- cross-posted to:
- linuxmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- linuxmemes@lemmy.world
EDIT: i had an rpi it died from esd i think
EDIT2: this is also my work machine and i sleep to the sound of the fans
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I just found what server #loops run on.
I just got a Nas with 4hdd and 4 nvme. That’s pretty solid for my current needs. Scale your hardware to your needs. I won’t be maxing out my setup maybe ever. I’ll just update to newer hardware every 5 or 6 years and call it good.
My first services were running on an old laptop from 2006/2007 standing on an old leather chair in a corner of a room. The laptop was standing on four old and used skateboard wheels so there was some space between the laptop and the leather.
I had a spare gpu lying around so I didn’t need integrated graphics
Then next thing I knew I had 16tbs of data
Poverty computing takes more balls. Like yeah, you got a nice Plex server and you can play Skyrim at max setting because you can afford a big NAS and a nice graphic card - no skills needed. I’m spending two hours trying to get the Sims to work on a fifteen year old laptop that I don’t think can even run a DE or running Puppy Linux off USB while waiting to afford a new hard drive.
To be completely fair, it’s hard to overstate the durability of an old Thinkpad. They’re so ubiquitous, Linux compatibility is almost guaranteed. Then, after the battery goes, attach it to a UPC and ride that setup for another decade at least.
Racks? None
Screens? Attached
Fans? Full blast
Oh yeah, it’s server laptop time
Modern tech is so wasteful. Why’d you ever need all that stuff for.
Back in the day I used to host all my stuff on a dinky little router (ASUS Wl500g, 300mhz 32MB RAM) with a powered USB hub and a spare USB HDD hooked to it. It handled downloading torrents overnight, hosted a few websites, an FTP/SAMBA server, an image/screenshots hosting and galleries for me and my friends, including that one script that generated a GIF of all my epic gamer stats on each access, a couple of bots, sent me weather reports via SMS, hosted a webcam to be used as IP security camera, and also a dumb printer so that it could be used by anyone on the network, besides working as my actual router.
When it died* I moved all that stuff to an old UMPC. And nowadays, I host my shit on $30 smartwatches with Termux.
Meanwhile, one of the commercial projects I’ve been working with lately, which is basically just a glorified image dump, with all the modern bells and whistles, doesn’t even launch if the machine has less than 32GB RAM… smh
EDIT: * It was the HDD that died, the router itself is still chugging along, but with less duties as just a network switch for less demanding appliances
Because we forgot optimization in a world that celebrates maximalists and constant upgrades to feed shopping addictions that make people feel more in control of their space in a world with less and less opportunities for self determination.
When I remember I was the cool kid for having a 4GB flash drive that could fit all of my call of duty game and homework and I look at the 560GB games now that aren’t even as fun to play I think we have made some mistakes along the way that instead of prioritizing the experience of life we prioritize the ease of it.
Please tell more about those watches
W&O X9 Call. It’s a terrible watch, basically just a shitty android phone inside of a knockoff applewatch case. It runs Android 9 on 2" screen, 4GB RAM and 64GB of space (didn’t even test that one tbh), battery life - nonexistent (less than a day). But I’ve been looking specifically for stuff like this and bought a load of them at wholesale for like $28.5 a piece… and the specs didn’t even exactly match between all of them. Loaded them up with cheapest plans for IoT devices, installed termux, nodejs and moved some of my personal scripts over to them. One app/script per piece, no need for VM’s or containers 🤣 And they got their own links so firewall is also not necessary.
None of them have static IP’s accessible from outside though, so for stuff I need public access to I jam that into the remaining RAM space on one of the few of my $1/mo lowendboxes that I’m using primarily as VPN servers. Got them all on tailscale, so I could theoretically use Funnel to route traffic from public internet to those watches (haven’t tried yet). And still to figure out some way for them to failover onto each other’s internet because the plans are extremely limited, will probably have to learn android app development for that when I get to it.
There is also HK Ultra 2 which I believe is essentially the same thing, and I saw a few other variants on the market without even a brand name, so the only way to find them would be to search for “sim card” or sorting smartwatches category by bad reviews first 😂
Ah, and also a disclaimer: I am not promoting this as a viable way to host things. This is just my personal exercise at hobo engineering
I went overkill because i had money, no hardware i could dedicate and wanted flexibility for my volatile interests. So overkill (except storage until i upgrade) that i plan sharing it with my family (when i set it up properly) I could have made a less overkill choice but that way i probably wont need to change my setup for some game
Imagine asking “why?” instead of “why not?”
Money? Noise? Power consumption?
Heavy-duty applications? Lots of devices in the home? Reliance on PoE? There are plenty of reasons to use big equipment, it’s not just for show.
I couldn’t run multiple game servers off of a laptop the way I do on my spare Ryzen 9 5900X. I also have it transcoding media and it has 30tb of storage, of which I’m currently using over 2/3s for media/steam cache.
I also have a 24 port switch because I have a whole family here each with their own PCs, consoles, etc… I host the odd LAN as well and it wasn’t really any cheaper to go smaller for when I don’t need all 24, so I just popped it off. I also need two APs on different channels just to accommodate all the wireless devices + IoT shit.
Mine is my 6th gen i5 gaming PC stuffed into an early 00’s tower server chassis. It’s got an ebay IT mode HBA hooked up to a bunch of drives I pulled from an old Lefthand node we were recycling.
BRB just making a backup
I just bought a whole new 8th gen Intel setup to be my main PC. So I could use my 4770 as a Plex server.
Nothing ever dies in my house, Just Machines for the machine gods.
My (family’s) Homeserver is my dad’s old gaming rig from ~2014
I just put an 8 TB Hard Drive in it and set it up as a combination Emby Server and ghetto “NAS”.
If I didn’t need a large amount of storage I’d totally do this. As it stands it’s hard or prohibitively expensive to get 30TB of storage connected to a laptop with reasonable read/write speeds.
