0:00

I'm really curious to know what your process is when something

0:03

dies in your home automation

0:05

setup. You know, one of these annoying

0:07

things like a controller going out or a

0:09

light bulb stopping working or you

0:11

know something like that where it just falls off the wi-fi

0:13

for no reason and and you're just like oh

0:16

I've got to go and investigate this. What now?

0:19

Yeah that is inevitable

0:21

when you have more and more devices

0:24

and of course these days

0:26

if I was going to deploy like an led

0:28

light strip or a temperature sensor

0:31

I would get a little ESP, put

0:33

ESP home on there, you know I

0:35

would build it modularly and then I would

0:38

just replace like the light strip if that died or just the

0:40

controller if that died but you

0:42

know past Chris didn't

0:45

really think that way and I'll give

0:47

you an example that just happened to me recently. I love

0:49

these LIFX light beam bars.

0:52

They're these bars that are magnetic and you can connect

0:55

like up to multiple pieces and make shapes

0:57

and whatnot and they're great for the bedroom, they're great

0:59

for the living room, they're just

1:01

great products except for they

1:03

have a proprietary controller and I don't

1:05

think they even make it anymore so

1:08

go figure one of ours died recently. I had

1:10

to go onto like eBay and go buy a

1:12

used controller so I could replace mine

1:14

and of course I've got this light because it's our it's our

1:16

headboard. I've got this light in a

1:19

couple of different scripts, multiple automations,

1:22

I don't want to like come up with a new name and then go change

1:25

everything so I have to go through this

1:27

process with the LIFX stuff where

1:29

you join to its Wi-Fi on your phone, you use their

1:32

little app to set it up initially, you get it on

1:34

your Wi-Fi network, then Home Assistant

1:36

will detect it if you have the LIFX integration and

1:38

what I do is before I take that

1:40

step

1:42

and I'm curious to know if the audience out there has a better way to do

1:44

this, I go rename the dead

1:46

one so I'll do like old

1:48

underscore headboard light

1:51

or whatever it might be

1:52

and I'll make sure I update that and sometimes

1:54

I'll even restart Home Assistant because I've noticed

1:57

when I rename devices it's not necessarily represented

1:59

everywhere right.

1:59

And so I'll sometimes even restart

2:02

Home Assistant. Then I will at that point, when

2:04

it detects the new light bar controller,

2:07

I then

2:07

go in there and add it and I give it the name

2:10

of the old one.

2:11

And that seems to work.

2:13

I don't do it a lot. So I don't know if I could recommend

2:15

it as the official process. Maybe there's

2:17

a better one. I would love just to like

2:19

a replace device option because these

2:21

things inevitably die. Or

2:24

I'd like to like have like a hide when device

2:26

doesn't respond because another

2:28

one is, I have smart plugs for

2:31

Christmas decorations.

2:32

I don't leave them plugged in throughout

2:34

the year when we don't have Christmas decorations

2:37

up. So I just, in my main dashboard

2:39

where I have all my devices, I just have these hairs.

2:43

You know, things are airing out. It just drives me crazy

2:45

to see it. I'd love a hide when inactive

2:47

kind of thing. But yeah, that's my

2:49

process. I don't know if it's great, Alex.

2:52

Well, whilst you were talking, I was sort of thinking, wouldn't

2:54

it be great if there was just a single pane

2:56

of glass with all of my entities in it?

2:59

But then I got thinking that exists,

3:01

that must exist in the interface. So I went digging.

3:05

And on the integrations page at the top, there

3:07

are four little buttons. And one of them

3:09

turns out is devices. Another

3:11

one is entities.

3:13

So under that menu, there

3:15

are, there is an easy way to get into

3:17

all of the different names

3:20

and sensors and all the rest of it that you've

3:22

got. However,

3:24

you know, if I just take, for

3:27

example, our Mazda is a 2022 model.

3:30

So it's got

3:33

a modem in it for some reason. And I

3:35

connected it into Home Assistant. So I could look at how much

3:38

petrol was in the tank. And if

3:40

I look at this thing, it's got, it

3:42

must be at least 15 or 20 entities, all

3:47

part of this same vehicle or

3:49

the same connected service. And

3:52

when you go in and try and figure out

3:54

which of these entities, because I mean, you

3:57

know, a Phillips hue motion

3:59

sensor, for example, also has a temperature and

4:01

humidity sensor in it. So it's

4:03

not uncommon for one entity to actually

4:05

have five or 10 related

4:08

things. So if I just click on one of

4:10

these items, I can of course go

4:13

to the related option in

4:15

the Home Assistant interface and look

4:17

at all of the related entities, but it's

4:19

not an editor that I'm in there. So

4:22

I guess what I'm kind of pitching here is

4:24

some kind of spreadsheet-esque

4:27

entity editor that I

4:29

could just actually go in and update in real time all

4:32

the device names and get everything just

4:34

formatted correctly. Right,

4:37

that was one of the reasons, one of the times I had

4:39

to redo Home Assistant. I was sort

4:41

of

4:42

reluctantly grateful because the

4:44

first time around using Home Assistant, I just

4:46

took all the default names that it just auto-generates

4:49

for stuff. And that was a nightmare

4:51

when I had six or seven sensors that all

4:53

essentially have the same name with a one, two, three,

4:56

four affixed to them. And

4:58

my life was so much easier when I realized I could go in there and

5:00

name them something that made sense to me. But

5:03

it was, like you said, so many

5:05

entities, so it's my sensors,

5:07

each sensor has seven or eight entities,

5:10

maybe nine entities that it adds to Home Assistant. It

5:12

was a nightmare. And so some way

5:15

to just, if you could go to that entities

5:17

or device screen and just go into mass edit mode, and

5:19

you're right, if it just turned into editable fields

5:21

where you could go in there and just change names and it would update,

5:24

that would be magic. One nice thing they've

5:27

added in the last year or so is

5:29

if you go to the device and you rename

5:31

it at its main device screen,

5:33

it will prompt you if you wanna rename all

5:36

the entities too. So you can do it one off

5:38

like that, which is what I do when I'm renaming

5:40

them to like the old device.

5:42

Well, that's what I've been messing around with these last few days,

5:45

but you have news of another variety,

5:47

don't you? I do. I am unemployed

5:49

officially as of this recording. I

5:51

have no current employer. Yeah,

5:56

I mean, I think for as long as I've made, you

5:58

were just getting the job at Red Hat maybe.

5:59

when I met you? Was that how it was?

6:02

Something right around then. So it's been five

6:04

and a half years if you can believe it. Yeah.

6:07

Obviously this show has only been going what,

6:09

four or so? Coming up to four in September

6:11

I think.

6:12

So yeah, I guess that

6:15

year that you and I first met Texas Linux

6:17

Fest the year before that, I was

6:19

probably fairly new in my first year or

6:21

so.

6:22

Okay, okay.

6:23

But yeah, it was just time for a change really,

6:26

you know, five and a half years at the same company.

6:28

I started as an infrastructure consultant in

6:30

the UK and that was

6:33

fine but there was just too much travel in

6:35

that role. And we were looking to emigrate anyway

6:37

so it was actually a perfect excuse. And

6:41

I found an open shift TAM job

6:43

dealing with commercial customers so

6:46

that meant that we moved to Raleigh even though

6:48

it was a fully remote position. Just

6:50

having the Red Hat Tower just there, HQ

6:53

there, I figured would be a good career move. Whenever

6:55

anybody came to the tower for a meeting or whatever

6:57

I could hang out and get FaceTime and all

7:00

the rest of it. And, you know, with

7:02

COVID that actually, I mean, for the first

7:04

year or two it was a really, that

7:06

bore out to be fairly

7:08

true. But after COVID

7:11

I've been to the tower, I don't know,

7:13

twice this year maybe, three times

7:15

at most. And I'm not alone. They've

7:18

closed a few floors of the building. It's

7:20

just a shadow of what it was

7:23

before COVID. So

7:24

being in Raleigh for Red Hat, lost

7:27

a lot of its benefits, I suppose.

