Some changes happened!

Ever since the last server update, there's been small changes happening. When it was built, there were a few PCIE slots open, and only 3 spinning disks in there. It's since been upgraded from 3x10TB, to 3x10TB + 4x12TB (New RaidZ and a hot spare), as well as adding in an Intel Arc A380 for transcodes in Jellyfin! With more and more users on the server, it became very useful, especially with people streaming to remote machines or phones, and this allows for saving on bandwidth for both the VPS that's used as a bouncer, as well as for the user!

So we're over-complicating it again...

For those of you that have talked to me in the last several years, I've linked everyone to my original post about how I host things, and in a really vague sense, it's still the general flow. There's a VPS that hosts a web server acting as a reverse proxy over an ephemeral network into docker container(s). That said, nearly the entire tech stack has changed underneath itself.

In this post, we'll cover a bit about how it works, the common questions I get asked on why this specific tech stack, over all how it works, and what I hope to do with it into the future.

What is git-ops?

Git-ops is, simply put, a way to define infrastructure in a git repository. It's not so much a tool, but a way of working. I've been looking for a way to manage my homelab, and surrounding components, in a way that's reproducible, relatively easy to understand and manage, and possibly most importantly, not running on someone else's cloud...

If you want to know a bit more about what git-ops is, feel free to read more about it from the links below.

https://about.gitlab.com/topics/gitops/

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/gitops

Why stop being in search engines?

Last year, I noticed thatmy git server was starting to slow down, and use a lit more memory. Not only that, but web traffic from it was never ending. This isn't normal for that type of server, especially when I'm the most active user by far, and I hardly touch it. I went to see what was happening, and it turned out to be web crawlers. Nothing but bots loading every page, just so places like google and duckduckgo searches can find the page. Problem is that on a git server, files are generated on the fly, and large projects like QMK, which I used to keep a personal copy of, could generate literally billions of pages. Not only is it liking at every file, but every version of every file that's ever existed.

Some small updates for those that care!

First off, the servers have been updated, and verified, to ensure that none of the systems are effected by https://copy.fail/

I've started truncating the blog posts to clean up the homepage of the blog. This should offer a much smoother experience in finding things! Small theme updates are also happening from time to time, if only because I'm bored.

I've joined Mastodon! If anyone wants to follow me there for whatever reason, feel free to. https://woof.tech/@kdb424

All systems are back up and operational after replacing the dead drive. Investigation is still ongoing to the cause, may it truly be the drive, or the data cable. Both are being tested, but it's unlikely to cause any more downtime, especially given the level of redundancy in the system.

That should be all for now! I'm sure I'll be back with more updates soon enough. Life's been a bit boring, so I'm bound to get into some chaos.

Data loss didn't happen!

So I've ranted, raved, and preached ZFS for so many years, and it continues to pay off! After many years of running my main array, I finally lost a drive.

For many years now, I've been running a set of 3, 10TB drives in a RAIDZ, and I later added another 3 12TB drives, also in a RAIDZ, I was smart enough to buy 4 drives when I added those, and left the last in a a hot spare. Low and behold, I woke up to a message on the 27th stating that I had no more hot spare, and my array was resilvering. My 10TB had enough errors, and was booted from the array, and replaced with the hot spare, all while I was sleeping.

Movim is up!

I wanted to get completely off of other's hosted platforms as much as I could, and noticed that there weren't always great clients for XMPP on some platforms, as they were all missing this or that feature, so I decided to host a movim!

Micro blogging, or just chatting with friends in the usual way, it's got something for everyone. Feel free to check out my instance at https://movim.kittie.gay or you can host your own! Speaking of which...

It's time to leave Discord!

With Discord ensuring it's own destruction, between collecting user ID's, to massive machine learning on it's users, to probable ties to palantir beyond what they claim, I'm done with Discord.

Over the years, I've moved from IRC, to many platforms that used XMPP (Google talk, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo, Facebook, probably more), to Skype, to Discord, and I even tried to like Matrix on the way. While Matrix never fit the bill for me for several reasons, XMPP seems to have what I'm looking for, so that's where I'll be with the death of Discord.

So you want to talk on XMPP, huh?

Welp, how do you do it?! Unlike most chat services you may be used to, XMPP is a protocol. There are many ways to connect to it, which is a blessing and a curse. It's nice to have options, but sometimes it's too much to look through if you don't know what there is out there. Here are my recommended clients for each platform to help get you started.

With Discord in talks with Palantir, it's time to move on from having my chats controlled by a platform that's only going to continue to go down hill. We've been through many a service through the years, from things like AIM, MSN Messanger, Gtalk, and mumble, to Skype, eventually Discord, and probably other platforms that I've forgotten about. I'm well versed in self hosting at this point, and am done with changing platforms. It's time for self hosting a chat service.