that.
[972.98 → 975.72] I'm trying to think of a good example. I suppose wiki would be a decent one.
[975.72 → 981.44] Because you can probably throw some stuff up on GitHub in a random repository,
[981.76 → 990.98] a bunch of text files, and call that a wiki if you want to. You could also go to some random website
[990.98 → 996.96] and buy probably wiki capabilities. But there's nothing quite like hosting your own and keeping
[996.96 → 1005.12] that kind of information in-house. Because the role a wiki in particular fulfills often is to store
[1005.12 → 1011.52] proprietary, you know, custom information, you know, maybe Wi-Fi passwords for your house or
[1011.52 → 1016.42] something, or the code to the safe so that your wife can open it when you're out or something. I don't
[1016.42 → 1023.66] know what people store in their, you know, wikis. But there could be some sensitive information in there.
[1023.66 → 1028.48] Sounds like you have a code for a safe that if I was ever on your LAN, I should try to get that code.
[1028.82 → 1030.26] I've got to buy the safe first.
[1031.26 → 1035.42] I was like, he has a safe? Oh, okay. But it's a good example. You're right. I have been thinking,
[1035.60 → 1042.02] like, how could I leave my wife notes in a way that is fully secure? And there is this feeling
[1042.02 → 1047.98] that I think is actually pretty special. And it's this total feel of control. And I feel this when I
[1047.98 → 1054.36] am off-grid, and I'm generating my own power, and I've brought my own food, and I don't need anyone
[1054.36 → 1061.90] to do anything. For a brief moment, I feel like I'm truly in control. And I have that same sense when
[1061.90 → 1069.04] it comes to everything being offline in my RV, and being self-contained to the RV, and having
[1069.04 → 1074.30] gone through this project off-grid where I offloaded a bunch of services and got everything running
[1074.30 → 1082.44] locally. When I get access to that stuff, it's like this feeling of confidence that we get so
[1082.44 → 1086.88] sparingly now. With so many cloud services that are integrated with our mobile devices,
[1087.06 → 1093.42] or integrated with commercial desktops, less and fewer consumers and technology users have control.
[1093.60 → 1098.32] Less and less. They have less control than ever of modifying their devices, of controlling their
[1098.32 → 1103.74] devices, or even determining who has access to their data, or if it can be scanned, or any of that.
[1103.74 → 1109.46] And so when we have these areas, we can actually exercise that control. We have to keep doing it,
[1109.56 → 1115.66] or else it will go away. If there are no users of these self-hosted services, and if there's no
[1115.66 → 1124.00] market demand for this control, eventually the developers and the companies that serve that niche
[1124.00 → 1129.42] will dry up. And so it's like you have to always be looking like, where can I exercise that control?
[1129.50 → 1132.94] Where does it matter the most? And that's kind of where I've come down on it. It's like, okay,
[1132.94 → 1137.70] this information, like secret stuff I want to give my wife, that is always going to be
[1137.70 → 1143.06] on my land. Like, I'm just never going to put it anywhere else. And thankfully, you know,
[1143.08 → 1146.24] I've come up with a little system where it's just some markdown files. It's really simple. It's not,
[1146.28 → 1148.66] it's not, it's not a big effort to actually do it.
[1149.18 → 1155.66] You are right. There are an increasing number of companies doing stuff for this marketplace. You know,
[1155.66 → 1161.12] Tuna, we talked about it last episode with Morgan, have announced a native home assistant
[1161.12 → 1166.12] integration as part of their product line. You know, so these things are happening, and you see,
[1166.22 → 1171.66] what's his name? Linus Sebastian has just bought a new house, and he was talking about how he's going to
[1172.30 → 1177.62] implement smart dampers in every room. So he's not air conditioning every room and how there is lots of
[1177.62 → 1181.86] proprietary services that could do this stuff and how it's just all so overwhelming. And
[1181.86 → 1186.38] I think that's largely what I'm feeling too. It's just a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I
[1186.38 → 1192.64] could do. You know, it's not even necessarily just when stuff breaks. It's, it's that feeling of once
[1192.64 → 1196.80] I put my daughter to bed or something in the evening of, okay, I've got a couple of hours before I go to
[1196.80 → 1202.90] sleep now. I don't want to just sit and veg and watch cartoons necessarily. I'll do that whilst I'm
[1202.90 → 1207.96] doing something else. But what out of my huge long list of ideas that I've got, should I pick and
[1207.96 → 1213.60] oh, I can't be bothered. I'll just watch cartoons. You know, what I've been doing is like the really
[1213.60 → 1221.84] simple stuff. Uh, I went through my, uh, home assistant dashboard and I made individual, I chose
[1221.84 → 1227.28] like individual icons for each entity. So each light bulb has like a unique light bulb icon, really just
[1227.28 → 1234.52] slow kind of paced work while I was watching Rick and Morty, you know, and so it's like not very high
[1234.52 → 1239.44] cognitive load, but I can sit there and fiddle with something. Um, and then the other thing that
[1239.44 → 1243.32] I did recently, it was, it was one of those moments where I was like, I don't need to build something
[1243.32 → 1249.12] complicated here. I could just get a couple of window fans off of Amazon that have manual controls,
[1249.76 → 1254.56] plug them into some smart plugs, and I could have some set to input and I could have some set to output.