7:31

So I wandered around within that role for a little while. I

7:33

was made senior and then I moved over to the

7:35

partner account team from the commercial

7:37

side. But more recently I took a cloud

7:39

success architect role and

7:41

that was to aid customers adopting open

7:44

shift in the cloud and that kind of thing.

7:46

However, right around that sort of time, three or four

7:49

months ago, was when Red Hat announced

7:51

the first round of layoffs.

7:53

The mood in the company really changed after

7:55

that. I can't, if you're not a

7:57

Red Hatter, it's hard to explain.

7:59

but people talk about the IBMification

8:03

of Red Hat and stuff like that. And for

8:05

the most part, it's just hype in

8:07

the media. It doesn't really exist. Of course,

8:09

there are higher level objectives from

8:12

financial targets and stuff like that that will

8:14

come down from upon high. But

8:17

in the day-to-day side of things, we've been largely

8:19

left alone

8:21

until these layoffs.

8:23

Now, I'm not saying IBM had anything to do

8:25

with them. In fact, we've been told categorically

8:28

that they did not.

8:30

However, for me, it was just a

8:32

shot across the bowels to say, OK,

8:35

let's see what else is out there. And I actually

8:37

posted on Twitter to say, hey, is

8:39

anybody hiring? And someone

8:42

from Tailscale reached out and said,

8:45

yeah, we're hiring. You should apply to come work

8:47

at Tailscale. So

8:49

that's what I'm going to go and do. That's

8:52

pretty great. I mean, we're huge fans of Tailscale.

8:55

So there's a handful of companies. I'd

8:58

be up for working for. And Tailscale is probably one of

9:00

them. And it's a totally

9:02

different kind of shift for you, right? Red

9:04

Hat's a very large company, tens of tens of thousands

9:07

of staff and contractors. And Tailscale

9:10

is at a totally different end of the spectrum there. Well,

9:12

when I joined Red Hat, it was around 11, 12, 13k,

9:14

something

9:17

like that, employees. I think

9:19

they were at like 22, 23,000 now. So

9:22

I mean, the growth has been spectacular. And

9:25

I don't know if it's true, but I've heard it's north

9:27

of 40 if you add contractors.

9:29

I couldn't comment on that. But in

9:32

terms of Red Hatters, certainly it's almost

9:34

doubled. I guess it pretty much has doubled

9:37

in the last five years or so. Yeah, crazy. But

9:39

Tailscale is a team of about 100 people. So

9:42

it's about as different as it could possibly be

9:44

if it was just me and someone sat in a room with a laptop.

9:47

Do you know if anybody else works in Raleigh? There is

9:49

a chap who is just moving from DC

9:52

locally. I'll spare his identity for now

9:54

in case he doesn't want me to say. Yes,

9:56

there is someone else in Raleigh, so that's nice.

9:58

I just wanted to say as well.

9:59

Well, I've had folks ask me on Twitter and stuff

10:02

like that if I was laid off. Nope,

10:04

not at all. It was completely my decision.

10:06

More so that this was just an opportunity that was so

10:09

good, I couldn't really pass it up. So I'm

10:11

gonna be working over there as a developer

10:14

advocate. So writing blog posts, dealing

10:16

with YouTube stuff and videos

10:18

and documentation and outreach

10:21

to various different teams and stuff like that.

10:23

And it's basically taking

10:26

what I've been doing

10:27

as a side hustle and turning it into

10:30

jobby job.

10:31

And I'm really excited to exercise

10:34

that creative muscle professionally.

10:36

It's not something I've done before, so.

10:38

And just totally selfishly, but you're probably going

10:40

to get more opportunities to meet up with self-hosted

10:42

audience, too. I will, starting almost

10:45

right away. Because DevOps

10:47

stays in Chicago is coming

10:49

up on August the 9th and 10th. And

10:52

I will be there with Tailscale. So

10:54

if you're in the area, I don't know

10:57

what the details are going to look like for a last minute

10:59

meetup. But it will either be the Tuesday or

11:01

the Wednesday evening. I need

11:03

to actually start working for the company next

11:05

week before I can find out those details.

11:08

And then I'll post something on the meetup page and

11:11

we'll mention it in various shows that we

11:13

can. I don't think this show will be out again before

11:15

then, maybe. I don't know. But

11:18

yeah, keep an ear to the ground for that one. And maybe

11:20

we'll just go to find a bar and get a couple of beers

11:22

or something. Nothing crazy.

11:24

Oh, I wish I could be there. Well, congratulations.

11:27

That's exciting news. And

11:29

I am

11:31

really looking forward to see where things go. Because

11:33

I think Tailscale's got a bright future ahead

11:35

of them. You're going to be riding that wave, Alex. Startup

11:37

life, baby. I am basically Ehrlich

11:40

Bachman personified. Yeah.

11:44

Yeah, all right. Well, let's talk about a company

11:46

that is in a different phase of

11:49

life where things aren't going so well. Some

11:51

of us are just running away from Reddit these days.

11:53

I don't know about you, but it's just not the same

11:56

anymore. And there's perhaps better self-hosted

11:58

ways to replace Reddit.

12:00

Yeah, we've all known. We've all been using

12:03

Reddit for years and thought, what

12:05

happens when this goes away?

12:07

And for me, the iOS

12:10

client Apollo stuff and the boot and, you

12:12

know, the API debacle that we've talked

12:14

about before, that was enough

12:17

of a push for me to be like,

12:19

okay, I am done investing time

12:21

and energy into this platform. It's still

12:23

obviously useful as a resource of human

12:26

knowledge, but

12:27

that's going to decay pretty fast if people start

12:29

leaving the platform. So it's going

12:32

to be interesting,

12:33

but that has left me with a hole to

12:35

fill, you know, the poop time.

12:37

You've got to have something to read or do. You know,

12:40

there's only so many times you can text Brent and say, Hey,

12:42

how you doing, bud? How's Berlin this week? And

12:45

we came across Wallerbag,

12:46

which is an offline article

12:49

reader in the style of something like

12:51

pocket or insta paper. And of

12:53

course

12:54

you can self-host it. They do actually offer

12:56

a hosted

12:59

version. It's MIT license though. There

13:01

is some Docker compose instructions available

13:04

and they make an API and

13:06

remote connection method available for apps

13:08

like

13:09

Android or iOS apps, browser

13:11

extensions. It's everything you

13:13

would expect from something like pocket, but

13:16

perhaps more of a power user version of it. Right?

13:18

Because,

13:20

because you get this API, there's

13:22

a gnome read it later app that plugs in with

13:24

it. It feels like, feels

13:28

like it's both replaces pinboard

13:30

and pocket for me, which I use both. I don't know if you're familiar

13:32

with pinboard, but I use both those right now. It's kind

13:34

of a way to save content for getting to later.

13:37

The nice thing about Wallerbag is how it presents

13:39

the articles to you just as basically

13:42

tiles. You can also change the interface

13:44

to be a list view and that kind of stuff, but

13:46

it downloads things to be offline. So

13:49

it saves the text of these articles. You

13:51

can add things like tags. You

13:53

can mark them as starred, you know, refetch

13:56

the original content is another option that's in

13:58

there. So if,

13:59

if it's a heavy updating

14:02

blog or something else, you

14:04

could update the content that way. It's also

14:06

got a jump to random button, which I really

14:08

appreciate. So if you're not quite sure what

14:11

you want to dig into at the moment, you just press the random

14:13

button and off you go.

14:14

So it works really nicely in the browser, no

14:17

complaints there at all. But obviously

14:19

the mobile experience is a huge part of why

14:21

I'm looking to do this kind of stuff. So

14:23

I ended up coming across a

14:26

tangentially related project called Fresh

14:28

RSS. And the reason I mentioned

14:31

this is because Wallabag exposes

14:34

the articles that you add to it as

14:36

an RSS feed. So I can then

14:39

bring that into my RSS reader, which

14:41

is actually spelled R-E-E-D-E-R,

14:44

the client on iOS.

14:44

I can bring in my Wallabag

14:47

feed as an RSS feed, as

14:49

my read it later queue. And so then

14:52

I've got one place to go for all the tech

14:54

blogs and all of the software

14:56

updates and GitHub release notes that

14:58

I want to follow as part of the

15:00

different feeds, as well as my

15:03

cultivated list of read it later articles.

