Viceroy's recent activity
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Comment on What AI tools are you actually using? in ~tech
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Comment on Advice on expanding storage in starter homelab/media server in ~comp
Viceroy LinkI decided to build a home-lab/media server a couple of years ago as a project during the pandemic and I decided I wanted to build the entire thing from scratch so I went in a slightly different...I decided to build a home-lab/media server a couple of years ago as a project during the pandemic and I decided I wanted to build the entire thing from scratch so I went in a slightly different direction than most of the commenters here. I'll try to provide a brief overview and if you have any additional question just let me know!
Intro:
First, this was mostly a learning project for me, I don't have a formal programming or hardware background so it was primarily to challenge myself to learn newer technologies. I was specifically interested in learning linux, docker and networking configurations so instead of using something like UnRaid I just used Ubuntu. I specifically targeted uses cases of streaming media and document storage so I had a pretty good idea what I needed from the hardware. The goal was for the server to always be on so I didn't bother including any type of wake scripting, since it wouldn't be needed.Hardware:
Roughly here was the build: Micro-atx case and mother board, 16 GiB of ram, 10th gen i5 intel cpu, one Nvme for the OS and four 4TB Ironwolf drives for storage. At the time this cost around $900 for everything.Software:
I loaded the most recent version of Ubuntu and off I went. I decided that I didn't want to go headless since I still wasn't that comfortable with linux so I went with a standard install. Then I implemented a software raid on the storage drives, I went with raid 5 as it seemed to give the best tradeoff between redundancy and efficient drive use. Since docker was one of the things I was keen on learning all of my services are dockerized, and I manage all of them through Portainer. I use Jellyfin for movies/tv, Navidrome/Symfonium for music and nextcloud for document storage. I was also interested in being able to access my services externally so I also bought a cheap domain and setup a reverse proxy for the external connections. Lastly, I use wireguard to securely access the services that are not exposed externally. I also put in several more containers for vpns and sourcing content, but if you have questions about that then just DM me.Thoughts:
Overall it was a great project and I have a lot of fun with it. On the 'expand-ability' front I really like this setup, docker makes it very easy to spin up/down new services I want to try without interfering with my main storage or UI applications and the storage can be easily expanded.Happy to answer any questions you might have!
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Comment on Is anyone here a consultant? I have questions... in ~life
Viceroy LinkHey, something I can try to answer. I have been a consultant independently, as a part of a small firm and a large firm. At a very high level, consultants are hired to solve problems or implement...Hey, something I can try to answer.
- I have been a consultant independently, as a part of a small firm and a large firm.
- At a very high level, consultants are hired to solve problems or implement solutions that a company does not have the internal resources to address. They are usually hired to deliver a specific outcome or meet some delivery in a set amount of time. You should expect to work hard to meet this goal but you should be compensated well for achieving it. Typically, people will treat you as the expert on the subject at hand, so you should know your stuff if you are going to take the job.
- This depends on firm size, etc. But for larger firms, billing rates are typically 3 - 4 times the salary of the employee. As an independent consultant, I would recommend billing at an hourly rate at least twice what you expect to make in a year. So, for example, if you wanted to make $100k a year, which is roughly $50/hr, I would recommend charging at least $100/hr. Rates can be as high as you think someone is willing to pay you for your work so if your expertise is extremely niche your hourly rates can be higher to compensate for the difficulty a firm would have trying to hire that skillset.
Happy to answer any other question you might have.
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NordVPN changes to username and password encryption cause Auth_FAIL in OpenVPN/Gluetun
Recently NordVPN rolled out an update which forced users to use an encrypted username and password combination when connecting through OpenVPN. I haven't seen any posts on this here, and it took...
Recently NordVPN rolled out an update which forced users to use an encrypted username and password combination when connecting through OpenVPN. I haven't seen any posts on this here, and it took me way longer than I want to admit troubleshooting this issue because I knew my original credentials were correct.
If you use a gluetun container for routing any of other containers traffic, you might have recently noticed a 500 Internal Service Error in your Health Status and when you check your logs you will find a AUTH_FAILED message.
Solution below:
- Go to NordVPN website and log in (using your normal credentials)
- Under accounts, services, click NordVPN
- Click "Set up NordVPN Manually" at the bottom of the page
- You will receive an email verification code, using whatever email you have set up for your NordVPN services. Type this code into the popup window.
- Copy your new encrypted credentials for your Open VPN client settings.
This is my first post, please add tags as required.
24 votes
This is a perfect example of what generative AI is great for. I work in the AI space, and I have always hated the clickbate headlines about it. AI has some amazing possibilities and potential, but the current applications are much more mundane. It really is best used as a jumping off point for more research, summarizing text/code to digest easier or basically doing the heavy lifting in brainstorming so that a person can then expand on the generation with their experience.