Posts on WretchedGhost's Tech Blog and Rants

Enabling Hibernation on Linux Laptops

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Due to issues with the latest sleep states in laptops I’ve had to resort using hibernation or S4 as the strata for all my Linux laptops:

Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 8 (intel 10th gen CPU)
HP Gram 17z90n (intel )
Dell XPS 9315 13 i5

My older laptops like the System 76 Darter Pro before they moved to CoreBoot systems and Dell XPS 9380 still functions quite well in S3 state, not requiring hibernation.

HIC SUNT LOCALHOST

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Article: PSA be aware of the difference between localhost and 127.0.0.1

I was bit in the butt by a bug that sprung up at me over the weekend. It really wasn’t a bug but I think it should be. I explain more down below. Over the weekend I setup a new VPS with Linode where its only job was to be my central always-running syncthing server in the cloud. Upon first setting it up was able to reverse SSH tunnel to it using my standard SSH config and keys using this command. (hic sunt localhost is a play on words from the old Hunt-Lenox-Globe which coined the phrase “Here be dragons” or “hic sunt dracones” in Latin.)

That's What I Sed

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

sed (Stream EDitor) is a super simple program that can be used to replace text for another in a file. Let’s first view the contents of a file I made called greetings.txt with cat.

Why I'm hoarding data and why digital preservation matters

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My intention is NOT to create a clickbait title, but I have found a re-invigoration within me with regards to data - or in layman’s terms, data hoarding. I have always had around 8-10TB of data between videos, family pics and videos, and some games (not my entire GOG or Steam library yet, but maybe one day). All of this takes up precious space on my HDDs.

I recently upgraded from a 4-disk 8TB RAID-Z2 array which gave me 12TB of usable space to a 4-disk 12TB RAID-Z2 array with 18TB+ usable. The upgrade isn’t as huge as one would expect moving from 4x8TB to 4x12TB drives, but I still believe very much in redundancy.

Command Line Navigation Tips and Obscure Shortcuts, Part 2

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ctrl+X, Ctrl+E - Open current command in your default editor (usually vim or nano)

Command Line Navigation Tips and Obscure Shortcuts

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re spending any amount of time in the terminal, learning shortcuts can potentially save you hours in the future. Most people know the arrow keys and backspace, but bash has decades of shortcuts built in that almost nobody uses.

I’ve been using Linux since 2011, and I’m still discovering new ones. Here are the ones I actually use daily, plus some obscure gems.

Exanding ZFS Root Parition on a Live System

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My server, cprox, as I call it, was set up with only 64GB of storage on the root partition. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but this caused issues only a week after setting up the new server.

Within this time, the OS, packages, and other things Proxmox does, consumed 86% of the drive. This made things run slowly and caused the command line to freeze sometimes, which was very weird since the OS was on mirrored SSDs - which is exactly what allowed me to do this resizing live.

I Love Ranger

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My ranger config can be found here

Here is a quick write up of a program that I have heard of before and installed but never found it necessary in my work flow. I have and still am happy to move around in the command line like I have been for the past ten years plus but now after finding a good reason to try it out this time since I have been moving around a lot more in the command line from writing blogs to notes to novels, and everything in between, I felt like my work flow wasn’t as optimized nor as speedy as it could be.

Vim Plugins Setup

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why Use Vim Plugins?

In the Vim Basics series, we covered vanilla vim and how powerful it is right out of the box. And honestly, vanilla vim can handle 90% of your daily work as a sysadmin. But sometimes you want that extra 10% - better syntax highlighting, file navigation, or quality of life improvements that make your workflow even smoother.

The key is not to go overboard. I’ve seen people install 30+ plugins and end up with a slow, bloated vim that defeats the purpose of using a lightweight editor in the first place. As a system admin who jumps between servers constantly, I keep my plugin setup minimal and portable.