15:06

That is really nice that it pulls it in there. Fresh

15:08

RSS is my favorite

15:11

of the self-hostable RSS applications

15:13

out there. It turns 10

15:14

this year,

15:16

which is really amazing. You can pop

15:18

podcast feeds in there too, which I really appreciate

15:20

because there's some podcasts I kind of follow

15:22

a little more casually. And so it's kind

15:24

of a great spot for it. And I suppose if you're on

15:27

mobile, you could probably just play it right there.

15:29

And of course, you can just pop in your OPML feed. So

15:31

if you're using something like Feedly

15:33

or another RSS app, you

15:35

can throw it in there. And

15:38

I seem to recall that the Linux server IO

15:40

folks have a fresh RSS

15:42

image. I'm thinking that's probably the one

15:44

I deployed the last time I tried it. You know,

15:46

what's funny is as part of all this, you

15:49

know, let's leave read it behind idea. I

15:52

started looking at the awesome

15:54

self-hosted list. And for some reason, I picked out

15:56

TT RSS, which is tiny, tiny RSS

15:59

reader. Right.

15:59

I've used that too. And I spent, it must have

16:02

been three

16:03

hours going through

16:05

the deployment of this thing. There are, it's just,

16:08

it's so opinionated. It's,

16:11

this developer has basically said, unless

16:13

you do things exactly my

16:16

way, including using the hard coded container

16:18

names,

16:19

this stack ain't gonna start.

16:22

And it's like, dude, the whole

16:24

point of containers is to remove

16:26

that it works on my machine problem.

16:29

And apparently I posted on a

16:31

Master Donald a little bit about it, had a bit of a rant. It

16:34

turns out that developer has some,

16:37

shall we say strong opinions about

16:39

the world. And he is not necessarily the

16:42

most friendly approachable chap.

16:44

So I haven't personally

16:47

dealt with that, but that's the reputation that the project

16:50

has, unfortunately. So it

16:52

was really a breath of, no pun intended,

16:54

fresh air when I started using

16:56

fresh RSS because I used the Linux server

16:58

image and within literally two minutes, I

17:01

had the instance up and running. It's

17:03

just so nice when stuff like that works. That

17:06

is the peak

17:08

self hosted Docker compose experience.

17:10

You set up your compose file, you do your

17:12

Docker compose up. And I

17:15

always, the first time I run it, I always just leave

17:17

the logs, the output right there on the command line and

17:19

just to see if there's any errors. And when it's

17:22

something simple and it fires right up, you're just, well,

17:25

wall bag is a little bit more involved. It's

17:27

not as bad as tiny, tiny RSS, but

17:30

it's, and it's not as simple as fresh RSS and

17:32

you don't necessarily need wall bag to use

17:34

fresh RSS. You could just throw an OPML file in

17:36

there and look at feeds, but the two together,

17:39

I think are a really compelling combination

17:41

because you can use one to capture

17:43

an archive stuff and the other than to review

17:45

it later in an application

17:47

of your choice that, you know, where developers

17:50

spend a lot of time just refining that

17:53

application to really view those feeds nicely

17:55

and clever. And you can point pretty much any

17:57

of those at fresh RSS. And so,

18:00

like the stack you've created here is like it's

18:02

three layers, right? Because you got wall beg for the capture.

18:04

You got fresh RSS for reviewing that and

18:07

other stuff. And then you need a really good

18:09

mobile RSS application.

18:12

But there's plenty of those on both Android

18:14

and iOS. So I mean, it's a pretty

18:16

clever stack. Now out of the box, I

18:18

ended up deploying both of these, I think,

18:20

with the SQLite database. You

18:23

can change that back end, particularly

18:25

on Wallabag. It supports Postgres and MySQL

18:27

as well.

18:28

With fresh RSS, the deal is the same thing.

18:31

SQLite by default, particularly in the Linux server

18:33

image, just for ease of setup. But if you

18:35

want to go in there and tune the Postgres or

18:38

MySQL databases as well,

18:40

you can also do that. So what you could potentially

18:43

have is just one database container shared

18:45

between these two apps, maybe, if you want to do that.

18:48

Although the overhead of having a second container

18:50

is so small,

18:51

I might just do that anyway. But they do

18:53

link really nicely together.

18:55

The big thing that I'm missing at the moment from

18:57

the Reddit days is not

19:00

the quality of comments, I will just say, because it's

19:02

been a real shock to my system, going back

19:04

to

19:05

purposefully written

19:07

articles and blog posts. You

19:09

think someone's put some time into crafting

19:12

this thing versus a comment

19:14

that someone's literally just s*** it out onto

19:16

Reddit that's given three seconds thought.

19:19

I mean, there are the odd exception on Reddit,

19:21

of course, but the majority of it

19:23

is just brain dumps into random

19:26

comments and arguments and that kind of stuff.

19:29

But along with that kind

19:31

of brain dump, low-quality comments

19:33

comes a lot of discovery,

19:35

which I'm really missing from this

19:38

solution at the moment. I'm having to actively go and

19:40

seek out blogs and go and

19:42

seek out content and stuff like that in a way I

19:44

haven't had to for a decade.

19:47

So if you have a list of

19:50

your favorite blogs or something like that, I've

19:53

been considering putting together a list

19:55

on the self-hosted wiki of your favorite

19:57

blog posts, of your favorite blogs and things.

19:59

that you follow in categories and

20:02

that kind of stuff. I'm not quite sure the format it will take

20:04

yet but I'll sort of I'll try and seed

20:06

that before this episode airs on Friday just

20:09

so that we can all get an idea of what to do. Open

20:11

a PR, open a merge request and we'll

20:14

take a look at it and get it merged into the wiki.

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21:27

Anybody know Dust?

21:30

This is an old one that's an old sort of deep pull

21:32

for some of the UK audience there but

21:35

I found an app recently called Dust

21:37

and this is a this builds itself as a more

21:39

intuitive version of DU

21:42

in Rust of course. We need the theme tune

21:45

at some point.

21:46

Wes is going to come riding over the sun

21:48

over the horizon. That'd

21:52

be so great that'd be so worth it. I

21:55

like the the visual layout of this I mean first of all

21:58

these are really handy on the command line because

21:59

because I'm often SSH-ing into my file

22:02

server or my media server, trying to figure

22:04

out what folders I can

22:06

go trim from. And so this gives you a really

22:09

nice tree layout

22:11

on the left-hand side. And on the right-hand

22:13

side, it gives you a bar graph. It's

22:16

a nice way to lay it out.

22:17

It is, and the way that I've been doing

22:19

it for the last several years has been

22:21

using NCDU. And

22:23

it's kind of slow to index

22:26

files. You get the impression it's actually reading every

22:28

single file one at a time, which

22:31

leads me on to my next pick, which is

22:33

an app called DUF, Duff. This

22:36

is disk usage free utility,

22:38

which also builds itself as a better

22:41

DF alternative. So DF and DU,

22:43

those two tools are pretty much interchangeable to

22:46

find out different amounts

22:47

of file system usage.

22:49

And the thing about Duff is it's unbelievably

22:53

fast.

22:54

And it outputs to JSON,

22:56

which I wouldn't use, but

22:58

I know there's guys out there that could actually,

23:01

if you could take that storage data output it to JSON,

23:03

you could feed that into something useful.

23:05

Well, some kind of alerting server or something like that,

23:08

maybe Prometheus would chew

23:10

that in and be like, hey, bud, you've only got 10% left

23:12

on this disk. You should probably

23:15

do something about that soon. Hey, bud. Hey,

23:17

hey, hey. Hey there, bud. You know, it's a funny thing to

23:19

say, and you're gonna have to just accept it. These

23:21

command line apps have beautiful interfaces. This

23:24

is a great example of super

23:26

easy to read, glanceable information

23:29

that anybody new or experienced

23:31

could look at this and understand what it's telling you. And

23:33

it's crazy fast, like you're saying. Yeah,

23:35

yeah, it is. And one of the issues that I

23:37

have with DF typically is, and

23:40

I've written a Bash alias, which removes

23:43

a lot of these tempfs devices and all the

23:45

Docker volumes and that stuff. But

23:47

when you type DF-H typically,

23:50

is it DF-H? Yeah, for human

23:52

readable. You get this list of like 500

23:54

devices. I'm

23:56

like,

23:57

no, dude, calm

23:59

down. I just want to see how much

24:01

free space I've got on

24:04

one of my hard drives. It's so

24:06

bad if you've got snaps too. If you've got a few snaps

24:08

running, it's...

