I recently set up some public computers with Ubuntu at a hackerspace. People kept logging into their Gmail etc. and forgetting to log out. For their own benefit I changed the computers to use overlayfs so on reboot all changes from the base filesystem (Ubuntu 24.04 + packages + updates) are lost. I'm looking for tips on configuration. Keep in mind that because our users tend to be fairly technical I am not attempting to outright prevent changes, just prevent them by default.

Here are the current details:

• The machines have a wallpaper warning users that all changes are wiped on reboot
• The normal automatic update system is disabled (updates through it won't persist)
• I install updates and reboot on a cronjob at 5am every day (this uses overlayroot-chroot)
• The overlay is implemented as an encrypted filesystem on a separate partition, with the key generated on boot and held in memory
• Documentation is taped to the desktop computer itself educating users on how to make persistent changes

Hi!

I've decided to move some of my selfhosted things from on-prem (at home ;)) to the cloud, and at the same time I'd like to try and run this in EU, or at least europe. I'd like to get started fairly quickly as this was prompted by one of my home servers halfway dying on me.

The features I'm most interested in are approximately:

• Virtual machines.
• Storage. Cheap long term for backups (similar to S3 Glacier).
• Managed DB, most likely postgresql.
• Serverless jobs (similar to AWS lambda).
• IaaS (I've got a bit of experience with terraform, but it doesn't have to be that).
• Builtin monitoring.
• Git hosting, it's likely that I'll just go with github/gitlab here, but if there's a nice alternative I'm up for it.
• Automated sending of email. I'm using AWS SES atm, and I'm very happy with it.

Some other things:

• I intend to run a combination of services written by others, e.g. nextcloud and software I've written myself.
• I'll most likely be running linux only, but I prefer to select my own flavour where it makes sense.
• I much prefer managing permissions and users in gcp than in aws as I find aws way too complicated for my needs while gcp mostly just makes sense.
• I'd prefer a platform that's being developed and improving over time with big potential for the future.
• This is a hobby project, and some of these requirements may seem a bit contradictory or non-optimal, but that's ok.
• I have some experience running kubernetes (self-hosted), and I'm not a huge fan of the complexity and yaml files, at the same time OpenStack is getting kinda old, and I don't know if I think it's a platform for the future. But from what I see most of the options seems to be built on top of one of those.
• Cheaper is of course better, I don't have a company-sized budget, this is all coming out of my "hobby pocket".
• I live in Sweden, so datacenters geographically close is a plus.

Right now I'm looking at European alternatives to Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Scaleway is looking the most promising, but I'm really skimming the top when it comes to info atm.

Hope that makes sense =) I'm interested in all kinds of feedback.

When I first setup my NUC, I wanted to setup docker on it so that all the information is stored on the NFS mount I setup on my Synology mount. Meaning volumes and anything of that kind.

One issue that came up however, was that if my router experience a temporary glitch, the docker containers would then also experience an issue since they were trying to access information stored on the mounts and my system would freeze and I had to force a shutdown to get the mount to work correctly.

Which makes me wonder, what is the recommended way to have docker containers store their information on an NFS mount while also allowing taking into account that sometimes a networking issue or router issue might happen?

I have traditionally used APC's UPS products for my NAS, router, media centre and desktop computer. Nothing fancy, just something to survive short power outages and to allow graceful shutdowns if such an outage lasts longer than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, I have had three of APC's devices malfunction in the past decade and while their customer support has always been excellent, I would prefer products that just work and don't cause me additional headaches. Do you know of any UPSs that you would recommend for home use and are reasonably priced? I'm located in the EU, if that makes a difference.

I'm buying a WiFi router for a new house. What would we get from using a router that works with OpenWRT, versus just going with Wirecutter's top pick?

Since we upgraded to fiber, I'm pretty happy with the network speeds at our current house. We don't have WiFi 6. I'm fairly unlikely to mess with advanced networking features as long as the networking just works.

The new house will also have fiber. The previous owners left us some kind of mesh networking devices, which I need to go look at tomorrow.

If we did go with OpenWRT, is there any particular recommended hardware?