Vim Basics: Part 3

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Building on the Basics

Now that we know how to open a file, edit it, move around in it, and save it, let us now look into how we can tweak it. My post to part 1 of vim basics can be found here: https://blog.lanlocked.xyz/post/vim-basics-part-1/. Part 2 can be found here: https://blog.lanlocked.xyz/post/vim-basics-part-2.

In this part, we’ll cover visual mode, text objects (which will change how you think about editing), and then dive into customizing vim with your .vimrc configuration file.

Vim Basics: Part 2

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome Back

In Part 1, we covered the basics of opening vim, understanding normal and insert modes, and moving around with the hjkl keys. If you haven’t read that yet, I’d recommend starting there as we’ll build on those concepts.

Now it’s time to tackle what might be the most infamous aspect of vim: how to actually save and exit the program. We’ll also dive into some useful editing commands that will start to show you why vim users are so passionate about this editor.

Vim Basics: Part 1

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Getting to know vim

If you are looking for a way to get more efficient at editing configs and text then vim is what you are wanting. Even at its most basic interface with no added plugins, vim can help you manipulate a file with its efficient modes and commands.

vim is not the easiest to learn, especially for beginners where often newbies trying it out for the first time find they are not even able to exit the program. But, after some little quirks have been understood, you may soon ask yourself how you lived without it.

How to Remove the DRM on Amazon Audible Files - Updated

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Note: When I first published this article, the https://audible-converter.ml/ shortcut method still worked. As of August 2023, that site is down. The method below using RainbowCrack still works perfectly.

Why You Should Care

As Amazon continues to expand their collection of books, music, and audiobooks, licensing disputes with publishers and authors will continue to cause problems. What this means for us as users is that we could lose access to media we purchased on Amazon’s platform. This has happened before and will happen again when you least expect it.

My Take on Synology as a Sys-Admin

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I first dipped my toes into using Synology though their top-notch NVR system. I had eight cameras at the time around my house and it worked very well for myself and my family, though paying $40-$50 a license per camera can get expensive fast. I didn’t really use it for its other features for years until a fellow sysadmin introduced to me the functionality that it had offered him as he did large project like setup NVR and NASes for the city and school systems. It intrigued me enough to accept his proposal of bringing in a Synology 4U rackmount server into my main datacenter.

Giving New Life to a Chromebook

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I am the new owner of a hand-me-down Chromebook that to me, now has a new reason to exist. No longer is it tied to Google and their tracking and ads policies. Rather it is its own system now, complete with Arch Linux/EndeavourOS on i3-wm.

I first purchased this laptop for my oldest child who required something for online school during the Covids and I landed on the Lenovo S340-14. Inside it has a Celeron N4000 dual core/dual hyperthread CPU, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 14 inch TN screen at 1920x1080 and 220 nits. It worked fine for her during that time but now that its basically a paperweight now that she has my System76 i7 Dart Pro gen 1 laptop ((I need to make a review on about it one day) which was before they stared using coreboot and is 15.6" rather than either 14" or 16" they have now, but that is a story for another day).

Running Asahi Linux on my Macbook Air M1

Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Even though this device is not meant to be running Linux, I’m going to be tough during this review.

Setup process

It’s extremely easy. Enter in the script, read what its outputting, click a few keys, voila, you have a running Asahi Linux system that dual-boots with MacOS. Ok, its not as simple as that but one through ten where 10 is installing Gentoo its like a two. The only gotchas that occur are when you don’t read the final output and your system goes into an infinite boot loop which is remedied by simply resetting and holding the power button until it tells you it is booting into config mode.

The Reasons I Keep Going Back to MikroTik

Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I have been using MikroTik (my-crow-tick or me-crow-teek), or however you want to pronounce it, for several years now and I just keep coming back to using it. MikroTik, for the uninitiated, can be quite a difficult system to learn and use. There are quite a bit of gotchas that can bite you along the way and even now, some things can still trip me up if I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. Read below under Final Thoughts for the great benefits that I have found from using MikroTik and for those TLDR enthusiasts.