[1255.56 → 1260.08] And then I could just set up automations to turn the smart plugs on and off. And it was one of those
[1260.08 → 1265.30] moments where I was like, I could just do something very simple for cooling, and it would probably take
[1265.30 → 1271.14] me 35 minutes to set it all up. And I was so down in the weeds with all of these things. Like I could
[1271.14 → 1276.36] build a new virtualization backend, and then I could set up individual host OSes and then put containers
[1276.36 → 1280.04] in there. Like I was going through this entire thing about how I wanted to rebuild all the
[1280.04 → 1283.74] infrastructure. And then I thought, you know what else I could do is I could just spend 30 minutes
[1283.74 → 1288.26] doing this tonight, and I'll spend 30 minutes doing that tomorrow. And over a couple of nights,
[1288.26 → 1290.76] I got it all done. If it works, it ain't stupid.
[1292.38 → 1299.26] Linode.com slash SSH. Go there to support the show and get $100 in credit on a new account.
[1299.82 → 1303.18] Linde is our cloud hosting provider. When we're building something that we want to experiment
[1303.18 → 1307.54] with, we do it on Linde. There are a lot of quick ways to deploy. They have 11 data centres to choose
[1307.54 → 1312.30] from. They have crazy fast network connections and a whole range of types of servers. So if we want
[1312.30 → 1318.12] something simple, we'll get like a $5 a month system. But sometimes we want some dedicated CPUs or GPUs.
[1318.26 → 1323.54] They have a lot of choices. Roger wrote into the show to say that he used Linde to replace
[1323.54 → 1328.88] Zoom with something he can host himself. He says, along with just about everybody else,
[1328.96 → 1334.74] the Milwaukee Linux users group had to go to virtual due to COVID-19. And as you might expect
[1334.74 → 1339.82] from a group of Linux users, they weren't a big fan of using Zoom. They wanted to use Jitsi.
[1340.04 → 1345.90] So they looked around at different providers, and they chose Linde. They picked the $5 a month
[1345.90 → 1350.86] machine, and they also chose to do the automatic backup service. So that way there's just backups
[1350.86 → 1356.74] that are just taken care of. They installed Jitsi Meet on that system, and they're now using it with
[1356.74 → 1362.92] Nextcloud Talk to do the video calls for their lug, all running on Linde. You know, what's really nice
[1362.92 → 1369.92] about this too is, is Roger was able to prototype Jitsi and Nextcloud and try them all out really quickly
[1369.92 → 1374.80] in environments that are production style environments. So you could really get a sense
[1374.80 → 1380.14] for how it's going to perform. And it's pretty great because at one point they made a change to
[1380.14 → 1387.64] Nextcloud just before the lug meeting and it broke. So Roger says they were able to use the snapshots
[1387.64 → 1393.12] that they got with the automatic backups and just roll it back. So it was basically a non-issue.
[1393.12 → 1397.86] And then after the lug was over, they were able to continue on with the Nextcloud update.
[1398.38 → 1402.52] And that's just an example of how you can use Linde, you know, to run your own Zoom instance.
[1402.70 → 1407.88] Or they also have a one-click deployment for Downcast, which is essentially a Twitch in a box.
[1408.56 → 1413.18] You can use it for that as well. There are so many different choices from hosting your website to
[1413.18 → 1418.56] their object storage. Like I use it for like a sync thing instance. Just go try it out,
[1418.56 → 1424.76] learn something, and experiment with that $100 and support the show at linode.com slash SSH.
[1426.82 → 1432.42] Now, in case you haven't heard, we're getting together in Denver. I'm looking forward to this.
[1432.96 → 1437.58] And not only is Alex going to be there, but he's going to be our trivia master at the meetup.
[1437.98 → 1439.90] So you got to come just to say hi to Alex.
[1440.24 → 1443.80] Looking forward to that. I've been working hard on the trivia questions. I promise you.
[1444.22 → 1448.02] There'll be a bunch of Linux questions. There'll be some, you know, general knowledge stuff,
[1448.02 → 1453.20] but there's also going to be some like older, more esoteric hardware questions as well. I've been
[1453.20 → 1459.06] having a real fun digging out some of these questions. I'm looking forward to that. So we'll
[1459.06 → 1463.34] have the meetup details. We have two meetups actually planned. Alex is going to be the Denver
[1463.34 → 1468.28] meetup, but there's also a Salt Lake City meetup on the books. Details are over at meetup.com
[1468.28 → 1474.86] slash Jupiter Broadcasting. And then additionally, in Lady Coupes, my RV, I will have a live tracker.
[1474.86 → 1479.46] And if there, and there will be more details. And if it works out, we'll do a little micro meetup.
[1479.62 → 1484.66] Could just be, you know, just come by and say hi. And we'll have this embedded webpage that you'll
[1484.66 → 1490.02] be able to view over at colony tracker dot live. That'll show you right where we are at. It's all
[1490.02 → 1496.04] in the works right now. Just in this last week, we got the backend set up for own tracks to record
[1496.04 → 1498.98] where I'm actually going to be at. And that's a pretty neat deal, Alex.
[1499.22 → 1500.98] How are you doing that? Is that on Linde or something?
[1500.98 → 1504.22] Oh yeah, of course. Naturally.
