GreatBlueHeron

I've been running ZFS for around 20 years and am very comfortable with it. My current server is Ubuntu 22.04.5.

Last night I was bored logging into my different boxes and looking around. I ran df on my main server and saw that 56 of my 61 snapshots were mounted. The script that creates and manages my snaps has not changed in at least 3 years, there's nothing weird in any logs and I'm confused. I can manually unmount them and everything looks fine.

The only thing I can think of that's changed recently is I installed Prometheus node_exporter and I just checked and the zfs collector is enabled by default. I'm wondering if that mounted them so it could collect their details..

Any other thoughts?

I've got an IKEA Tradfri LED driver and a Rodret dimmer. When I first installed them I thought it would be good to also control some non-IKEA pendant lights with the same dimmer, in sync with the cabinet lights connected to the Tradfri - so, I created automations in Home Assistant corresponding to each of the actions the dimmer can perform and this is working fine. However, we've decided not to control the pendant lights in sync with the cabinet lights so it's now unnecessarily complicated. I plan to remove the automations and link the Rodret direct to the Tradfri again.

I understand that I can do this by following the IKEA procedure to pair the devices. But I'm also curious about the option in Home Assistant to bind devices.

Finally to my question - are these two methods to achieve the same result, or is IKEA pairing somehow different than Zigbee binding?

I'm a retired Unix admin. I've been using Linux since I installed Slackware 3.1 from several boxes of 1.44MB diskettes. But, working in a corporate environment with lots of M$ Office requirements meant that my work desktop has always been Windows. I know it sounds crazy, but I was really hesitant to switch to away from Windows - I guess after 30+ years I'd developed a bit of Stockholm syndrome. But, Copilot and the looming Recall were enough to push me over the edge.

Anyway - I spent a while making sure I got all my data off OneDrive etc. and then installed Debian 12 with LXDE - my laptop is an older i7 with 16GB of RAM, but lightweight and minimal really appeals to me. Everything just worked and I was happy for a day or two. Then I started noticing video tearing - especially on my 2nd monitor. I did a bit of research and found a suggestion to enable TearFree in the X11 configuration - X wouldn't even start when I did that. So, I did some more reading and now think I understand that the lightweight window managers don't have vsync and this causes the tearing. Apparently the real solution is to use a compositing window manager (I don't understand what that means..) with OpenGL. Oh well, I can't have minimal lightweight - so, I installed KDE. It's very clean and no video tearing. I still don't have it doing power management for my monitors the way I want, but other than that - I'm very happy. It was noticeably sluggish compared to LXDE, but I'm used to that already after only a day.

It's only been a few days, but I have not regretted the switch for one second.

I tried Nextcloud a while back and was not impressed - I had issues withe the speed of the Windows sync that were determined to be "normal" with no roadmap to getting fixed. I'm now planning to move off Windows desktop so that won't be an issue - so I thought I'd try again.

I went to nextcloud.com, clicked on Download-> Nextcloud server -> All-in-one -> Docker image - Setup AIO. This took me to the github README at Docker section. I'm already running docker for other things so I read the instructions, setup a new filesystem for my data directory and ran the suggested docker command with an appropriate "--env NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=". I'm then left with a terminal running docker in the foreground - not a great way to run a background server but ok, I've been around for a while and can figure out how to make it autostart in the background ongoing. So I move on to the next step - open my browser at the appropriate URL and I'm presented with a simple page asking me to "Log in using your Nextcloud AIO passphrase:". I don't have a Nextcloud AIO passphrase and nothing I've read so far has mentioned it. When I search for it I get some results on how to reset it, but not much help. I could probably figure that out too, but after reading some more I found that Nextcloud requires a public hostname and can't work with a local name or IP address. I'm already running my home LAN with OpenVPN and access it from anywhere as "local" - I don't really want to create a new path into my home network just for Nextcloud.

I'm sorry - I know this sounds like a disgruntled rant and I guess it is. I just want to check that I'm not missing obvious things before I give up again. All I want is a simple file sync setup like onedrive but without the microsoft.

I'm a retired Unix (AIX) admin and I run some Linux servers at home. But, I'm still using Windows as a desktop. This whole Windows recall thing is the final straw - I'm switching to Linux for desktop. I've done a bit of research and believe Debian is the best fit for me. So, I recently installed it on one of my small servers.

I like it but I find the "half baked" approach to systemd a bit confusing. My default minimal server install has both cron jobs and systemd timers configured for basic system maintenance tasks. For example logrotate is fired twice a day - once by /etc/cron.daily/logrotate and once by /lib/systemd/system/logrotate.service. I'm tempted confirm that everything cron does is actually also done by systemd and then apt purge cron\* && rm -rf /etc/cron*. But, I suspect that might break future package installs and updates?

I'm also not excited by ifup/ifdown - why not just use the capability already included with systemd? This is just a minor thing for me as there's no real duplication I guess.

Is the a Debian based "pure systemd" distro??

... or are notifications just really bad on Android?

For background, we've got an old, sick, dog and my wife often needs to get help from me urgently. I'm still running an old Pixel 4a - it worked really well for me until Google crippled the battery and even now it works well enough that I'm not tempted to upgrade.