Data Hoarding in an RV - Updated

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In my previous article of https://blog.lanlocked.xyz/data-hoarding-in-an-rv/, I documented how I was using a Synology DS1520+ as my NAS. After fighting with it and the main array of weird issues Synology desires to implement, which I won’t get into here, I have recently sold the setup and gone with a much more robust system, or systems, in my RV.

I have built three new server systems, but first lets start with what hardware I am currently running.

How to Upgrade Gitea

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Updating gitea is a simple as replacing the binary in /usr/local/bin/gitea.

Stop the gitea service

$ sudo systemctl stop gitea

Move the current binary from gitea to gitea.old just in case things break.

$ sudo mv /usr/local/bin/gitea /usr/local/bin/gitea.old

Use wget to get the the current version: example -> https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/releases/download/v1.20.2/gitea-1.20.2-linux-amd64. This is not the latest version, this is just an example.

cd ~/Downloads && wget https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/releases/download/v1.20.2/gitea-1.20.2-linux-amd64

Change the name of the file from gitean-x.x.x-linux-amd to gitea

$ mv gitea-x.x.x-linux-amd gitea

My MikroTik Firewall Rules

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to show a little firewall rule that I setup that will allow an entity to attempt to login via SSH or Winbox and have them locked out for 21 days after so many attempts. You can tweak this to allow for more attempts and or have them locked out indefinably. This might be considered a tar pit for those that know that term except this is a manual tar pit that acts a little differently than the one MikroTik has built-in.

How to Sync AntennaPod with Nextcloud | Part 2

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have basically gone this whole entire setup just to get synchronization on AntennaPod and my phone/devices. Is it worth it? Not really as you can do the same with exporting the backup the official AntennaPod to another phone or use an OPML file to do the same for other podcast clients, but its a fun project.

Now that we have Nextcloud up and running now we can install the GPodder Sync app.

How to Sync AntennaPod with Nextcloud | Part 1

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After much research and trial and error I have found the gpodder implementation to be very terrible. The only known way to get synchronization across devices is to setup a Nextcloud server and install the plugin/addin gpodder. The other ways that I have tested but could not get any to work due to broken links and or not enough information are with micro-gpodder-server and gpodder2go. Both failed miserably.

The official link/website and how-to from gpodder.net called mygpodder has a broken link and requires various weird ways to get it to work using sqlite3, cargo, npm, etc. The cargo program is run in .exe making me think they have this running on windows and not on Linux.

Using Perl-Rename For File Substitution

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I tried to use sed to rename filenames but found it rather cumbersome. sed is great when used to edit the content of a file which you can find some examples I created here, but I found this handy program that can do the same but for filenames instead.

Installed on my Arch, BTW, system I already had the program called rename which is not the same as the one we need called perl-rename. To install it I just ran it using pacman -S perl-rename. From here I was then able to rename a whole ton of files that I had scraped from the internet, cough cough youtube, quite easily.

Pixel 4 on GrapheneOS EoL:

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Note GrapheneOS has placed the Pixel 4 line in legacy extended support which is great news as I believe many people complained and or threw money at the GrapheneOS creators.

Unfortunately, my Pixel 4 XL that I have been using with GrapheneOS for around two years now is End-of-Life. All the Pixel 4 range except the Pixel 4a(5G) will no longer be getting any extended support nor security updates as of Oct 1, 2023. This sucks as the Pixel 4 XL has been the best phone I have ever used and I do not want to give it up. I will be looking for alternative ROMs to be installing but finding one that offered all the great things GrapheneOS does is going to be hard.

Two-Factor Auth and/or Passwordless Login on Arch Linux Using u2f Physical Keys

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Credit Where Credit Is Due

I used a lot of https://old.jamesthebard.net/archlinux-and-u2f-login/ config but then tweaked it and added a litle more explination as his entry was from 2017~.

Let’s Start the Rant

I have always wanted a way to get away from always having to type in password to login or use sudo. There are security concerns by allowing this type of login, one is the fact that anyone who possesses my key could then login and run as sudo, also is the factor that with some tweaking you can make it only allow for key entry via u2f :lock:. A third way, which is the most secure way, is to have it where you must type in the password and possess the u2f hardware key to login.