[1504.74 → 1512.20] Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we just decided to do a dedicated lower end Linde because
[1512.20 → 1515.68] what we want to do is put a little website on there that has the details and stuff. And then
[1515.68 → 1520.36] own tracks itself is kind of like in multiple components. And so the recorder is a Docker
[1520.36 → 1525.32] image that you can deploy. And that's like a lightweight backend that stores the location
[1525.32 → 1530.96] data. And you can publish your location information to it in two different ways, either over
[1530.98 → 1537.34] HTTP or over MQTT. And then the recorder, as the name implies, records the information
[1537.34 → 1543.12] and then makes your location data available, which is all completely under your control
[1543.12 → 1549.28] via a various set of APIs, some of which can integrate directly into home assistant. So
[1549.28 → 1554.06] you can actually use own tracks to provide home assistant with your real time location, which
[1554.06 → 1559.20] is a fantastic way to control automations. And one way that we use this, not with own tracks
[1559.20 → 1565.18] today, but soon is when no one is at home. If some of the lights, which always happens,
[1565.30 → 1571.46] get left on, which never fails to get left on, then if no one's home, and it's, and a certain
[1571.46 → 1576.10] amount of time has passed, the lights just automatically turn off. And that's just a simple way to use
[1576.10 → 1582.28] the automations. Or in the winter, if we're approaching, and it's cold, the heating turns on.
[1582.52 → 1585.34] Really simple stuff, that stuff that we just don't want to even have to think about.
[1585.34 → 1591.76] And, but the key is getting your location into home assistant and own tracks can essentially
[1591.76 → 1598.24] be that source of information. I'm using it for a live embedded map on a webpage. So that way you
[1598.24 → 1602.84] guys can find me, and we can meet up, and I'll be running the own tracks' client, which publishes
[1602.84 → 1605.40] that information to the recorder on my pixel.
[1605.86 → 1608.20] That's so cool. And it uses MQTT to do that.
[1608.44 → 1612.80] Yeah, isn't it? It's clever. It seems like it actually a great use of it because you could see
[1612.80 → 1617.40] how, when you have maybe a loss of connectivity, it could queue up. And then when you connect,
[1617.44 → 1622.28] it can just transmit the bits that were queued while you had no signal. It's, it's really smart.
[1622.66 → 1628.18] Perfect. It's exactly what it was designed for. Now my favourite robot vacuum firmware,
[1628.32 → 1632.98] Altitude, had a big release last month and I finally got around to updating it and installing
[1632.98 → 1637.76] it this week. I'm a glutton for punishment, aren't I? There's lots of stuff breaking and I still
[1637.76 → 1641.12] go ahead and install these updates. And guess what?
[1641.36 → 1641.52] What?
[1642.72 → 1643.72] Did it break?
[1644.28 → 1649.78] Well, I mean, no, the updates went fine, but there'd been some changes to how the
[1649.78 → 1656.38] the vacuums get communicated with from Home Assistant. They've deprecated the vacuum. Send
[1656.38 → 1661.76] command, which was what I used to say, hey robot, go, you know, hoover the bedroom or something.
[1661.76 → 1670.68] Um, and they've deprecated it for an MQTT publish command. So we're both using MQTT here in wildly
[1670.68 → 1674.44] different use cases, but I just think that's so cool how it's the same technology.
[1675.00 → 1680.24] It is pretty neat. And I, just as a side note, I, I hate it when stuff like that gets deprecated.
[1680.24 → 1685.56] Like I think, I think the whole Z-Wave stack that I'm using in Home Assistant has been deprecated
[1685.56 → 1690.86] and I just don't want to reset up my Z-Wave network. And I don't know what that migration process
[1690.86 → 1694.84] is like, and I just don't want to deal with it. And that kind of goes back to your topic earlier.
[1694.84 → 1700.46] It's like, it's working. It's just, I don't, I don't want to break it. I don't want to have to
[1700.46 → 1705.24] do anything with it because it's just so part of my infrastructure. Now it no longer feels like a
[1705.24 → 1709.94] separate system. It feels like it is part of my home and I don't like messing with that stuff
[1709.94 → 1716.48] anymore. And equally, because it is part of the house, the uptime needs to be as close to a hundred
[1716.48 → 1721.70] percent as possible. Yeah. And then you have to balance that off against applying updates because
[1721.70 → 1725.96] it's part of your house. You don't want to not update it for 10 years. I mean, some people would
[1725.96 → 1731.14] just say if it's working, leave it, but I keep it up to date because I feel like I want to be
[1731.14 → 1735.46] compatible with future technology and future functionality. I mentioned to you earlier,
[1735.46 → 1740.12] I was like, maybe I should rebuild the whole setup and I should base it on virtualization because the
[1740.12 → 1745.46] safety that a virtual machine gives me, that's that snapshot capability. And that, that holistic
[1745.46 → 1750.26] restoring of a system or, or taking a copy of it and setting it on a shelf and saying,
[1750.38 → 1756.70] this is known good. That is so appealing to me. And it feels like it gives me a safety net to what,
[1757.18 → 1761.32] what seems like a risky proposition to keep updating all of these systems all the time.
[1761.84 → 1765.76] That's where I keep thinking, maybe I got to rethink the way I'm doing stuff. And that's where I,
[1765.88 → 1769.40] that's where I go down the rabbit hole and go, oh, it's too much. Not right now.
[1769.40 → 1772.58] Do you use a hypervisor at all for, for anything?
