DeltaTangoLima

Obligatory note for those that haven't read/retained the news: Simple Mobile Tools was sold to ZipoApps - an Israeli company that specialises in buying and monetising popular apps.

Fossify is the fork of the Simple Mobile Tools repos, and they're gradually getting through each app and re-releasing them under the new name.

So, after nearly 10 years of faithful service, my shitty ol' Wanhao i3 Plus is finally ready for retirement. Steppers are buzzing, occasional collisions with the bed, and the heat block just doesn't... heat as quickly as it used to.

Talking to a mate who does a lot more printing than I, it seems I can't pass up the Ender 3 V2. The right price for what I typically do, and is backed by a mature community.

I've ordered the auto-level kit with it, but nothing else. My i3 already sits in a Lack Rack I made, and it should comfortably take the new printer.

I have a couple of functional print projects on the backburner that were waiting for me to make a move, but wanted to get some advice on mods and upgrades first, that might make the first experience with the Ender even better.

So, asking the more experienced Ender owners out there: are there any essential upgrades, preferably 3D printed, you think I should look at first?

Cheers in advance!

I just spent a good chunk of today migrating some services onto new docker containers in Proxmox LXCs.

As I was updating my network diagram, I was struck by just how many services, hosts, and LXCs I'm running, so counted everything up.

• 116 docker containers
  • Running on 25 docker hosts
  • 50 are the same on each docker host - Watchtower and Portainer agent
• 38 Proxmox LXCs (19 are docker hosts)
• 8 physical servers
• 7 VLANs
• 5 SSIDs
• 2 NASes

So, it got me wondering about the size of other people's homelabs. What are your stats?

We have tickets for a festival he's headlining next month. I'm sure the promoters will line up someone else who'll put on a good show but, having seen Jimmy at this festival before, I know he'll be missed.

Wishing Jimmy a full, and speedy, recovery. The man's a national treasure!

I assume this is the genesis of a Five Eyes cloud platform.

Questions for me are which commercial partners are in the mix, and how will they ensure TS-level security?

I guess we'll never truly know, but it's hard not to worry about the implications of this.

"In Catholic morality, consent is necessary, but not sufficient, to make the sexual act right or wrong. It is the long-held teaching of Christ that sexual activity is only legitimately expressed within the loving relationship between husband and wife."

Er. Who's going to tell them?

So, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote to this community, asking for some advice about our new blue tongue's eating. And the advice I got really helped us start to understand the lizard brain a little better.

It's been nearly three weeks since we brought him home, and we've figured out he really likes tinned dog food, strawberries and raspberries. No luck with veggies just yet, but we're still trying new things. The important thing is he's not going hungry, and gets his calcium supplement with the dog food.

But he's still very reclusive, and quite cranky with us. Most of the time, he'll hide under his basking log, or bury himself under some substrate. When we've reached in to try and pat him, he jerks suddenly and hisses.

My daughter's been afraid to try patting him again herself so, the past week, we've just been getting her to hand feed him a small piece of fruit each day, to try and build some trust between them. It's gone well, and he's eaten out of her hand a few times now.

My biggest concerns are that either his behaviour isn't that normal and we've not done something right, or that we're running the risk of letting this behaviour become his new "normal", and my daughter won't get to have a relationship with her pet.

So I guess my question, without trying to sound too anxious or impatient, is if his behaviour at this stage would still be considered normal? Should we be doing anything different?

Once again, thanks in advance for any knowledge and experience you can share.

We got our daughter (9yo) a blue tongue lizard for her birthday this week. We picked it up on Tuesday afternoon (it's now Saturday morning, here in Australia). The store says it's about 6 months old.

We also bought a really nice enclosure for it, with all the bits and pieces: 4' wood enclosure with glass sliding doors; twin 75W ceramic heat emitters; thermostat (located around the mid-zone); UVB light (on 12hrs per day, from 7:30am); good substrate, a basking log, a hide-out, and some fake grasses and leaves to hide under.

I'm not convinced the thermostat is particularly good, but I've kept a digital thermometer at the basking end, and the heat seems to consistently sit at around 30°-35°C (~86°-95°F) there, which at least tells me that zone is OK. I'm not sure the cool zone isn't too cool. I plan on buying another thermometer for that end.

The problem is, it's not eating much. It tends to find a hiding spot near the cool end, and bury itself under the substrate. We gave it some diced strawberries on Wednesday. I ended up putting it right near the food, and it eventually ate about a strawberry's worth.

The past couple of days we've tried some diced apple (freshly cut each day), but it hasn't gone near the food at all. Most of those two days, it stayed hidden and/or buried under the substrate. Per the store's instructions, we're taking the food away again around mid-afternoon - 3pm-ish.

Today, we put some beef pet food out and moved the lizard next to the food bowl. It had a tiny, little munch, but didn't really eat what you might consider a meal.

The store says it could take a week or so for it to settle into its new home, and I understand that. We're being disciplined and resisting the urge to take it out and hold it, to try and keep stress levels down.