Web Scraping for Preservation's Sake

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Due to the higher complexities of running a modern website or blog securely or rather, for making it easier for people via CloudFlare and the like, I have found that when one of those main sites are down, again like CloudFlare, sites that rely on their DNS redirecting and whatnot, go down too. Many blogs that I follow are starting to jump on that band-wagon which is annoying since it can be quite a bit of time for a site to return to working order whether it was on CloudFlare’s side or the blog owner. Regardless of this I have looked into ways to have backup copies of their sites while this is still an option.

Vim Substitution

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

vim substitution is one tool any advanced vim user should know. Basically, vim substitution is similar to search and replace used on other file editors but vim goes much further than just searching and replacing files and characters. For anyone who creates bash scripts and edits a ton of config files like myself, will attest to the need to comment and uncomment many lines at a time.

I’ll start with the basic uses of substitution and go into the more meaty commands as we go along.

AntennaPod Has To Be My Favorite App Right Now

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After hacking my Amazon Audible key which can be found in a previous post here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/hacking_aax/, I was on the hunt for an audiobook player that was OpenSource and simple to work with.

My search for anything on Android begins with F-Droid, an OpenSource app “store”, that has tons of OpenSource apps made by awesome people. Most of these apps are less bloaty and don’t track your usage. Some are labeled as having Anti-features which conveniently show how they may do things like track and or require access to your files.

Auto Screen Lock With Suspend and Resume in i3 With Systemd

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After using i3-wm, formally known as i3-gaps, for several years on my personal workstation I have not really needed to use the i3lock features that often due to my workstation being in my office where no one else touches it. They wouldn’t know how to use it in they did try and mess with my workstation. But now that I am using my same i3 config across more systems including my work computer where I now use it manage and maintain the network and servers of my work, I began looking for ways to make my computer more secure.

Data Hoarding in an RV

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I like to data hoard but I don’t take it the extreme. I am able to prune things I really don’t need. Living in an RV doesn’t help with having excess. In fact part of the liberating thing of the RV life is to get rid of things that we don’t really need. Believe me it was hard giving up on my networks, and servers, server racks, and full tower PCs, but going miniature and finding out what you really need is freeing. It’s not totally based on the fact that I don’t want things its also based on the fact that I don’t have room enough to put stuff in.

My Thinkpad Woes

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe its my fault but my latest hardware purchase a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen4 has been nothing but issues for me. Lets start with the hardware. I thought purchasing a badass laptop with a 4K display, RTX 3070 mobile, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and all the other great aspects that a powerful laptop is known for would translate well into a beast of a machine that can handle anything I give it. Apart from this system not being very often used in the Linux world due to the lack of specific pages specifying what works and what doesn’t, the consensus was always the fact that Lenovo drivers were well supported on most or all Linux distros. If I was running Windows as my daily driver that assumption would reign true, the system would just work. Well…, I don’t want to run Windows nor do I like to use it if I can avoid it.

Use Tailscale to Connect over CGNAT Devices (ie., SpaceX, Verizon, Tmobile, etc.)

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

EDITOR’S NOTE – 08-07-2023 – This article has been updated to fill in missing info and explain better some misunderstood concepts.

For those of us using SpaceX satellite internet, we have had a great means to have internet in virtually any location now, but it does come with some caveats. One major one is the fact that SpaceX satellite networks are CGNATed (Carrier grade NAT). For those that don’t know what that means, NAT, which is used by virtually any router/modem to redirect an internal network (ie., 192.168.1.x, etc) to a public IP. This has allowed people and business to have many devices behind a NAT and only require one Public IPv4 address. Due to the limited nature and massive amount of end devices that now exist NATing is very important so that we don’t run out of IPv4 addresses. Another way that phone carriers like Verizon and Tmobile, hence the name Carrier Grade NAT, limit the amount of public IP addresses they need to purchase or maintain is by creating a NAT behind a NAT. This means that most end devices connected to a phone carrier’s network/tower are all within the same private IP range whether it be 192.168.x.x, 172.16.x.x, or 10.x.x.x. They also make it to where clients to see each other for obvious security reason. The one thing that CGNAT does not let you do, which is what I want to focus on for this blog page, is the inability of port forwarding.