[1772.58 → 1777.44] No, right now the system's built around these Raspberry Pis. There's not a lot of overhead
[1777.44 → 1783.94] there. So I'm just running containers on Ubuntu LTS on Pi 4, but I would be willing to replace,
[1784.14 → 1790.66] you know, the two or three Raspberry Pis it takes to do this with one fairly low energy x86 machine.
[1790.66 → 1795.10] And then I'd have sort of my, my, you know, my, my choice of virtualizes at that point.
[1795.10 → 1800.32] Well, good news for you. Proxmox have just had a big release. Version seven was released on the 6th of
[1800.32 → 1807.30] July 2021, and it's based on Debian bullseye number 11. I'm sure most of you know this bit
[1807.30 → 1811.76] of trivia, but, uh, those of you coming to the Denver meetup might want to pay attention.
[1812.10 → 1814.24] I might've given a question away there. Damn it.
[1815.28 → 1818.70] I love it. No, that's good. That's good. Cause if they're a listener,
[1818.82 → 1820.98] they get a heads-up and no one else will know.
[1821.18 → 1827.16] Free trivia question coming your way. Which kids movie does Debian name its releases after?
[1827.16 → 1831.44] Maybe you'll know, maybe you won't. Uh, it's just the sort of thing you'll have to come to the
[1831.44 → 1836.28] meetup and find out about. All right. Now what else is included in this release? They've got a bunch
[1836.28 → 1844.78] of new versions of stuff. So ZFS is now 2.04, uh, QEMU has been bumped to version six and the
[1844.78 → 1850.78] there's a new kernel 5.11. So it's, it's perfect to see that Proxmox are pushing the envelope
[1850.78 → 1856.34] here and updating lots of their core systems. The reason I say that in particular is that Debian has a
[1856.34 → 1861.38] bit of a reputation for being a bit old and crusty. And you look at the versions of some of these
[1861.38 → 1867.46] packages, and they're not that far off what is shipping in Arch, right? I mean, a 5.11 kernel
[1867.46 → 1871.48] is older than what's in Arch, but it's newer than what's in most LTS distros right now.
[1871.82 → 1876.58] And they've rolled out more recent Butters support, which I think is kind of a big deal.
[1876.64 → 1881.76] It's nice to see essentially Butters and ZFS get near parity support in Proxmox.
[1881.76 → 1886.28] It absolutely is. And I think this, this comes back to a point that, uh, I hear quite frequently
[1886.28 → 1892.62] on Linux Unplugged actually, is that we need to start taking Butters seriously and, uh, stop just
[1892.62 → 1897.56] treating it as a bit of a joke because, you know, Facebook and all these other massive companies
[1897.56 → 1904.24] that have things at significant scale are putting a lot of, uh, blood, sweat and tears into the Butters
[1904.24 → 1910.18] subsystems. And it does seem to be cropping up in more and more places. And, you know, for me,
[1910.18 → 1917.02] I'm actually starting to use Proxmox as my default distro, you know, for, for server OSes because
[1917.02 → 1926.32] it has ZFS baked in. So I don't need to Fitz about with DKMS or an AUR package to install a custom
[1926.32 → 1931.66] kernel. I don't have to worry about the licensing. It's just taken care of. I mean, the same is true
[1931.66 → 1938.74] of Ubuntu, but the thing that Proxmox gives me most out of all of this other stuff is a real slick
[1938.74 → 1945.40] web UI to manage virtual machines and LXC containers. Great point. And I think that is
[1945.40 → 1951.64] something that you and I probably underplay. I think for a lot of new users, that's like the
[1951.64 → 1957.78] the biggest deal, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I, I completely agree on your points about Butters
[1957.78 → 1963.80] too. I think the thing that you have to remember is what Butters offers is a file system that does
[1963.80 → 1969.64] copy on write transparent compression. It can offer encryption. It can offer SSD trim support
[1969.64 → 1975.50] and it's extremely low memory. So it works perfect. Say like in a Raspberry Pi situation
[1975.50 → 1981.72] or in a laptop with a single SSD. Those are some use cases where ZFS is, is really not a great choice
[1981.72 → 1989.70] there. And, and I, I really love the combination of the two. I think it makes for a really reliable home
[1989.70 → 1996.18] server. And the way I use it now is Butters is on the root file system. So the system can boot
[1996.18 → 2002.20] regardless of what's going on with ZFS. If, if your DKMS module fails to build for some weird reason,
[2002.20 → 2008.38] which has happened to me, your system still boots because the core system, the file system is Butters.
[2008.76 → 2013.78] And then your really large datasets with your multiple disks that are in some sort of RAID configuration,
[2013.78 → 2019.26] that's where I go ZFS. And that mounts almost every time the system reboots. But if it doesn't,
[2019.26 → 2024.10] because the root is Butters, it's guaranteed I can get in there and get the system repaired
[2024.10 → 2028.76] and we can then get in, you know, then get other things online, like getting ZFS to mount.
[2029.12 → 2033.26] And perhaps the biggest feature that we haven't touched on the single most important improvement
[2033.26 → 2038.74] in Proxmox 7, I can now download ISOs on the web UI. Hooray!
[2039.42 → 2043.88] Oh yeah. Dun, dun, dun, dun. So you give them a URL, and it downloads it or does that mean you can
[2043.88 → 2044.70] download it to your machine?