24:09

Yeah, really bad. Now

24:13

I mentioned NCDU a couple of minutes ago. This

24:15

app, dua-cli,

24:18

dua-cli, is a disk

24:21

usage analyzer tool, which

24:23

is...

24:24

I know I said the last one was fast in terms

24:26

of glanceable information, but when you run this,

24:29

compared to NCDU, it literally

24:31

feels like...

24:32

How could it possibly be done already?

24:35

Yeah, it's like, does it already know some... Yeah,

24:37

I use this one on the regular because it

24:39

is so dang fast, dua,

24:41

and also 90% written in

24:45

Rust. So these Rust apps are

24:47

just ludicrous fast. Yep, they

24:50

really are. Now I came across these things

24:52

whilst I was browsing through, and this

24:54

is going to be a trigger topic maybe. We'll

24:56

see. We'll see how it goes. But

24:58

whilst I was browsing through Wimpi's world,

25:01

he has posted his NixOS

25:04

config. Oh

25:05

really? Okay. I looked at a bunch

25:07

of the packages that Wimpi was using and I found these apps

25:09

in there and I was like, oh hey, I

25:11

should try these things out. Oh, I

25:13

do that too. I look at people's Nix config and I find

25:15

the apps and I try them out. So

25:18

I think I've seen the light in the last week or so

25:20

with Nix. Now tell me what the

25:22

breakthrough is. Right. I'm going

25:24

to cut Nix a bit and I'm curious to know what the shift

25:27

was.

25:27

I can define my entire system

25:30

in one file.

25:33

Two technically, if you include the hardware config

25:35

file. But I can read it and

25:38

it's glanceable.

25:39

Almost like some of the command line tools

25:42

that we just mentioned. You

25:44

know, I can say, well, what are my users?

25:46

What is my static IP configuration?

25:49

You know, what are all the packages on this

25:51

box? The reproducibility

25:53

angle doesn't really bother me that much. It's

25:56

certainly not to the degree that

25:58

I

25:58

would. Nick's because

26:01

of the reproducibility.

26:03

But if I was a developer building development

26:06

environments and that kind of thing,

26:07

oh my goodness, this is like the best

26:10

thing ever. This is what containers promised,

26:13

but the the entropy of,

26:15

you know, apt repos even.

26:18

You can't guarantee that building a

26:20

ten-year-old software package is going to build today

26:22

because some of the upstream dependencies

26:25

will have gone away. And

26:27

with Nick's, they solve that by having a huge,

26:30

what they call, mono repo with

26:32

over 80,000 packages

26:35

in a single repo. And

26:37

they have every version of that package

26:40

that's ever been made stored

26:42

in that repo. It just boggles

26:44

the mind how expensive that storage must

26:47

be. I know. And what I love about

26:49

it is it's allowed

26:51

me to experiment with mixing

26:53

stable and unstable versions. So, for example,

26:56

if

26:57

you wanted to, you could run a sort

26:59

of rolling Nick's OS by going completely

27:01

unstable. But you could then

27:04

say, but always give me plasma

27:06

that's stable, or always give me stable

27:08

Firefox. And you could also do the flip. You could have

27:10

a completely stable system, but

27:12

always have the unstable version of some of your

27:14

favorite packages. And you can mix it, and Nick's

27:17

just totally manages it. And as you know,

27:19

and this is true for other systems as well, but what

27:21

I love compared to say apt

27:23

or DNF

27:25

is if something's going to break, and I'm not

27:27

just talking like at a package resolution

27:30

dependency level, I'm like talking the

27:32

configuration of the service that you're about to deploy

27:35

as well. Like if something's wrong in the config,

27:37

it will stop and it'll give you the line number

27:39

to go fix it. And so you catch stuff

27:42

before you actually deploy it. And that

27:45

is, to

27:46

me, so nice, because I can

27:48

sit there, I can tweak it. Okay, does it build now? Oh,

27:50

no. Okay, I gotta go fix. Okay, does it build now? Okay,

27:52

I got it. All right, now I know. And then when I'm

27:54

working on my desktop, because I have it running on my desktops

27:57

and laptops too. I

27:59

love using

27:59

I'm using VS Code to edit my Nix config because

28:02

I've got the Nix language extension.

28:04

And I just fire up VS Code,

28:07

change a line, save it, it

28:09

prompts me for the sudo password, and I

28:11

hit rebuild and I'm done. It's

28:13

such a slick way once you learn

28:16

to live in that Nix config. And I

28:18

know I could break it out more, but like you, I just put

28:20

it in the main file plus the hardware file, and

28:22

everything that describes my system is there. This

28:25

last week, Alex, I was reviewing the InfinityBook

28:28

Pro 14 from Tuxedo, and

28:30

I wanted to try Tuxedo OS for a bit,

28:32

and then I wanted to put Nix OS on there. And

28:35

I loaded a bare Nix OS system on there, just

28:37

a real basic kind of install, just command

28:40

line,

28:40

and

28:41

SSH'd over a Nix config, changed

28:44

the hostname, changed a couple

28:46

of the bootloader things, and that was it. Rebuilt

28:49

the system, rebooted, and I had a full

28:51

working desktop system with all my applications.

28:54

It is kind of crazy, and I think the

28:57

use case really for me is

28:59

as a somewhat, you

29:02

know,

29:02

educator on the internet of

29:05

some description anyway, you know,

29:07

perfectmediaserver.com,

29:09

I've often struggled with the

29:12

fact that, you know, compared to something like,

29:14

say, Unraid, which is flash

29:17

this image onto a USB key and boot,

29:20

you've had to go through the process,

29:23

and admittedly it's gotten a lot easier over the

29:25

last decade, but you've had to go through the

29:27

process of installing Linux from an ISO

29:29

on the bare metal hardware.

29:32

Then once you've done that, you know, if you

29:34

were to follow my dog food all the way through, you

29:36

then have to go and learn Ansible and configure

29:38

these complex playbooks and understand

29:41

SSH and just all this stuff

29:43

that

29:44

I don't think is

29:46

unreasonable to learn for

29:48

someone who's in the industry, but if

29:50

all you want to do is just set up a simple file

29:52

server that's got some TV shows and

29:54

some movies on it, for example,

29:57

honestly, it's a bit much, whereas

29:59

if we tell people to install Nix

30:02

OS for example and then I say oh by

30:04

the way you just copy pasta this exact

30:07

Nix configuration and by the

30:09

way you'll get ZFS out of the box you'll

30:12

get hardware acceleration for your iGPU

30:14

out of the box and you can just set

30:16

your static IP here and your users

30:19

and you can install a desktop if you want to.

30:22

There is no downside there

30:25

is no downside and that's really what hit me

30:27

this week. It feels like we

30:29

it's finally a version of Linux that's fully managed

30:32

and controlled the way Linux should be. Like

30:34

a lot of times on a system

30:36

that's RPM based or dev based

30:39

not 100% of the time but most the

30:41

time I don't uninstall software I

30:44

just install software because uninstalling

30:46

software every now and then goes

30:49

awry and I've got I've got Ubuntu

30:51

systems that I've been running since 2018

30:53

and

30:54

I'm probably underestimating if I say

30:57

three times a year I end up having to break

30:59

down to like a TTY and

31:01

like resolve a boot issue or solve some

31:03

sort of broken package problem and dash

31:06

dash fix broken install or whatever

31:08

it is yeah yeah and then of course

31:10

you gotta you gotta go do the auto remove stuff

31:12

and you gotta make sure like you don't fill up the boot part

31:14

like all these silly things that

31:17

Nix just takes care of ahead of time and

31:19

catches it before it does things and

31:21

you just follow that

31:24

which is essentially like YAML in the Nix config

31:26

and it it's just easy to read and it makes sense and it

31:28

doesn't take a very long

31:30

time to pick up

31:31

if you're willing to just take it a little bit at a time and the

31:34

fact that there's so many good and yours you'll

31:36

have it linked in the show notes is a great clean

31:38

example there's there's a lot of really complicated

31:41

Nix configs out there but what I like about yours is it's

31:43

just right you know and I think it's a good example

31:45

for people to look at and this defines a system

31:48

it's 115 lines

31:50

with some comments in there and stuff like that and

31:53

it defines the entire environment that's

31:55

just it now if you

31:57

are looking to get more complicated

31:59

Oh boy, will Nick's

32:02

OS let you?