How Linux Can Free You

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a user of Linux since 2011. My brother-in-law was the one who introduced me to Linux and more specifically, Ubuntu. Since then, I have loved every minute of it. Even though I don’t use Ubuntu as my daily driver machine, but I do use it and Debian for servers, I am eternally grateful for him showing me this entire different world of computers.

Sometimes learning new things can be frustrating, and believe me there is a steep climb atop the Linux mountain, but once you reach a certain point you just cannot fathom life without it.

The Watch Command

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The watch command is used when you want to have a program run every so many seconds that you define. I often use it to see the stream of files that are being transferred or for checking the status of scripts while I test them.

Running The Watch Command

Here is a common way that I use watch after I have run rsync just to make sure things are going the way they should:

Sometimes You Just Need to Reboot Your System

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If you ever have an issue with Arch Linux it could be due to a kernel issue. Due to its rolling release nature. Most updates usually comes with a new kernel version. Due to the mismatch between what you are running and what Arch Linux is now looking for, various things can stop working.

For me this specifically was the OS would not detect any new USB stick I had just plugged into my computer. After identifying that it was a kernel issue, performing a simple reboot resolves the issue.

i3-wm Advanced Lessons

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After using i3-wm (which I will call i3 from here on out) for over 5 years now, I have pretty much got it almost exactly how I like it. For reference here is my latest i3 config which can be found at https://git.wretchednet.com/wretchedghost/i3-wretchedbox This config might change here and there so check often as some things might have been updated since this post.

Today’s lesson will revolve around some advanced tweaks to add to your config for a more finely tuned system on i3.

Sweet ffmpeg Script to Speed Up Convert Times with AMDGPU

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My current specs can be found here: https://wretchedghost.com/about.

After pulling all the photos and videos from my wife’s iPhone I soon ran into an issue where I found all of her videos were a MOV format. Normally this is not an issue due the fact I can use VLC which can play anything I give it but other software, in this case Synology Photos, would not play this at all on the computer. On a mobile device it had no issues but if my computer has issues with it then I’m sure other devices would be afflicted as well.

WretchedGhost's Arch Install Guide

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s Note Here is a guide of my super simple install of Arch Linux using a fork of Classy Girraffe’s that users LUKS, ext4, GRUB2, swapfile, and tmpfs. It can be found here. I also have my i3 dotfiles that you can check out here

This guide does not hold your hand so you will either need to research a few things you do not know or you must already know what commands and flags are needed when presented.

Mounting Mulitple Drives at Boot Time using LUKS (dm-crypt)

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Mounting more than just the root partition at boot using LUKS/dm-crypt is a little more complicating than setting up just the one. Rather than just placing your UUID of the root partition in the /etc/default/grub file you have to go through several more steps. Follow along as I describe a simple way to get more than one partitions/disks mounted at boot time.

When you might not want mount-encrypted drives at boot.

Having encryption at rest built into a partition/disk is a great way to keep those who have physically compromised said disk out from reading your data easily.

The Frailties of mdadm RAID and Why I Wont Ever Use It Again

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

PSA!!!

As a homelabber I have used several filesystems across many machines. When I first began the simplest was EXT3 and its predecessor EXT4 is still the simplest journaling file system around. After a while I started to look for redundancy via mdadm’s RAID on Linux. From then on I had RAID arrays usually consisting of RAID1 or mirror on most of my systems whether it be on HDDs or SSDs. But only after 10 plus years have I had a reason to take an old unused RAID1 HDD and try to get a file out of the drive, I have found it to be virtually impossible.