[2045.12 → 2049.38] Both. So what happens is you plug the URL into the, uh, the little form that says,
[2049.44 → 2053.46] I want to download it to this particular area of storage. And then at the bottom,
[2053.54 → 2058.92] this is a really nice feature. It has an optional box at the bottom for you to fill in the MD5
[2058.92 → 2065.74] hash in there. So it will automatically verify the download for you as part of its automated process.
[2066.12 → 2071.68] Now, a lot of people seem to think that Proxmox isn't free as in cost. Uh, it's,
[2071.68 → 2078.14] it's open source. So it's free as in speech and it is also free as in beer. Um, the reason I thought
[2078.14 → 2083.20] it wasn't free is because it has this little nag screen that says you do not have a valid
[2083.20 → 2088.56] subscription for this server. And all that simply means is you have the enterprise repos enabled,
[2088.56 → 2094.92] which are some air quotes, better tested packages. I don't know quite what that testing entails,
[2094.92 → 2099.96] but that's what the Proxmox team say anyway. Um, and so you can support the project and give
[2099.96 → 2106.16] them money, and they will enable your server to get rid of that nag message, or you could use
[2106.16 → 2110.70] automation. You could use, I've written an Ansible role, which several of our community
[2110.70 → 2115.88] have now contributed to as well, because open source is just that awesome. And what that does
[2115.88 → 2121.10] is it goes in and removes the repos for you, changes a couple of lines in the, uh, web UI
[2121.10 → 2127.66] files on the Proxmox system and removes the nag for you automatically. Just one more use case for
[2127.66 → 2134.24] automation. And speaking of automation, we want to mention our friends over to Cloud Guru have a
[2134.24 → 2138.80] course that we'll have linked in the show notes just for you. It's the Red Hat certified specialist
[2138.80 → 2144.52] in advanced automation and Ansible best practices. In this course, they're going to cover the topics
[2144.52 → 2150.02] on the EX447 exam as well to make sure you're ready to take that. If you're planning on expanding
[2150.02 → 2153.36] your Ansible knowledge, this is a great course for you. You'll have a better understanding
[2153.36 → 2158.96] of the topics on the exam and around Ansible and Ansible tower and managing and Ansible inventory.
[2159.02 → 2163.72] And of course, templates as well. So you'll have to go over to our show notes to get the link to go
[2163.72 → 2169.68] directly to this course. That of course is over at self-hosted. Show slash 49. You'll see the link for
[2169.68 → 2174.50] ACG and that'll take you to the Red Hat certified specialist in advanced automation for Ansible best
[2174.50 → 2184.84] practices. Did you get the update to your shield yet? Alex, I am so, so disappointed in this. I loved
[2184.84 → 2190.20] the Nvidia shield so much. I've bought three of them in total. Furthermore, I've recommended them to the audience.
[2190.20 → 2198.04] And I know that some people out there have also noticed that Nvidia has decided to improve your
[2198.04 → 2203.86] experience by taking the top row, which used to be reserved for your favourite applications,
[2203.86 → 2213.68] and now put full wide advertisements right there at the top, including folks in bondage,
[2214.12 → 2219.64] folks doing all kinds of like crazy things like, you know, guns and violence and smoking. Like I've seen
[2219.64 → 2225.46] the whole range. Thankfully, you know, we're not really that kind of, uh, we, we don't, it doesn't
[2225.46 → 2229.12] really bother me that much. And it's in my bedroom. It's not like it's a the family uses it all the
[2229.12 → 2235.52] time, but I really do not like the fact that I cannot turn it off. And, um, I think it's on my
[2235.52 → 2239.82] list to replace now, Alex. It's really disappointed. It's such a great device. Yeah. It's, it's been a
[2239.82 → 2246.24] fascinating one to watch the, uh, kind of cancel culture online react to this one. I mean,
[2246.24 → 2253.10] on the one hand, I don't really care that much. Um, they, they've taken an interface that was
[2253.10 → 2259.48] very clean and just got the job done and didn't really have any cruft to it whatsoever.
[2260.14 → 2263.12] And then, as you say, they've polluted it with a bunch of ads. I mean, that,
[2263.60 → 2268.78] that on the one hand sounds pretty terrible, but I mean, on the, on the other hand, I don't,
[2268.88 → 2273.54] I just don't find myself really caring all that much. I, uh, I, I've been browsing the
[2273.54 → 2280.66] the Subreddits, um, the Nvidia shield Subreddit for the last few years. And there's lots of people
[2280.66 → 2286.20] now posting custom launches that you can install on the Nvidia shield. I mean, it's just Android
[2286.20 → 2291.26] underneath, right? So you can install a custom launcher if you want to. And I think all this
[2291.26 → 2297.68] is going to serve to do is motivate those who do care about such things to release better quality
[2297.68 → 2301.58] third party launches rather than relying on the, the Google provided one.
[2301.58 → 2306.86] I think I'll probably just switch it to an Apple TV. I have found that the Apple TVs perform even
[2306.86 → 2311.52] better than the Nvidia shield, which I felt like was pretty well performant. This is the exact kind
[2311.52 → 2316.22] of thing that will never happen on the Apple TV platform. And it, you know, it's been, the UI has
[2316.22 → 2323.92] been very consistent now for years. The other thing is it, it wakes, and it controls the TV more
[2323.92 → 2327.36] consistently than the Nvidia shield has too. So I think I'm just going to switch it out.
