… has too many hobbies.

Topic:

Linux

37 posts
Jan 2009 – Oct 2025

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= …

Pi Reliability over WiFi: 'Temporary failure in name resolution'

Part of the Raspberry Pi Reliability series. One Pi I run here at home sits in an outbuilding with less-than-ideal WiFi signal strength. It runs PiAware [1] and BirdNET-Pi, and I specifically haven't run Ethernet to it to partially mitigate lightning-strike risks, given that it has two exposed …

Reliable WiFi for the Bambu X1C 3D printer

How to set up a Raspberry Pi WiFi access point that the Bambu X1C can stay connected to.

Setting up a secondary Pi-Hole on my home network

I run Pi-Hole as the DNS server for my home network. It provides ad and nuisance blocking for a subset of the systems in the house. Having a single DNS server for your network is very stressful; it’s a single point of failure, so even routine maintenance feels touch-and-go. …