32:03

I thought, you know, I was watching

32:06

some YouTube videos about it and doing some research

32:08

and I started going down the rabbit hole of flakes.

32:12

Now these things are,

32:15

to quote Douglas Adams, big. So

32:18

mind-bogglingly big that you won't believe

32:20

just how big slash complex they

32:22

are. They must be a software

32:25

developer's wet dream because they are

32:27

just unbelievably difficult

32:29

to get started with. And I really

32:32

tried. I really did. I spent two or three evenings

32:35

and

32:35

a good chunk of my weekend trying to

32:38

implement these flakes.

32:41

And the idea behind them is as part of this

32:43

reproducibility problem, they

32:46

create a .lock file. So

32:48

you have a flake.nix file that you put some stuff

32:50

into and then alongside it you have a flake.lock

32:53

file. And that creates a

32:55

hermetically sealed timestamp

32:58

for all the dependencies in that

33:00

.nix flake file to say

33:02

on this exact moment in history, this

33:06

flake must always be built against this

33:08

.lock file and you will always use

33:10

this exact version of these packages

33:12

forever, no matter what.

33:15

I understand that that is actually

33:17

amazing and it solves a lot of problems for

33:19

a lot of people.

33:20

For me, it doesn't solve a problem that

33:22

I have. What it does do is

33:25

it creates a whole plethora

33:27

of unbelievably complicated,

33:30

like that house of cards just

33:33

trying to understand how the

33:35

Nix OS language works. Okay, that's fine.

33:38

It's not that complicated really to

33:40

understand. I mean, I'm used to Python.

33:42

I'm not used to Haskell

33:45

or anything like that that's a bit more close

33:48

to the Nix OS language. But I think if

33:50

you're rooted in the world

33:52

of being a software developer,

33:54

maybe like Wes, then Nix

33:56

OS and flakes will just

33:58

be right up your street. but for me

34:01

it's just so difficult

34:03

to understand what the concepts even are.

34:06

I mean

34:07

I understand the hermetically sealed part,

34:08

that bit's easy to understand, but

34:11

everything else is just like,

34:14

okay so I need to inherit this from here

34:16

and then I need to recreate Nix packages

34:19

over there with this syntax and then I import

34:21

it over here and like before you know it you've

34:23

got 15 files in a directory and you're

34:25

like

34:26

well the whole drawer

34:28

of this thing was the single config

34:31

file of beauty, of simplicity

34:34

and I understand you know looking at wimpies

34:36

config for example he's

34:39

got one flake file that can define like 15

34:41

systems.

34:44

Okay that is that is cool

34:47

but I could just have 15 files

34:49

that define 15 systems without all

34:51

of the complexity. I don't know

34:53

if that makes me a Luddite or what but

34:56

I've really tried with flakes but they're just

34:59

they're just too hard. I feel like this

35:01

is the number one sentiment I hear when the audience

35:04

tries out Nix and it's exactly how I feel too Alex

35:06

and I think the way I describe it is

35:09

all of the language that talks about flakes

35:11

sort of presumes a bunch

35:14

of tribal knowledge already and

35:16

so you almost have to spend a day

35:19

learning how to speak flake and ease

35:21

before you can even kind of start to wrap your

35:23

head around it and that's such a huge barrier

35:25

and I've tried to I've tried to explain to

35:27

the folks like we have a Nix nerds matrix chat

35:30

room which is a great chat room a great resource

35:32

and the folks in there know it so well they're just like oh what are

35:35

you talking about you do this this that and there's no big problem you've got three

35:37

other ways you can do it it's easy. It's

35:39

like when you go to a mechanic shop and you're like well I've

35:41

got this issue and he's like oh well you just need to replace

35:44

the Regina Phalange flux

35:46

capacitor and you're like okay.

35:48

Once

35:49

you got a lift just put on your lift and

35:52

I look at it as I already feel

35:54

like Nix is so far exceeding

35:57

my expectations like I've got not only do you have

35:59

what you

35:59

can define in the

36:01

Nix configuration. But one of the things

36:03

I love as somebody who's just trying stuff out all the time is

36:06

Nix shell dash P package name and Nix

36:08

just builds a temporary environment

36:11

with that application. And then when you close it, it's

36:13

ephemeral, it's gone. And so I can just

36:15

pull down any old package for a few minutes and

36:17

use it. And that combined

36:19

with what I can do with the just configuration

36:22

already, I'm just like, I

36:24

don't yet have the need for flakes because I

36:27

never had that on any other distribution. And it's already

36:29

doing more for me than any distribution already has

36:31

done. So I've been happy. But

36:34

I do feel like a bit like you're like, am

36:36

I, let I hear my missing out on something? Because

36:38

the thing I always hear about flakes

36:40

is well, then you get home manager. Yes. And

36:43

home manager is really where the like

36:45

power tools are at. And I do feel

36:47

that draw.

36:48

Me too. And I will

36:50

keep plugging away at flakes, but there

36:52

just came a point where I'd spent maybe

36:55

three or four days

36:56

trying to understand it. And I was

36:58

like, this is beyond me. And it's not

37:00

toot my own horn. It's not often that that

37:02

happens with Linux and stuff these days.

37:05

So it's kind of a deflating feeling to

37:08

realize that and then admit it publicly in a podcast

37:11

as well. So I spoke

37:14

to a few people on Mastodon about

37:17

trying to get some help and some example flake

37:19

configs I could understand. And I think

37:22

another part of the issue to build on everything

37:24

you've just said

37:25

is everybody does it slightly

37:28

differently.

37:29

And so there isn't like a recipe

37:32

and because they're still officially an experimental

37:34

feature in the Nix world,

37:37

the official documentation

37:40

doesn't really cover flakes at all, even

37:42

though they are, everybody says, the

37:45

future. So

37:46

for me, for now, I'll be sticking to

37:48

configuration.nix because it's something

37:51

my simple brain can comprehend and

37:53

understand nice and easily. And

37:55

I'll probably migrate perfect

37:57

media server maybe by the end of the

37:59

year.

37:59

I'll rewrite that a little bit, just

38:02

towards NixOS because it really, for

38:05

most people, is going to do everything

38:08

that you need.

38:10

Tailscale.com slash self-hosted.

38:13

Go check it out right now and get a free personal account

38:15

for up to 100 devices and it's a great way

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38:24

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38:28

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and so easy. It's going to change your networking

39:39

game. So support the show and try

39:41

it for 100 devices for free on a personal

39:44

account. Just go to tailscale.com

39:46

slash self-hosted. That's it. And

39:48

you get started for 100 devices right there. Tailscale.com

39:51

slash self-hosted.

39:59

But we did jelly fin January and for

40:02

the most part it's been going pretty well. There was a couple

40:04

of rough edges that we touched on back

40:06

in February. But

40:07

I've been having a great time over there on the jelly

40:09

fin source. But

40:12

you had a dad fail the other day. Oh,

40:14

it was embarrassing Alex. Worst

40:17

case. Worst case. One

40:19

of those days where

40:21

literally all day long the

40:23

wife and the kid are talking about how

40:25

we're going to watch Dune tonight. We're going to have dinner.

40:28

We're going to pop popcorn. We're going to sit down and we're

40:30

going to watch the whole Dune movie, which is a long movie.

40:34

I think great. I have a cache locally on my jelly fin

40:36

server here in the RV.

40:38

Plenty of charge in the batteries. We're

40:40

good to go. I fire up infuse

40:43

and it's

40:45

going great. You know, it's a long movie. We're an

40:47

hour and 25 minutes into it and

40:50

I accidentally bump the Apple TV remote.