Pretty much what the title says - I'm building out a smallish compute cluster and hoping to set up some centralised storage that won't be a bottleneck, but I'm very much not a networking specialist. Most of the load will be random reads from compute nodes pulling in the bits of various datasets they need to work on.

Is it plausible to throw a 100GbE ConnectX-5 card and 256GB RAM into a consumer AM5 machine, format everything in ZFS, and set up a network share with KSMBD? My understanding is that I want to ensure everything's using mirroring rather than worrying about RAIDZ parity if I'm optimising for speed, which is fine, and I know that I'll only get full throughput as far as things can be cached in RAM - but is it reasonable to expect ZFS ARC to do that caching for me? Dare I hope that the SMB driver will just work if I drop it in there between the filesystem and the NIC? Or have I crossed the line into enterprisey-enough requirements that it's going to be an uphill battle to get this working anywhere near line speed?

I've never actually put in more fans than what a case comes with, but I have an unraid server that is running hot so I got a pack of 5 fans to put in it.

From what I understand, you want them set up so that there is a solid airflow throughout the case; ie I'm planning to set it up so that the front and bottom fans are intake and the top and back fans are exhaust, so that cool air enters from the front/bottom and exits out the back/top.

However, one of the fans will be going on the side door. I'm assuming this wants to be intake as well (so that the airflow goes through the entire case, as I assume it would disrupt the airflow as exhaust). Or would it be better to not have one on the side and just have an extra fan laying about?

This is how I plan to set it up (shout out to MS Paint): https://ibb.co/KcXx5cgW

Note: The X's are because the installed chassis block being able to put fans there; the bottom one is especially disappointing as it's the HDDs that are mostly getting hot

Just wanted to confirm that that set up looks good and that intake for the side one (where the ? is) is the proper choice

I have a 14 chapter text book to go through.

So far my plan is to read 1 chapter per weekend ( okay maybe two weekends ) and take solid notes on it.

Weeknights I am usually used up from work and got life to live. My thinking is review what I have already covered then.

My question is how to schedule the reviewing of old stuff so I don't lose it.

Example: If I just finished chapter 10, when would I review chapters 2,3,4...etc?

Anyone have experience with preparing for such a big exam?

I keep getting messages in my email inbox or LinkedIn like:

> Hi, 
> I’m seeking a genuine partnership where only a USA software engineer can truly collaborate with me. 
> I value transparency and real results. 
> Things to do are very simple and I guarantee 3K~10K/month income for you.
> I’m ready to prove my credibility and discuss a win-win business. 
> Thank you!

Hello $their_name,

Why do you need a USA engineer and what do I need to do?

- $my_name

> Thanks for reaching me out.
> 
> I run a software development team with five talented developers who specialize in frontend, backend, full stack, AI/ML and blockchain technologies. Although we have a strong team, we are struggling to find enough jobs right now. As you may know, the economy in Europe is tough and low salary as well, so we are trying to find more opportunities in the US and Canada. However, this is challenging for us because of time zone differences, language barriers, and many US clients preferring to hire local people like you.
> 
> To solve these issues, I'm actively looking for someone who can help us in getting more jobs in the US. Since you are a US citizen, you can create accounts on job platforms like Indeed, Dice, Upwork and Wellfound. I think you may have already heard about Upwork. It's a world famous freelancing platform. After setting up your accounts, if you allow me to use them, I will apply for jobs by myself. When I receive interview requests from clients, I will notify you so you can attend the meetings. During the interviews, I will support you by quickly sending you the right answers to any technical questions that come up.
> 
> Once we secure a job, our team will handle all the development work, including any test projects. We will share the profits from the work we do, with a split of 30% for you and 70% for our team.
> In short, your role would be to connect with clients and help us secure jobs, while our team takes care of the technical work. This is a great opportunity for collaboration and growth.
> 
> And there is one thing I need to tell you about using your account. Several platforms have very strict policies with ip addresses. If i use your account on my own machine, your account will be risky because ip addresses are different. And also they detect VPN, VPS, and some cloud services as well. To address this, we need to use your spare laptop. I will use your account on your spare one using a remote desktop application like Anydesk. Anydesk is a secure and safe remote desktop application.