[2327.36 → 2333.86] I wanted to keep it because I liked the idea of having both. And I really love Cody. You know,
[2333.88 → 2339.96] that's a big reason why I keep the shield is I really love Cody, but in fuse on Apple TV,
[2339.96 → 2345.64] it replaces Cody. In fact, I actually have to say, I think maybe in fuse is, is probably better
[2345.64 → 2351.98] because it's just a newer app built with more modern technologies, and they've just steadily added
[2351.98 → 2357.08] the features you need. It doesn't quite have the plugin ecosystem that Cody does, but in fuse
[2357.08 → 2362.10] is a really great local file playback, play from your file shares, all that kind of stuff.
[2362.64 → 2369.50] And it syncs via iCloud to your other Apple TVs. So your settings, you set it up once, and it's,
[2369.82 → 2376.44] Oh, and also out of the box supports syncing play status with Plex. And I can't remember if it does
[2376.44 → 2381.86] Jellyfin, but it's, it's a perfect app. And so it does the job that Cody does. And so I think
[2381.86 → 2385.62] it's just time to, I think I'm done with Android TV. I'm going to keep a couple of Chromecast's around
[2385.62 → 2388.44] and that's going to be it. Well, if there's one thing we've learned from the internet,
[2388.44 → 2394.12] it's the adverts always make everything better. I mean, YouTube's better because of all the ads.
[2395.12 → 2401.74] Radio is better because of adverts, right? I mean, I struggle to think of a single example where
[2401.74 → 2406.32] an advert makes things better. I think I wouldn't have even minded as much if it was only
[2406.32 → 2412.34] showing ads for services that I maybe have active logins for on the device, but right. But it's
[2412.34 → 2416.30] showing me advertisements for services that I don't have and will never subscribe to. So that
[2416.30 → 2421.08] drives me crazy. And then I think the other thing is if it was at the bottom of the UI,
[2421.48 → 2426.82] if they hadn't, if they hadn't taken the row of icons and lowered it. And so now you have to
[2426.82 → 2431.78] navigate down and that would have been better as well. What do you make of the argument that the
[2431.78 → 2436.26] Nvidia shield was a premium device? This, this is quite a pervasive argument on
[2436.26 → 2442.14] Reddit that, you know, it's a $200 device. It's a premium device. I've chosen this over
[2442.14 → 2446.64] something like the Google Chromecast, you know, the new one with the remote that has this same UI,
[2446.72 → 2452.04] by the way. What do you make of that argument? Because to me, I think I kind of agree with it
[2452.04 → 2457.24] in, in the yeah, one of the reasons I paid for the shield, I pay the extra money for two of them in
[2457.24 → 2463.08] this house was because it was so blazing fast. And because I didn't have this stuff kind of rammed down
[2463.08 → 2467.54] my throat, you know, without, without asking for it. Nvidia have just patched this thing for years
[2467.54 → 2473.66] and years and years. And it's, it's just been very reliable. And unlike you, I'm, I'm left feeling
[2473.66 → 2480.36] rather deflated about it. Yeah. It feels like a play to get affiliate revenue for stream signups.
[2480.44 → 2484.52] And it's like, they have a user base out there. They're not selling them as much anymore because
[2484.52 → 2488.06] they're not as competitive as they used to be. And there are cheaper options out there.
[2488.06 → 2492.82] And I think the Apple TV is starting to eat up some of its market share as well, because I think
[2492.82 → 2497.54] other people have realized it's a better box as well. And so I think Nvidia felt let's monetize
[2497.54 → 2501.58] what we've got here because they get some ongoing affiliate revenue from those subscriptions,
[2501.58 → 2505.96] depending on the deals that work out. That's too tempting, I think for them to say no to.
[2506.90 → 2511.78] And I do agree that it is a premium device. It absolutely is. I think $200 is on the cheap end.
[2511.86 → 2515.62] I think if you buy the like I, the first one I ever bought was the one with like the big hard drive
[2515.62 → 2520.30] and all of that. And the controller, I want to say that was like $300 or something.
[2520.88 → 2528.16] I bought that box because ROK's and cheaper boxes had that kind of crap. It's one of the
[2528.16 → 2533.08] reasons I didn't get a fire is because the Amazon fire does this as well. It's rows of advertisement.
[2533.74 → 2538.56] And so I didn't buy an Amazon fire. And so I didn't buy a ROK. I bought an Nvidia shield
[2538.56 → 2546.80] specifically because it didn't have this crap on it. Right. And so to have them retroactively add
[2546.80 → 2552.50] that, like that wasn't the deal, bro. When I spent $300 on your kit, that's, this wasn't the deal.
[2553.92 → 2559.32] I just hate it. And I think the custom launcher solution is not a bad one and maybe one I will
[2559.32 → 2564.40] explore, but it's unfortunate. It's sort of like when people tell you to solve the problems with an
[2564.40 → 2569.14] Android phone by flashing a custom ROM on there. It's like, come on, man. Yeah, I know you can do
[2569.14 → 2574.16] that, but most consumers aren't going to do that. They're just not. On that note, Will actually wrote
[2574.16 → 2578.86] in, and that's why we're talking about this, asking if you could put lineage on the shield. And I think
[2578.86 → 2583.86] that's a pretty interesting idea, actually. I don't think it's supported today, but certainly moving
[2583.86 → 2589.82] forward, I could see a much more motivated community emerging around this kind of stuff now.
