• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: April 27th, 2024

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  • Managing 30+ machines with NixOS in a single unified config, currently sitting at a total of around 17k lines of nix code.

    In other words, I have put a lot of time into this. It was a very steep learning curve, but it’s paid for itself multiple times over by now.

    For “newcomers”, my observations can be boiled down to this: if you only manage one machine, it’s not worth it. Maaaaaybe give home-manager a try and see if you like it.

    Situation is probably different with things like Silverblue (IMO throwing those kinds of distros in with Guix and NixOS is a bit misleading - very different philosophy and user experience), but I can only talk about Nix here.

    With Nix, the real benefit comes once you handle multiple machines. Identical or similar configurations get combined or parametrized. Config values set for Host A can be reused and decisions be made automatically based on it in Host B, for example:

    • all hosts know my SSH pub keys from first boot, without ever having to configure anything in any of them
    • my NAS IP is set once, all hosts requiring NAS access just reuse it implicitly
    • creating new proxmox VMs just means adding, on average, 10 lines of nix config (saying: your ID will be this, you will run that service) and a single command, because the heavy lifting and configuring has already been done, once -…













  • I went through essentially the same thing a couple months ago. Tried Calibre (and Calibre server) since everyone recommended it.

    Really disliked it. Calibre is great for converting ebooks, but has shit management and webserving capabilities.

    I ended up with Kavita and am super happy. On the web client, both management and actual reading are a pleasure. Any phone/tablet client supporting OPDS works perfectly to read/download your manga/books from the server.

    And a select few clients go a step further, supporting Kavita’s API, which allows for 2-way sync (effectively, syncing reading progress between all your devices).






  • I still find it hilarious that since dd-wrt and OpenWrt are just… Linux, you could install Super Mario Bros on there. I checked, nobody seems to have tried.

    Oh, definitely, but there are varying degrees of difficulty, esp. with what kinds of packages / package management you have available :D

    Ah, that make sense. Is Wireguard P2P?

    Yes, in the sense that each node/device is a peer. But the way I’d suggest you configure it in your case is more akin to a client/server setup - your devices forward all traffic to the “server”, but it never takes initiative to talk “back” to them, and they do not attempt to communicate with each other. Unless you have a separate usecase for that, of course.

    You both are perfect for each other, so don’t screw it up!

    ❤️

    Closing in on 8 years


  • I’m actually surprised nobody suggested simply using the Pi with OpenWrt as my own router. Though, that would make it hard to host Jellyfin.

    A brief internet search shows that surprisingly, hosting Jellyfin on OpenWRT should work… No idea how well though. Come to think of it, having OpenWRT on the pi might make it a lot easier to configure, with graphical settings available and so on.

    Could you explain Wireguard vs. Tailscale in this scenario?

    I’ve never used tailscale, I’m afraid. Normally I would say: just use whatever seems easier to set up on your device/network; however, note that tailscale needs a “coordinate server”. No actual traffic ever goes through it, it just facilitates key exchanges and the like (from what I understand), but regardless, it’s a server outside your control which is involved in some way. You can selfhost this server, but that is additional work, of course…

    Thank you all so much for your help! This is likely the solution I will go with, combined with another one, so again thank you so much!

    Glad I could help, after being so unhelpful yesterday :)

    P.S. I don’t care if you wrap an ethernet cord around her finger, get going!

    Eh… Marriage is not really common in either of our families. We agreed to go sign the papers if there ever is a tax reason, lol. Sorry if that’s a bit unromantic :D Nice rings though ^^