40:52

And this thing, if you fart on this Apple TV

40:54

remote, it triggers stuff.

40:57

And it closed the app.

40:59

Okay. So I relaunched

41:01

the app and it resumes the app and it tries to start resuming

41:04

the video,

41:05

but it fails and it goes back to the main screen and airs

41:07

out with the generic air.

41:09

And it says, okay, would you like to resume in an hour and 25 minutes?

41:12

I say yes. And

41:14

after it waits and it waits and it waits,

41:16

it resumes the movie at like six minutes. Then

41:20

I pause and I wait and I wait and it resumes

41:22

at like 25 minutes. It's having a buffer

41:24

at each time. And so

41:26

we wait about 10 minutes trying to figure

41:29

out what's wrong with it. And when we finally just decided

41:31

to wait and let it buffer and then try to get to our time,

41:33

it's playing just fine for about 10 more minutes.

41:36

And then it crashes.

41:38

It stops. The stream just stops. So

41:41

I check the server. Everything's looking okay. I

41:43

think, all right, we're going to leave infuse. Let's

41:45

go use Swift fin. You know, that's a newer

41:48

app built for Jelly fin. Let's use

41:50

Swift fin. So I go over

41:52

to Swift fin, get it all configured

41:54

again because for whatever reason it lost the config. That's

41:57

fine. So I set it all up again, get it connected to my Jelly fin

41:59

server.

42:00

Hit play and

42:01

it's the same exact

42:04

experience It it's exactly

42:06

what like what happened in fuse where it plays six minutes

42:08

instead of an hour 25

42:10

We gave up with 20 minutes left on the movie

42:13

Ultimately, we gave up because we were having

42:15

so many problems once that remote got

42:17

bumped We never were able to really get going

42:19

again. And man is that embarrassing,

42:22

you know Made your dad fail

42:24

and then the thing that really stung

42:27

Is I opened up the Plex app which is configured

42:30

to connect to the Plex instance I still have running back

42:32

at the studio. So over my star link and

42:35

Opened up Dune just

42:37

to see and fast-forwarded and

42:39

went to the hour 25 mark

42:41

15 seconds or so after buffering it

42:44

played just fine same file. Yep same

42:46

file

42:47

Same file cuz I copied it from that server

42:49

to my local copy because that's where my mind went immediately

42:52

And it's not even a necessarily it's not a big file. It's a

42:54

1080p file It's you know, it's like 13 gigs.

42:57

I didn't get it. I didn't get a super high res version

42:59

either

43:01

As you combine that with the fact that Wes

43:03

and Brent want to do watch along

43:05

with Star Trek strange new worlds And I think the Plex

43:08

feature sets just a lot more

43:10

robust there for the watch

43:12

along stuff I'm feeling

43:14

like the Plex siren after like six months

43:16

of being really happy with jelly fin Yeah,

43:19

what I mean, we both still keep them knocking around

43:21

anyway

43:22

You know prologue on iOS is the

43:24

premiere audio book Client

43:27

and you will not convince my wife otherwise even

43:30

though audio bookshelf has had a lot of improvements

43:32

over the last year or two

43:35

Yeah, I mean for me if I open up Plex

43:37

or jelly fin on the client side, I mean, it's not

43:39

it's not a big deal Is it as

43:41

long as I guess you still try and default to jelly

43:44

fin then? Everything's

43:46

okay ish. What

43:48

about all of our concerns of You

43:51

know Plex as a company in their direction and

43:53

scraping data and they just laid people

43:55

off So clearly, you know, they're gonna have to find

43:57

a revenue stream from somewhere. I

43:59

still will I still maintain those concerns.

44:02

I also I think I just think jelly fin is

44:04

a better experience offline I mean, yes, I know

44:06

I can go allow the land access and all that kind of

44:08

stuff in Plex, but it's a workaround I don't like

44:10

it. I don't like any of that. I don't like having to have

44:12

a Plex account You know, even

44:14

though I'm a lifetime past subscriber I still

44:16

just just want to play my local files and

44:19

I don't want anybody to know anything about what I'm watching

44:21

Yes, the tin foil has approach

44:24

but then you know you're sitting there trying to watch a movie

44:27

and You're in the last 20 finally

44:29

you make it the last 20 minutes and you give up

44:32

That is almost a disqualifier. You know

44:34

that moment.

44:35

Well, do you want me to ruin it for you? Hmm.

44:37

Okay, everybody lives Or

44:40

dies. I don't know I'm

44:45

I don't have the time right now. So I'm probably not gonna swap

44:48

out but You

44:49

know, I guess to finish the movie We're gonna watch it off Plex

44:52

remotely instead of watching my local copy over

44:54

the layer you filthy Proprietary

44:56

garbage supporting man you I know

44:59

it's not even local It's my own cloud but

45:01

still somebody else's computer right just my computer

45:04

somebody it's another place I actually had a listener

45:06

right in just sent me a message in discord

45:08

this week to say because

45:10

of you I was going to put

45:12

something in Trello the other day and

45:15

Then I was thinking

45:17

do I trust this company with my data?

45:20

No, I Don't and

45:22

so they went and found a self-hosted alternative the name

45:25

escapes me right now

45:26

But I think it's a very important principle this

45:29

kind of guilt of using

45:31

the non perfect solution

45:34

Plex is the perfect example.

45:36

We know there are flaws with their business

45:38

model with them as a company and

45:40

all the rest of it

45:42

but sometimes it just gets

45:44

the job done and I

45:46

don't know if I don't know if Just

45:48

simply by the fact that we're using something like

45:50

Plex puts us in the top 1% of media

45:54

consumers anyway So

45:57

people probably aren't looking at us, but you

45:59

know there is this sense of guilt for any

46:02

self hosted for any hosted

46:04

service that we should be doing

46:06

the most pure, the most technically, you

46:09

know,

46:10

perfect approach. And I think

46:12

one of the things I've always tried to do on this show is

46:14

kind of lean into the pragmatism angle.

46:18

It's a fine line to walk. I'd love

46:20

to hear what you think. So please write in at self

46:22

hosted show slash contact.

46:24

Yes. And speaking of the feedback, Jericho

46:27

wrote in. He wanted to share something called

46:29

Post Moogle. He says it's

46:31

a program after you get a self hosted mail server.

46:34

It'll let you set up an email server that is also

46:36

a

46:36

matrix bridge. Why

46:39

would I want to do that, then? I would. You know what? Well,

46:42

if I could have

46:44

it's kind of like RSS in a way, if I could have

46:46

my emails output to a room, if

46:49

you're already living in element, let's say.

46:52

You know, or maybe it's Slack, whatever it may be, but if you're already living

46:54

in this case, an element, then it's kind of

46:56

nice to have a room that collects notifications

46:59

because I can I can get so busy. I can, you

47:01

know, go a day without checking my email and then

47:03

I get a bunch of upset people in there. So I could

47:05

kind of see it.

47:06

I don't know. I can kind of see it. Moogle Post

47:09

Moogle.

47:09

So we'll put a link in the show notes. I just wasn't sure

47:12

of quite what the use case was, but that makes sense.

47:14

Yeah. Or maybe like in our case, right? If like

47:17

people wrote into the self hosted show and

47:19

we had a shared room between us, then we would

47:21

both get a notification in that shared room about an email. That

47:23

could be cool. Martin writes in, it

47:25

says, hey, Chris and Alex, longtime listener. I've

47:28

been on the search for a note app and I know Chris was

47:30

too lately. I've been finding a lot of value out of

47:32

notion like note apps. I

47:34

stumbled on any type. It's open source

47:37

and encrypted and has mobile and desktop

47:39

clients.

47:40

Mm hmm. Any type dot I. Oh,

47:42

and they offer a self hosting set up. It is an alpha

47:45

right now. Well,

47:46

that's awfully helpful.

47:48

We have a bunch of really good recommendations that

47:50

come in like on stuff to try.

47:53

And it's hard to know which one to pull the trigger

47:55

on. But there's a few in here

47:57

this week that look really good. You know, the.