[2590.16 → 2593.14] I tell you what, if a decent lineage image showed up for that thing, I'd try it.
[2593.14 → 2596.64] Yeah, me too. And I mean, I, even though I just said most people aren't going to,
[2596.76 → 2600.54] the vast majority of consumers who bought this won't, I'd still, I'd use it.
[2600.66 → 2606.62] Now, another option you've got is to replace the launcher.APK via Team Win Recovery Project
[2606.62 → 2611.78] to one of the old versions of the launcher that doesn't have ads on the home screen.
[2612.14 → 2616.72] You'll need to unlock your bootloader to do that, but it doesn't require root or anything like that.
[2616.94 → 2621.02] Well, David from North Carolina wrote in, he said, I'd love to know a little more details
[2621.02 → 2625.22] around the solar panels that Alex recently had installed, especially since they seem
[2625.22 → 2628.50] to integrate with Home Assistant. I've been trying to convince my wife that it would
[2628.50 → 2632.62] be a worthwhile investment, love the show, and keep up the work. Thanks, David. And I
[2632.62 → 2635.72] think he's like extra excited because he's from your home state.
[2635.98 → 2637.84] Yeah, North Carolina. Hey, David, how are you doing?
[2638.16 → 2640.74] Is it called a home state now? I mean, your new home state?
[2641.92 → 2646.84] Well, is it? I don't know. I still refer to England as home, and I still watched England
[2646.84 → 2651.42] crash out of the Euros in the final, and I still wept like a small child when that happened,
[2651.54 → 2656.38] but you know. But you also have the first state that you called home in the US.
[2656.58 → 2660.46] It's also the first state where I, it's the first place in the world where I had a child,
[2660.60 → 2664.08] so you know, there is that. So it's your home, I think it's like, as far as states go,
[2664.16 → 2666.40] it's your home state. Yeah, yeah, it probably is.
[2667.98 → 2669.70] So what do you think? You got details for them?
[2669.92 → 2673.70] I've got a few, yeah, not, I don't have, you know, specific model numbers or anything like
[2673.70 → 2678.76] that, but I went to a company called NC Solar Now. I looked at Tesla and a few others, but
[2678.76 → 2684.74] the NC Solar Now folks were the ones that came out with the, you know, the best overall price
[2684.74 → 2690.72] and package and service and financing and all that kind of stuff. And I ended up going for a
[2690.72 → 2696.22] SolarEdge system, and this has a home assistant integration which connects to the they've got
[2696.22 → 2701.98] this website, and it will connect through the API to the website for up to 15 times an hour,
[2701.98 → 2707.56] I think it can pull the website through the API. And it was just a case of providing an API key.
[2707.76 → 2713.28] It took literally five minutes to set it up. I had to spend an extra few hundred dollars on the
[2713.28 → 2721.06] little Zigbee monitoring device to enable the inverter that's outside to talk to the internet,
[2721.06 → 2726.06] because by default it doesn't come with any Wi-Fi capabilities. But apart from that, you know,
[2726.32 → 2731.52] extra few hundred dollars to get the monitoring capabilities. Yeah, it's been very straightforward
[2731.52 → 2737.44] to set it up. And not only does it talk to home assistant, but the SolarEdge company also provides
[2737.44 → 2744.40] a really nice dashboard and a really pretty slick mobile app as well. So I've got a little widget on
[2744.40 → 2749.02] my Android home screen that tells me exactly what my solar is doing right now, which is pretty cool.
[2749.02 → 2757.44] That's great. Yeah. I love that they're using Zigbee for that. Just the thing, Zigbee's all over the
[2757.44 → 2762.32] place here. Nate wrote into the show asking about security implications for sharing Ansible playbooks
[2762.32 → 2766.96] publicly. You know, he sees them on GitHub, all of that. He got thinking about this after he listened
[2766.96 → 2770.52] to an episode of the Dark net Diaries, and he wondered if you have any thoughts on it.
[2770.52 → 2778.10] Well, all of my stuff's open source on GitHub.com slash ironic badger slash infra. You know, I have
[2778.10 → 2783.72] open sourced everything for years now. That's kind of my default policy. So I sure hope there isn't a
[2783.72 → 2786.44] privacy implication of doing that. You know?
[2787.72 → 2788.66] Good answer.
[2788.66 → 2795.94] Yeah. I do encrypt everything using Ansible Vault. So all of my secrets and things like that are stuck
[2795.94 → 2803.08] behind AES-256 encryption. So hopefully, unless I commit a secret directly in clear text, I think
[2803.08 → 2806.66] I'm okay. Yeah. I just, you know, when I go through your GitHub, I just look at it. I think, you know,
[2806.66 → 2810.40] everything looks pretty good except for that passwords.txt file where you just put all your
[2810.40 → 2816.72] passwords in there. Well, funny story on that. I actually published my Gmail password one time to
[2816.72 → 2824.46] that repo. And I had a guy, a listener in Australia message me. Like, it must have been first thing in
[2824.46 → 2828.62] the morning for him because it was just before I went to bed saying, hey, by the way, did you know
[2828.62 → 2833.92] that commit you pushed 12 minutes ago has your Gmail password in it? And I'm like, okay, first,
[2834.06 → 2840.20] thank you for letting me know. Secondly, it was 12 minutes ago. Like, were you just waiting for me to
[2840.20 → 2840.90] push something?