My notifications always seem to be delayed - in batches. I have 3 buildings on my property and each has a Nest doorbell. Some days I can be walking around and I'll constantly hear ding, ding, ding as I walk past each doorbell. Other days I can walk around and hear nothing, and then I'll get 5-10 notifications all at once.

Today was a perfect example of why this is so frustrating - I'm sitting at my desk with my phone in front of me. It's plugged in an charging. My phone starts ringing and it's my wife upset that I have not responded to her messages. I go help her with the dog and come back to my phone and sure enough, 8 minutes ago there's a notification from Google Chat, 6 minutes ago there's a notification from Google Messages and 4 minutes ago there's the phone call. The Google Chat and Google Messages notifications never came through - until the phone call came in!

I've been through and made sure that all the battery optimisations are turned off for all the apps that I want instant notifications from - but that shouldn't have any impact here - my phone was plugged in.

Is this normal Android? (kinda rhetorical question - I've been running Android since my Nexus 4 and don't think this is normal but it feels like it's somehow the "new" normal)

I'm not running the stock Pixel launcher - does the launcher get involved in notification delivery at all?

I've just had a 2nd USB3 SATA enclosure go bad. I can't remember what the first one was. This one is an Orico MS400U3. It was plugged into a Linux box with one drive and the drive started reporting strange errors so I removed the drive and connected it direct to SATA and it's working fine - after fsck fixed the errors on it. I thought maybe the USB port on the Linux box might be bad so I plugged the Orico into a Windows PC with a known good 1TB drive in it (a different drive than originally gave errors) - Windows sees the drive as 115PB and won't let me format it.

Is there any explanation for this other than the controller board in the enclosure somehow failing?

I'm thinking of going for this StarTech one next. Any other suggestions?

Some of you may recall my previous post about a ~20V potential between my electrical ground and my concrete slab. That's still not resolved - it's currently sitting just under 10V.

Today I have a new mystery - to me anyway..

I'm sitting at my desk and notice that I got a tingle from the outer shield/shell of a USB-C cable. I got my multi-meter and measured 65V from the cable to me with my bare feet on the slab! It drops to about 16V if I lift my feet off the floor. I immediately assumed the charging brick it's plugged into was faulty, but just in case I took a more measurements and found that the another similar charger has a similar offset, the "ground" part of a TRS cable plugged into an amplifier is similar, the accessible metal shield part of a USB-A port on an ASUS ChromeBox is similar. I assume that's not normal?

This is a new slab on grade build. Ground and neutral are properly bonded - I checked a few outlets and ground to neutral is ~0.3V.

Edit - I don't think there is any safety risk - I measured 0.3μA current.

I live in a small community at the end of a long line in Atlantic Canada. We get frequent power disruptions so I have installed a backup generator. I have a bit of a home lab, and don't like my server to lose power with no warning so I've recently installed a small UPS to keep it running in the gap between my power going out and the generator starting. The UPS logs data and lets me access it.

I'm wondering if I should be concerned about my input voltage. The blue line in the minimum for the hour, the amber is maximum for the hour. The zero period on the 8th of March was when I had the power turned off to do some work.

The default configuration for my UPS has it cut over to battery power at 88V, so it seems some significant variation is expected!

I tried searching my power company web site but they don't seem to publish anything about guaranteed, or even expected, supply voltage.

I hope avoiding Amazon fits this community rules?

I need a few bits to resurrect an old PC. My Amazon cart is $68 with shipping - we're going to cancel Prime, but my wife is still working on downloading all her photos. Best I can do elsewhere is near double this PLUS shipping from 3 different suppliers and 2 of the suppliers are on eBay, which is also a US company.

I moved to Canada a few years ago from Australia where I had pccasegear, scorptec and others. It seems Canadians have become reliant on the US market and Amazon and we now have no competitive local retailers for this type of thing?

I've just had a new house built in Atlantic Canada. This morning I noticed a bit of a tingle from my coffee machine when I touched it with wet hands. The machine has a grounded (3 pin) plug and I checked - it has 0V between the parts I touched (the entire metal outer case) and the ground socket in the outlet. So, I got curious and did some more measurements. It turns out there is 20V AC (and about 300mV DC) between the ground in my outlets and me when I'm standing on my floor (sealed concrete slab) with bare feet.

I assume this isn't good?

I'll be calling the electrician that wired the house in the morning, but I'd appreciate any insights you might have.

So pissed off with google. I've had google phones since my Nexus 4. I'm not a power user by any means and I'm now only on my 4th phone since then - a Pixel 4a. It's perfect for me - nice and small so it fits in my pocket, headphone jack etc. and all day battery! For my usage pattern I never had to think about battery even on such an old phone - I'd just charge it on my nightstand each night and never give it a thought.

Since the recent update - it's now 09:26 and I'm already down to 50%.

I know they say it's for my safety, but I simply don't believe them. I can't afford a new phone now, don't live anywhere where I can get the battery replaced reasonably and it's out of stock where I've looked for a DIY replacement. I'm stuck with this.

Update - typing the paragraph above took me down to 48%