48:00

really, it's not frustrating, but

48:02

it is a little bit frustrating, is

48:05

at some point you've just got to stick a pin in it and actually

48:07

pick one. And I feel like I just

48:09

picked Obsidian

48:11

as my de facto,

48:13

you know,

48:14

personal knowledge system,

48:16

replacing TiddlyWiki from before

48:18

then.

48:19

And then AnyType comes

48:22

along with this beautiful looking

48:24

application and crazy

48:26

fast load times and secure

48:29

and decentralized sync as part of the product.

48:31

You know, it's like,

48:33

oh, I just got it right.

48:35

And I'm not going to help too, because Jin from Mateek,

48:38

Jin from Mateek this week says he

48:40

found an agile tool that he loves that replaces

48:43

things like Jira for him and some

48:45

ticket tools. It's called Taiga, T-A-I-G-A-I

48:49

dot IO. And then on top of that,

48:51

he has found a killer outlining application,

48:54

which I've been checking out since Coder Radio, and it's called

48:56

GetOutlined.com.

48:58

And you can also self-host that.

49:01

So those are a couple of,

49:02

well, we have some really good, this is like an app pick

49:05

extravaganza episode.

49:07

I'll tell you what. We'll make sure to put links to

49:10

all of these things in the show notes, just

49:12

in case you want to check them out.

49:16

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50:24

And we got some great boost coming into

50:26

the show. Everybody's been really, really supportive

50:28

since episode 100. And LegitSalvage

50:31

came in with 75,000 sats. He's our

50:33

baller booster. He's been catching up. And

50:35

he has a brand new, beautiful baby girl.

50:39

And, well, soon, in about 12 weeks. And

50:41

he is on the hunt for a proper

50:43

baby monitor solution. He has IP cameras

50:45

for his home with a DVR. And

50:48

he's thinking about just adding a new camera to

50:50

her nursery. So that would be a normal solution.

50:52

However, since she's a preemie baby,

50:55

lung development and breathing will be a factor when

50:57

bringing her home. So for peace of mind,

50:59

I've been looking at video monitors that include visual

51:02

sensors to monitor breathing, like

51:04

the NAMP Pro or Eufy Space View. These

51:07

don't appear to have non-connected options.

51:09

Or if they do, it's not clear these features would work without

51:12

phoning home. I would suspect that

51:14

as well. Given all the incidents

51:16

of baby monitors being hacked, he's concerned

51:18

about it. And he wants to know if we have any suggestions.

51:21

He says he appreciates the content. It's a welcome

51:23

distraction from the recent chaos in life. Yeah, man, that's

51:25

gotta be...

51:27

That is not an easy time. Well,

51:29

speaking from experience, my daughter arrived

51:33

seven, eight weeks early, not quite 12,

51:37

like you, good sir. But what

51:39

I will say is now she's two and a half,

51:41

fully healthy and perfect, and

51:44

running about with baby shark towels on her head,

51:47

and will not eat her dinner without her flamingo

51:49

hat on. So it does

51:51

get easier. Yeah, 12 weeks before due date

51:54

is pretty serious, right?

51:55

Yeah, 12 weeks is not, you

51:57

know, it's no trifling matter.

51:59

So what I will say is first of all, if you

52:02

wanna reach out personally to me and

52:04

have a chat about someone who's gone through it recently,

52:06

the HoldnQ thing, you know,

52:09

it's a lot to process. So please feel free

52:11

to reach out. But secondly, what

52:13

I will also say is that we've

52:16

had a huge amount of success with the

52:18

Wyze cameras.

52:20

We've put them into a black hold

52:23

VLAN so that they're offline, they can't reach

52:25

the internet, but the, obviously the initial

52:27

registration they have to, but after

52:29

that they don't. And I can

52:31

connect to those cameras. I'm not running

52:34

a special firmware or anything like that over

52:37

the LAN. It does the discovery over the LAN and then

52:39

does a peer-to-peer

52:40

video stream from one device to

52:42

the other. Now, another piece of advice

52:44

for you, you mentioned

52:47

having sensors to check things like breathing

52:50

and all the rest of it.

52:51

The advice we were given, and in

52:53

hindsight, I really am glad

52:55

that we were given it, was don't fall

52:58

into the trap of getting these socks that measure

53:00

heart rates and apps,

53:03

because they just cause a lot of false positives and a lot

53:05

of anxiety and that kind of stuff. If

53:07

you're really worried about breathing and that

53:09

kind of stuff, you can put like vibration

53:12

things under the mattress, but

53:14

honestly, from my

53:16

personal opinion, the

53:19

medical staff won't send the baby home

53:21

until they're completely confident that the baby

53:23

is ready and healthy. So

53:26

from my perspective, I wouldn't,

53:28

I know it's difficult not to want to do something

53:30

as a new parent, everything

53:33

you can.

53:34

It's very difficult to just close

53:36

the door on the nursery and say, hey, right, I

53:39

will see you in the morning and

53:41

not sleep with the phone wide

53:44

open all night looking at the screen, that

53:46

kind of thing. But

53:48

it does get easier. I will say that as well.

53:51

The first

53:52

six months are the hardest. And so far, everything

53:54

after that has been downhill for us,

53:56

so hang in there, bro. And like I

53:58

say, reach out if you are.

53:59

If you want to chat some more. Yes. And thank you

54:02

for the support as well. Hurricane

54:04

Hernandez comes in with 51,273 sats. Longtime

54:09

listener, first time booster. He's

54:11

been around for a long time. In fact, he says he goes way back

54:13

with you probably since 2014 when you guys were

54:16

regulars on the Lime Tech forums. Does that ring

54:18

a bell? Yes, it does. Hurricane Hernandez.

54:21

I think, I think we first met

54:23

when we were trying to stream Formula

54:25

one. Like I was going to get a Sky Sports

54:27

subscription in the UK. This well before

54:29

F1 TV was a thing. And I was

54:32

going to get a Sky TV subscription in the UK,

54:34

figure out how to strip the DRM from it and

54:36

then stream it to his house using

54:37

TV head end. And we were going to split the

54:39

cost that way. That never happened. But that was what we were

54:41

talking about back then, I think. It

54:44

gives you a hard time too, for being a VM believer

54:47

when he was pushing containers back

54:49

in the day. There was, there was a time

54:51

before Alex used containers. You

54:53

know, that was a thing. Yeah.

54:56

I was a VM user myself. Still at VMs. Come on. And

54:58

he also continued with another boost. He says, I wrote

55:01

a blog post as to why I'm leaving Ansible

55:03

for Nix. You can find it on my blog. We'll put

55:05

a link. It's goodbye Ansible.

55:07

I'm here to challenge you to take the Nix OS challenge.

55:09

You'll find I have replicated parts of the perfect

55:12

media server in my Nix repos. Have a look. Stand

55:14

by my decision to use containers over VMs, just

55:16

like I stand my decision on my decision to

55:18

use Nix over Ansible. All

55:21

hail from the great white North in Alberta.

55:24

You know, I know we just talked about Nix earlier in the

55:26

show, but it does feel like

55:28

I'm seeing Nix everywhere at the moment.

55:30

I know, I

55:31

know I'm, I'm contributing to that

55:34

problem by talking about it on this here show, but you

55:36

know, Chris, you've been talking about it for a, what, a year

55:38

or more now. Yeah. I definitely

55:40

noticed it's been picking up. Yeah. Yeah.

55:43

I think it's solving more and more problems

55:45

as people get comfortable with container technology

55:47

and they get comfortable with all these other kind of concepts,

55:50

it's not that much more of a leap to then

55:52

start wrapping your head around Nix. Well, why

55:54

do I need a, an

55:56

operating system that I can build up a ton

55:58

of cruft in?

55:59

not just have it be declaratively

56:02

configured, you know, all that stuff. So,

56:05

you know, you're right Hurricane Hernandez, as usual,

56:08

turns out you're ahead of the curve there, good sir, and

56:11

Nix is the only way, apparently. This

56:14

is the way. Of course not, of course not. There

56:16

are situations still, of course, where one

56:19

is better than the other, but. You know,

56:21

it's a lot of fun, it's putting the old Nix package manager

56:23

on macOS, get rid of Brew and go to Nix

56:25

on macOS. See, I do have a brand

56:27

new 16 inch MacBook

56:29

Pro downstairs for

56:32

my stuff with Tailscale next week.