[2841.78 → 2843.92] Yes. He's got some sort of like alert.
[2843.92 → 2851.12] Uh, so to get around that, uh, Nick Busy from the Home Lab OS project, uh, helped me out with a
[2851.12 → 2857.72] pre-commit, uh, hook that I have in my Git repo that just checks that my secrets file is encrypted
[2857.72 → 2863.48] before I push and do a Git commit and push. That's been very, very useful. It doesn't protect against
[2863.48 → 2868.88] me actually putting API keys and variables and stuff like that directly into other files, which,
[2868.88 → 2874.14] you know, there comes a point where you've got to be like, right, okay, this, you know, my safety net
[2874.14 → 2880.72] is checking that file is encrypted or not. It's not going to go and scan every single file. Um, so
[2880.72 → 2885.78] yeah, I guess it's up to you whether you feel comfortable with that risk or not. And, uh, I,
[2885.84 → 2891.04] I tend to think that even if you're using a private repo on GitHub, you may as well treat that as a public
[2891.04 → 2895.04] repository anyway, because one day it will be whether you like it or not. So.
[2895.04 → 2899.00] And it really just means, can you stick to like a good hygiene with that kind of stuff?
[2899.26 → 2903.28] If you'd like to get your question in or have a comment or something you think we should check out,
[2903.66 → 2906.98] let us know, go over to self-hosted. Show slash contact.
[2907.46 → 2911.26] And you can go to self-hosted. Show slash SRE to show your support for the show.
[2911.52 → 2916.40] Yeah. Become a member, get access to the post show. And of course, uh, help us keep the show
[2916.40 → 2917.68] on the tracks.
[2918.04 → 2921.52] I think this episode, we're going to talk about the future of the gasoline engine
[2921.52 → 2923.16] and the internal combustion engine.
[2923.16 → 2925.26] Oh, I have thoughts on that. Interesting.
[2925.60 → 2931.08] Yeah, me too. Now I was browsing some, I always seem to come up with YouTube on these things,
[2931.16 → 2936.48] don't I? But anyway, uh, about steam trains the other week. And, uh, I found this Union Pacific
[2936.48 → 2942.40] steam loco called the big boy. And this thing is freaking enormous. And it was designed, uh,
[2942.40 → 2948.42] in the early, uh, part of last century to get over some of the Rocky mountain passes because
[2948.42 → 2954.82] they're just so vast here and the trains are so heavy. And so Union Pacific have actually restored
[2954.82 → 2960.36] one of these big boy steam locos, which is essentially two massive steam locos glued together.
[2960.58 → 2967.40] This thing has basically two sets of drive wheels and two, two full sets of pistons. And it's just
[2967.40 → 2973.90] awesome. Just go look it up. Big boy Union Pacific steam loco. And it's going on tour in August around
[2973.90 → 2980.66] the US. So it's, it's leaving Cheyenne, Wyoming and going all the way down to Houston past, uh,
[2981.08 → 2984.10] our beloved cheese bacon's hometown of Beaumont.
[2984.50 → 2986.12] I know he lives in Denver now, doesn't he?
[2986.40 → 2988.28] Okay. Well, so much for that.
[2988.28 → 2990.26] You could say it's his original hometown though.
[2990.62 → 2997.28] So much for that plug. Um, so yeah, it's going up to, I think, uh, through Dallas at some point
[2997.28 → 3002.02] and then up through Kansas City and St. Louis. So if you're in the centre of the country,
[3002.02 → 3006.98] by all means go take some pictures for me, because I'm not going to be able to make that one. But,
[3007.02 → 3009.02] uh, throughout August, it's traversing the country.
[3009.48 → 3013.04] That does look like an incredible route. Actually. We'll have a link in the show notes.
[3013.10 → 3016.12] And when you go there, they have a map that shows you the route that they're going to be on.
[3016.46 → 3020.68] Well, you know, it's either side of our Denver meetup, don't you? So I reckon if you were creative
[3020.68 → 3023.16] with your schedule, Chris, you could probably find it for a day.
[3023.20 → 3029.04] Our route for the Denver meetup in total is a good, it's going to be just over 5,000 miles.
[3029.04 → 3036.40] That's a long way. I drove that myself in 2018. We flew into Orlando, drove up to DC,
[3036.62 → 3042.06] drove down to Austin to meet you for the first time and then, uh, up to Denver. And that was
[3042.06 → 3047.66] about 5,000 miles. And we did that in three weeks in a car. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't our house.
[3048.14 → 3051.84] Now I'm going to be in a land yacht. Yeah, that's for sure. But if you're going to be in the area,
[3051.84 → 3054.82] don't forget that we have those meetups coming up, and you can get details
[3054.82 → 3059.82] at meetup.com slash Jupyter Broadcasting. Make sure you don't miss the next episode,
[3059.92 → 3065.82] episode 50. We've got some cool stuff lined up for you and rumour has it there might be some swag.
[3067.12 → 3072.12] Hmm. In the meantime, you can find Alex on Twitter. He is at Ironic Badger. I'm at Chris
[3072.12 → 3075.48] LES and the show is at self-hosted show. And thanks for listening, everybody.
[3075.48 → 3078.30] That was self-hosted. Show slash 49.