… has too many hobbies.

Topic:

Linux

40 posts
Jan 2009 – Nov 2025

Linux server migration planning

If you run some number of Linux servers for yourself you'll inevitably need to migrate one to a new machine at some point. This might be straightforward, particularly if you can do so by migrating a VM image or if you treat your personal servers like cattle, not …

Using systemd to keep an SMB share mounted

It's possible to use systemd to keep a SMB share mounted and retry it after the mount fails. This template-based approach scales relatively easily to multiple mounts. Create the retry service template In /etc/systemd/system/mount-retry@.service: [Unit] Description=Retry mounting %i After=network-online.target Wants=network-online. …

Using systemd to run a Docker container only when an SMB mount is mounted

I have a Linux machine that mounts several shares from my NAS via Samba. I'd like it to run fscrawler in a Docker container for each of those shares, but only when the shares are working properly — if the share goes away while fscrawler is running, fscrawler will …

Setting Up & Testing Spotlight + Samba + Elasticsearch

It's possible for Samba to use Elasticsearch to allow macOS Spotlight to use server-side searching on SMB shares. It's annoying to set up and debug, but/and this blog post aims to document everything I've learned. Versions It's critical to understand that …

How to rsync with sudo on both sides

When migrating from one server to another, you will likely want to use rsync over SSH to migrate directory trees. It's likely that these trees will not all be owned or even readable by you, meaning sudo is necessary to make the transfer. It's possible to …

Updated instructions for installing my Debian package repositories

I use these repos to distribute my own programs (the OSS repo) or Debian packages for third-party software (the 3p repo). The instructions in various project READMEs use old-style .list files; these updated instructions will install new-style .sources files. Prerequisite: Keyring sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https: …

Host Inventory for a (not-) Homelab

I don't really consider myself as running a proper "homelab." For starters, I own neither a proper network rack nor any rackable gear, and I see that as a prerequisite for calling your setup a "homelab." Nonetheless, I have a lot of physical and virtual machines to keep track of.

Cloning Raspberry Pi SD cards

Occasionally I need to set up a new Raspberry Pi that's extremely similar to an existing Pi, typically for a monitoring application like collecting UPS statistics. The hard way to do this is to set up the new Pi from scratch and install and configure your application. The …

Making a Docker container depend on a disk being mounted

Quick and easy way to make a Docker container depend on an external disk being connected and mounted.

Moving fake-hwclock to a separate partition on a read-only Raspberry Pi

My guide to running a Raspberry Pi with a read-only root filesystem has one hacky caveat: it still allows fake-hwclock to write to the filesystem every hour. I don't love this solution, and this post presents a fix.

Monitoring for NAS data corruption on ext4 with cshatag

Two open-source programs, cshatag and runner, make it easy to monitor an ext4 filesystem for data corruption.

Linux: start an mdraid check even though bash's noclobber is set

A quick post for today. When trying to force my NAS's mdraid array to run a check, in a root terminal, I got this error: # echo check > /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action -bash: /sys/block/md0/md/sync_action: cannot overwrite existing file This is because …

Pi Reliability: Reduce writes to your SD card

If you aren't using a read-only filesystem on your Pi, you can still reduce writes to the SD card to increase its lifespan.

Running a Raspberry Pi with a read-only root filesystem

While there are downsides, using a read-only root filesystem will dramatically increase your Pi SD card's lifetime.

Setting net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max on Ubuntu 22.04

On one server I manage, the default net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max value (65536, IIRC) was not sufficient and I wanted to increase it substantially. The first thing I did was add a new file in /etc/sysctl.d: # /etc/sysctl.d/91-cdz-nf_conntrack.conf net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max= …