Gitea Setup and Install on Ubuntu 20.04 and Others

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After an exhaustive exercise of finger tapping on my keyboard and several attempts to clear my head by walking away from the computer, I have finally setup a Gitea instance. Following the how-tos online seemed simple enough. Follow the steps, install a user, setup permissions, download a file and bam you are good to go. But that is the furthest from the truth for my experience. I have followed what seemed to be ten different how-tos that somehow seem to differ even between the same distro install. Each of which if you were setting up a server on your local machine would work but in my case of setting it up on my Linode instance where you have no access to the GUI and or a web interface that is able to look at the localhost or 127.0.0.1 it was just was nigh impossible. The logs showed I was reaching the server every time but still nothing showed up. But I digress.

bmon CLI Network Traffic Viewer

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In my ever continuing effort to use the command-line more, one tool that allows any command-line-junky to view their network traffic in real time is called bmon. It can be installed via any package manager: ie, apt, pacman, portage, etc.

Test HDD, SSD, and USB Read/Write Speeds with dd

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have found a fancy way to test the speeds of my media devices by using the dd tool. For those that don’t know what the dd command stands for or does, Disk/data Duplicator is a tool that was used in the old BSD/AT&T days but still has great functionality today.

Mostly dd is used for writing a .iso to a USB to be used to boot into a Linux distro or what have you. It can also be used to copy a block file or an entire disk to another disk or partition, which is kinda what we are going to be doing in this speed test example today.

Weird Issue with Tailscale and How to Fix it on Arch Linux

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

On my distro of choice, Arch BTW, I had a weird issue where I couldn’t find a proper solution for. My Tailscale would not let me turn it on and would give me an error where the server and the installed version were mismatched.

After doing some research I found that the backend, the installed version, and the CLI version must have the same versions. I did not find a way to choose a previous version other than the git version which is actually newer than the one you get with tailscale through the AUR. So after thinking about how I would go about fixing this, I remembered I used the AUR program called downgrade that will allow you to downgrade installed programs to an older version. downgrade will even ask if you want to make sure it doesn’t automatically upgrade to a new version when you run a pacman -Syyu by locking it in the /etc/pacman.conf file. I used this program in one of my other posts when rofi decided to break my config when it jumped from version 1.6.x to version 1.7. This can be found here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/rofi-broken Similarly, another post about MakeMKV which was broken can also be referenced https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/makemkv-version-requires-downgrade/

The How and Why You Might Want to Use Arch's Downgrade Feature

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As of 20220926, MakeMKV is broken on Arch Linux due to glib and various other files being updated in Arch but not in MakeMKV. To fix this issue which shows up as a “Fatal error”, you must install downgrade from the AUR.

This is a feature found in almost every Linux package manager but the one built designed for pacman works very easily and offers you various versions of the previous builds so that you could downgrade other programs that may act funky or are not working correctly.

Bringing Rsnapshot Back From the Dead on Debian

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For those of us who use rsnapshot, moving to another backup solution is really not a pleasant thought. Debian 11 Bullseye brought along new features, updated packages, and a new kernel. Unfortunately it also dropped support on some packages, namely rsnpashot. This was done, I’m sure with a purpose to keep packages that are still being developed running in the latest distro. And since Debian usually runs for about two years between major update version it was made that rsnapshot was to not be added the the Debian 11 release due to rsnapshot not being maintained for two years.

Reduce SSD Wear When Running ZFS: Plus Extra Tips

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A few tricks to reduce SSD (NOT NVMe/M.2) wear when running ZFS:

Remember to enable autotrim option on the pool. You should also setup a cron job to run zpool trim tank0 weekly or bi-weekly. Replace tank0 with your tank/dataset name.

zpool get autotrim tank0 # check trim
zpool set autotrim=on tank0 # enable trim on tank0
zpool trim tank0 # run trim manually

Use a large ashift of at least 12 but 13 is better. It will reduce write amplification. Jim Salters, recommends that you go higher than lower when choosing ashift which a too low can cripple whereas a high ashift won’t have much impact on most normal workloads. (You cannot change a pool vdev ashift once it has been set.