> Greeting,
> 
> I hope this message finds you well. My name is Cuong, and I came across your information on your website ( WE need it ). I am excited to share that I have a potential long-term collaboration opportunity that I believe could be mutually beneficial.
> 
> We’re a fast-growing IT consulting company based in Malaysia, with a talented team experienced in web2, web3, mobile development, and AI. As we expand into the U.S. market, we’re actively seeking a reliable business partner—someone like you—to grow together.
> 
> Here’s how we can support you:
> - Proactively apply and schedule interviews on job platforms on your behalf
> - Optimize and refine your resume and LinkedIn profile to stand out
> - Provide technical guidance to help you succeed in interviews
> - Take care of the actual development work once new projects are secured
> 
> If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to reach out. We’d love to hear your thoughts and explore how we can collaborate!
> 
> Looking forward to connecting with you.
> 
> Best Regards
> Cuong

Some of these messages are even from people who are well-connected to former bosses and managers and other talented people that I personally know. They aren't coming out of my spam folder.

I know I'm not special in this. I'm not the only one. They are throwing spaghetti on the wall until the meatballs stick, etc.

But I thought... what if I could use this to my advantage? I would still need to do the interviews but they could do the legwork applying for jobs and reaching out to companies, connections that they already have, and then when they deliver the job contract I cut off contact with these nebulous associates? And I join the company like normal.

Thoughts?

And as long as I'm asking ... nginx or Apache (or Caddy or whatever else you think is best).

I'm hosting a few web sites and services, but currently, everything is "out there" on VPSes. I want to bring it all in-house, go back to the old days of actually hosting websites out of my living room.

Towards that end, I am gradually upgrading and overhauling all the sites and services, fixing long-standing issues and inefficiencies in the config files, merging servers, etc.

I have never learned Docker. I've started to several times, worked with it a bit on a job once, used it a bit here and there; so I'm not clueless, but it would be a learning curve.

Also, I'm running one main service (Nextcloud) that officially, only supports Apache -- there absolutely are nginx setup guidelines and tutorials and such, but that's all unofficial, experimental setups.

And I'm running another major service (Synapse), on nginx.

And I want to merge the servers, and choose one web server to host both of them, and I don't know which way to go there.

Thanks for any feedback.

Any clever ways to connect to the Internet safely to update drivers, security, etc? I'd only want to connect to Intel, AMD, Microsoft, etc, and then would physically disconnect the lan card. I know, dangerous, but I'm trying a piecemeal approach with a flash drive and getting mixed results. I tried to update to Service Pack 2, and it bricked the computer on restart, back to flashing Vista.

I've been considering going back to school and taking some courses that are available to me. With the associates that I already have, I was weighing the options that I have available to me. Computer Science is a classic and could probably get me very far with the "need a piece of paper" folks, but it's more software development than I have a passion for, compared to my troubleshooting, find a problem, solve a problem desires. Cybersecurity is probably going to be more dependent on certs than anything I can learn in a class, especially if it's ever evolving and a degree can be outmoded very quickly. Computer Information Systems sort of has my attention because it seems like an IT based degree with elements of a business setup and not as laser focused on coding. With the courses that I currently have under my belt, it would be more for CIS than it would be for CS, but more CLEP and ACE options so it about evens out.

Does Computer Information Systems hold any water in any of your opinions to what Computer Science has to offer? Or is it somewhat arbitrary anyway?

It just so happens that I was asked to write a paper about goals I hadn't achieved and I just thought about how I haven't touched my video game engine project in any meaningful way for around two months or so. On reflection, the main thing that is preventing me from working on it is that when I try to get back into it, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm unorganized and can't figure out what exactly to do next because it's so open-ended. I'm absolutely terrible about writing down plans for what I should do.

I know that I'm not the only person who is trying to work on big solo projects, so I thought I'd ask: what are you doing to keep your project organized? Are you using any tools to help you? What do you find is most helpful to help you anticipate steps you'll need to address when things aren't very clear?