56:35

And so I will start with Nix on there. I will

56:37

be, I've been using Brew forever,

56:39

but this is the chance. Greeno

56:41

comes in with 24,543 sets. Long

56:44

time listener since 2019, first time booster

56:47

he's been catching up. He had some downtime recently and

56:49

heard the discussion about backups for the wives. I've

56:51

been waiting until I got caught up to see if anybody else mentioned a

56:53

solution.

56:55

He says, I think I'll give it a go.

56:56

We all know that 95% of our home labs would

56:59

be left to dust should anything happen to us.

57:01

Even the best documentation would be wasted in the end.

57:03

And let's be honest, nobody wants to take on

57:05

someone else's kit.

57:07

So I have a separate backup drive just for

57:09

the wife

57:10

that gets updated during maintenance tasks once a

57:12

week. I update my lab, my hose, my

57:14

containers, et cetera. And the last thing I have on the list

57:17

is I plug in the wife's drive and I run a script

57:19

to update with only what she cares about.

57:21

Things like photos, important documents,

57:23

the home viges and things like that. The files

57:26

get set to read only afterwards to ensure that nothing

57:28

accidentally gets deleted. The drive is encrypted

57:30

with Lux. And to make sure it all works,

57:33

she uses this to access files and photos she needs

57:35

to get from her elementary OS laptop.

57:38

All her files are accessible on the network, but

57:40

making sure she checks the backup drive keeps me feeling

57:42

warm and fuzzy knowing it works. Congrats

57:45

on self-host to 100 guys. And here's

57:47

to many more to come. That's such a great

57:49

idea. It's so

57:51

blindingly, obviously simple.

57:54

And just uses all

57:56

of the technologies that are

57:58

free and available.

57:59

to us anyway, like Lux and all

58:02

the rest of it. So that's a great idea.

58:04

Just a couple more boosts to round us out.

58:06

Thank you everybody who does BoostIn. We'll try to fit a few

58:08

more in. Bleetube comes in

58:10

with 21,007 sats from Podverse. Hey,

58:13

you teased your Noster end pub at the end of the last

58:15

show, but I don't see it in the show notes.

58:18

I know, I got that a lot from the emails

58:20

and the boosts. I don't know how to link

58:22

a Noster pub. I

58:24

took a crack at it and I couldn't

58:26

figure it out. And when I tried linking, because

58:28

I tested with somebody, this isn't a real

58:31

active profile. I'm like, okay. So

58:33

until I'm really getting serious about it, I probably won't

58:36

worry about it too much, I suppose. Is

58:38

it not just x.com at

58:40

Chris Lass?

58:41

Too

58:43

soon, Alex, too soon. I

58:46

don't even like thinking about x.com. And

58:48

you notice it's the X11 logo too. Like,

58:50

come on, man. Come on. I

58:53

think we got a boost from Jared in Amelia,

58:56

Idaho. No, Idaho, Ohio,

58:58

Ohio. I'm just checking right now on the map,

59:00

Ohio. He sent us 10,001, seven

59:03

sats and he gives us a zip code so we could kind of

59:05

figure out where he's at. He says, he's been a long time listener.

59:08

And I like that, thank you. And Panicked

59:10

Ketchup, which is one of the best usernames out there. 13,000 sats

59:14

is our last booster this week. Cause you know, we

59:16

got runtime here. He says, I've

59:18

been running a self-hosted Unifi controller on an old

59:21

NUC with Ubuntu. I always kind of

59:23

get nervous to do an update on the Ubuntu

59:25

or the controller software. I was thinking about getting

59:28

the Unifi Cloud Key Generation 2 with

59:30

the hard drive. I'm not sure if a dedicated

59:32

device is the best option other than the option

59:35

of doing a Ubiquiti hosted, but

59:37

I don't think I want to go that route. What

59:39

do you guys think?

59:41

If you're deploying this commercially, so you're

59:43

running an MSP or something like that, you're charging

59:46

people money.

59:47

Absolutely. Cloud key all the way

59:49

and just don't worry about it. For

59:53

home use though, I would say a self-hosted controller

59:55

is

59:56

more than adequate. You can back up the

59:58

configs, you can export.

59:59

them. I forget what the format is off

1:00:02

the top of my head but for example

1:00:04

when I did the 10 gig network upgrade in the spring

1:00:06

I exported all of

1:00:08

my devices from one site and

1:00:11

imported them to another controller

1:00:13

that I hosted in this building. So I used to only

1:00:15

have a couple of Wi-Fi access points and then I went all

1:00:18

in on the Unify ecosystem and went to like 20

1:00:20

devices here so I figured let's pull

1:00:22

it out of the cloud and bring it in-house and

1:00:25

that process was really painless. Don't

1:00:27

fix what ain't broke you know just

1:00:29

make sure

1:00:29

you've got regular backups and use you know

1:00:32

ZFS data sets for the app data and you'll

1:00:34

be fine.

1:00:35

And maybe this is a

1:00:36

something you just feel more comfortable running in

1:00:39

a VM and you can take snapshots before

1:00:41

major software upgrades. And

1:00:44

since we've gone so hard on Nix this episode I'll

1:00:46

make one more Nix mention and

1:00:48

that is just that this is one of the things you don't

1:00:51

worry about in Nix anymore is these upgrades

1:00:53

breaking things. If it does

1:00:55

by some chance

1:00:57

build and still break you just select

1:00:59

the last version and grub and go back to the way it

1:01:01

was. That's really nice but

1:01:03

you can replicate that with any distribution with file

1:01:05

system snapshots or maybe even more simply VM

1:01:08

snapshots.

1:01:09

Good luck Panicked I think that's a good project

1:01:11

to take on though. Thank you everybody

1:01:13

that boosted in I am sorry we did not get to all of them

1:01:15

but we do read all of them we share them in our team chat

1:01:18

and we store all of them in the show docs

1:01:20

so this episode's doc will have your boost forever. We

1:01:22

had 31 boosts

1:01:25

across 22 boosters totally. Awesome

1:01:28

amazing thank you everybody some of you sending

1:01:30

multiple messages with nice long messages

1:01:33

and we got a total of 239,313 sats. You guys are absolutely

1:01:38

the best and we appreciate your support. You

1:01:40

can boost into the podcast by getting

1:01:42

a new podcast app at newpodcastapps.com

1:01:45

or

1:01:46

just go get Albi and boost from the web getalbi.com

1:01:48

then head over to the podcast index and you'll find self hosted

1:01:50

over there. We got links to all of it in the show notes.

1:01:53

Yes we do and of course we need

1:01:55

to thank our site reliability engineers

1:01:58

the SRE subscribers you are a

1:01:59

another part of what makes this show possible.

1:02:02

You can go to selfhosted.show slash SRE.

1:02:05

And we've got an ad-free feed over there for you with

1:02:08

a post show. What are we going to talk about this week? I

1:02:10

got a couple of ideas out here in the woods, hunting

1:02:12

animals. No, not really. But I do have a few ideas.

1:02:15

Smoking those meats, I hope. Smoking

1:02:18

the meats and grilling. Thank you to our site reliability

1:02:21

engineers. We really appreciate it. Alex, where can

1:02:23

they find you on the internet? Well, don't forget about the

1:02:25

Meetup coming up in Chicago as well. Potential

1:02:27

Meetup, I will say, around DevOps

1:02:30

Day, Chicago, probably the Tuesday or the

1:02:32

Wednesday evening.

1:02:32

Maybe the Thursday evening. Who

1:02:34

knows? Because I fly out on Friday morning.

1:02:37

But you can go to selfhosted.show

1:02:39

slash contact to send in your feedback

1:02:41

directly to the show. And you can find

1:02:43

me over at alex.ktz.me. And

1:02:46

come join us in the matrix, jupiterbroadcasting.com

1:02:49

slash matrix. We've got a big old matrix server

1:02:51

we self-host with lots of rooms in there for

1:02:54

every type of discussion, including self-hosting.

1:02:56

And you can find me in there as well, at Chris LAS.

1:02:59

Thanks for joining us. This is episode 102.