But, I'm a touch concerned at all the staying hidden/buried, and lack of eating, as we've been told juveniles should be fed daily. My daughter's starting to get really worried, and I've tried explaining that cold-blooded animals metabolise way slower than warm-blooded, so it's not like he's starving or anything. At least, I don't think he is.

Should we be concerned at all? At which point should I start to seek professional assistance?

Just looking for some reassurance that anything we're doing/not doing isn't causing any problems. Thanks.

Took this coming down the mountain from Lovick's Hut, roughly halfway to Bluff Hut, looking west.

The peak at the centre (with cloud hovering over it) is Mt Buller and the one to the right of that (1/4 in from right edge, slightly more cloud) is Mt Stirling.

Love me some Victorian high country.

Hi all - I have a sectional garage door, that I'm currently automating with a relay to trigger button press on the garage door motor, and a simple reed switch for open/closed state, using esphome on a Wemos D1 mini.

Lately, I've been thinking about finding/building a door position sensor, instead of the reed switch.

If I had position data being sent reliably, I could very easily determine if the door is opening, as well as open/close state. I have a number of automations in mind that would benefit from such data.

So far, my searches for "garage door position sensor", and variations thereof, aren't bearing much fruit. I've been pondering of couple of home-brewed approaches:

1. A series of reed switches on a track that a magnet on the door will trip as it moves along.

   I guess it's theoretically doable, but they'd have to be sensitive enough to be tripped by a moving magnet, but not so sensitive that too many of them are tripped at the same time, which might confuse my "moving mathematics" to determine door movement direction.

    

2. An ultrasonic sensor could possibly do the job.

   I'm mulling over exact placement of it so it has a reliable surface to reflect off, to give me an accurate read on position. Nothing (yet) comes to mind on that front.

It's not that I wouldn't enjoy going down the very enjoyable rabbit hole of prototyping something, but I thought I'd just ask first.

Is anyone aware of an off-the shelf sensor that might give me what I'm looking for, please? If it needs something beefier than an ESP board, I've got a couple of RasPis lying around doing nothing.

Cheers in advance for any suggestions.

Just wondering what tools and techniques people are using to keep on top of updates, particularly security-related updates, for their self-hosting fleet.

I'm not talking about docker containers - that's relatively easy. I have Watchtower pull (not update) latest images once per week. My Saturday mornings are usually spent combing through Portainer and hitting the recreate button for those containers with updated images. After checking the service is good, I manually delete the old images.

But, I don't have a centralised, automated solution for all my Linux hosts. I have a few RasPis and a bunch of LXCs on a pair of Proxmox nodes, all running their respective variation of Debian.

Not a lot of this stuff is exposed direct to the internet - less than a handful of services, with the rest only accessible over Wireguard. I'm also running OPNsense with IPS enabled, so this problem isn't exactly keeping me up at night right now. But, as we all know, security is about layers.

Some time ago, on one of my RasPis, I did setup Unattended Upgrades and it works OK, but there was a little bit of work involved in getting it setup just right. I don't relish the idea of doing that another 40 or so times for the rest of my fleet.

I also don't want all of those hosts grabbing updates at around the same time, smashing my internet link (yes, I could randomise the cron job within a time range, but I'd rather not have to).

I have a fledgling Ansible setup that I'm just starting to wrap my head around. Is that the answer? Is there something better?

Would love to hear how others are dealing with this.

Cheers!

So I recently (a couple months ago) moved my fragmented docker-on-raspberry-pi architecture over to a Proxmox cluster. I'm running it on a pair of HP DL360 G6s, and I couldn't be happier.

Except, well, I could be happier with just one more thing: high availability.

In particular, I want HA for my OPNsense firewall/router, but eventually for more of the workloads my family are depending on for life in general - Home Assistant, Plex, Overseerr, Immich, etc etc.

My current storage setup is a couple ratty old ARM-based NASes - an ancient Netgear ReadyNAS and an even more ancient Qnap TS-410. They're both populated with 4 x 4TB (max raw size they can take) using RAID5, so I get about 22TB usable across the pair of them. They mostly store media for my Plex setup, but also support my 2N+C backup strategy for stuff like Immich, Paperless, and other important data.

My high-level plan is to grab another DL360, so I can have a quorum, then introduce a new storage system that:

• provides an iSCSI target for my Proxmox cluster; and
• can eventually grow to replace my old NASes.

The two solutions I'm pondering are:

1. Build a TrueNAS setup from scratch - mini ITX case, board - the lot
2. Pickup something tried, true and proven in the market, like a Synology

Up front cost is a consideration - I have a family to feed, so I can't just run out and buy an 8-bay enclosure and fully populate it with 16TB disks.

Whatever I get, I'm likely to want to start with, say, 3 disks and grow it over time.

So, I guess this is a call out to the community to share any and all successes, war stories, and other advice. The more technical, the better. I want to make a sound, data-based decision here, and anecdotes from others who think like me are the best way to set my compass.

Cheers for anything you can offer!