Proxmox Backup

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After running Proxmox on my server in my homelab as well as for work for several years now, I have looked into ways to backup the essential files for an easy reinstall if and when needed. Since most Proxmox setups run on bare metal hardware recover is a little more involved than just creating a snapshot or backup and reverting to an earlier point in time.

I often backup the files with rsnapshot, but sadly Debian 11 has dropped rsnapshot from their repo due to the fact that rsnapshot hasn’t been maintained in over two years. I do have a fix for that by following this link here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/bringing_rsnapshot_back_to_debian/. Update it appears that rsnapshot is back up and running on Debian 12 stable.

Custom Git Commit Push Alias

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I normally don’t create nor use tons of aliases in my .bashrc file. I have a few that tweak how grep and ls show color in the prompt and others where I can change directory by typing .. or … which perform cd ../ and cd ../../ respectively, but because of my roaming nature, where I bounce around from one computer/server to another where it may or may not have a configured .bashrc nor .vimrc, I have always tried to keep my dot-config-files mostly vanilla. My bashrc can be found here: github.com/wretchedghost/bashconfig I am also of the mind that aliases can make you dumb since you will be relying on the alias you created and not on what the alias might be doing in the background, but I digress.

Backing Up to Google Drive Using Rclone

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After I recently setup rsnapshot as my backup solution, which can be found here https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/rsnapshot/ I started looking at options on how to remotely backup my workstation. I used Backblaze for a while but I wasn’t too happy with their interface. I looked at getting another cloud backup solutions but each one would either cost quite a bit more per month and or had similar or worse user interfaces.

I decided to go with Google Drive since I’ve had it for years, its free for up to 15 GB, and the interface is simple to index and use. Most of my initial backups would only be a few gigs, but whenever it came time to get the higher tier from Google Drive, I can get 100 GB for not too crazy of a price.

Best ZFS Snapshot Scripts

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I came upon a very powerful and simple script when I was searching for a good way to automate the ZFS snapshots. I have found this to the best one so far in terms of how I can edit the script and tweak it for my use very easily.

I know that other scripts and programs exist such as sanoid by Jim Salter, which you can find at his GitHub page here jimsalterjrs/sanoid, but I have found iceflatline’s script to be quite good at what it does which is a basic ZFS snapshot creator.

Git Init Pull

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Creating a new git repo is a little more involved than one that is already setup but here are the simple steps to get one rolling. I prefer to use SSH over HTTPS due to security and ease of use from the command line.

Setup

We need to first do a few things to make a commit as easy as possible.

Create a ssh key if you haven’t already. This will be placed in ~/.ssh unless you tell it otherwise with the -f flag.

Replace HDD in Server Chassis on Linux

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In this scenario I want to replace a HDD in my ZFS tank0 pool. The pool has grown from 4 TB across 3 HDDS to 8TBs. I have swapped out two of the HDDs in the pool but I’m needing to swap out the last one to finally start using 8TB of storage where right now I’m stuck at 4TB.

Now, I have several things I can do to swap out this hard drive but since I didn’t use the /dev/by-disk or /dev/by-id labels and all of my HDDs in my zpool pull are labeled as /dev/sdx, I don’t know which one it currently is I’m needing to replace.

Rsnapshot

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I think of myself as an advanced Linux users. I have been using it exclusively for over 10 years plus and as a homelab enthusiast and a network/system administrator for my job, I use it every single day. But I hadn’t taken the time to sit down and really give rsnapshot a decent try. I have worked with rsync and scripting during all of this time but now that my needs are expanding, rsync is not keeping up with the scale. It took a little bit of time to understand how to work with the config file but once I had learned it, I implemented it on all my servers and workstations.

Save a File as Sudo Without Exiting Vim

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have often opened a file which I did not first run as sudo in vim, edited the file, then to only find out that it is in read-only mode. I would then have to close the file then re-open it as superuser then make the changes needed. I found this to be very frustrating and found out there are several ways to get the file edited by inserting commands in command-mode using vim.