I use rsync too. It’s older and from what I understand was designed at a time when data storage was much smaller so it may not be as fast as other backup options. It also doesn’t have encrypted backups like other backup options (I think).

Rsync has been the most reliable option for me though. Every syncing option I’ve tried seems too complicated and breaks down every time I look away. Since my entire backup size is around 550gb and I’m not concerned with encrypted backups, I think rsync just works just fine.

I even created my own tool that puts my rsync commands into easy to read/modify files so I can organize my most common transfers. I can easily backup my phone, HomeAssistant server, home server and computer to my two backup locations in a single alias or cronjob now.

A bit of a pain to learning how to make proper backups that restore successfully every time, but once I figured it out, I’ve been very confident in my backup strategy.

I finally got Caddy’s TLS working with a custom module to handle DNS challenges. Turns out all I had to do was wait 10-15 minutes and everything would sort itself out.

Now on to the next puzzle. I started with Caddy in a Docker container and it’s working as intended. Now I want to replicate that in Rootful Podman Compose but I’m running into an issue. With the exact same setup (docker-compose.yml, Dockerfile and Caddyfile) I can get my TLS cert without issue but I can’t seem to connect to my website from any external browser. Not through my domain name or even through my home’s local network.

Once I figure out how I can access my website, I’ll be one step closer to where I want to be. Next will be to get Rootless Podman working, then I can finally set up the file server and kiwix instance instead of the test page I am currently using.

After that, I can finally spend time doing what I want to do and focus my time looking into the Gemeni Protocol.

Down the road I’ll look into hosting an IRC server and Snikket instant messenger but that’s super low priority. I like tinkering with my Raspberry Pi and my constant backup/restores wouldn’t be good for reliability for such services.

Oh no, I was just about to move forward and then you gave me another rabbit hole.

I didn’t know Let’s Encrypt had a public database, that does sound like a good idea to use wildcard certs instead.

I assume this is what I can use as a reference for wildcard certs.

How do you keep track of probing? I’ve been curious about that but haven’t put much effort into that as I’ve been focused on getting things working.

I’ve been using Alpine Linux. I’ve always leaned towards minimalism in my personal life so Alpine seems like an appropriate fit for me.

Since what is installed is intentional, I am able to keep track of changes more accurately. I keep a document for complete setup by hand, then reduce that to an install script so I can get back to the same state in a minimal amount of time if needed.

Since I only have a Laptop and two Raspberry Pi’s with no intention of expanding or upgrading, this works for me as a personal hobby.

I’ve even gone as far as to use Alpine Sway as a desktop to keep everything similar as well.

I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who doesn’t have the time to learn. It doesn’t use systemd and packages are often split meaning you will have to figure out what additional packages you may need beyond the core package.

I appreciate the approach Alpine takes because from a security point of view, less moving parts means less surface area to exploit. In today’s social climate, who knows how or when I’ll become a target.

I finished setting up my personal computer with Sway on Alpine so now I can’t procrastinate anymore on getting TLS working with Caddy for my RPi 5.

I decided to ditch Cloudflare since using that service makes me feel uncomfortable. TLS is a bit of a pain because I am using an uncommon port so I need to do a DNS challenge. I still haven’t been able to get it working with DeSec.io but I hope maybe sometime this week.

I might look into using a tunnel service in the future but if I can figure this out, I’ll at least be able to adapt to changes in the future if I need to deal with any changing situations.

When I figure that out, I’ll look into Gemeni protocol and host something there. I don’t want anything big, just a little space of my own in the corner of the internet. Maybe I’ll look into hosting an irc server for a small group of people too.

It wasn’t until my first job at a grocery store during Christmas time that I learned it was “Feliz Navidad” being sung.

Before that, I couldn’t figure out why the cheerful song that only appeared around Christmas time was saying “Police shot my dad”

Frogcomposband is my favourite Angband varient. There’s a huge amount of classes to pick from, towns with quests and once you get a hang of it, most of the interactions can be done by the number pad.

I met one of my now closest friends at the end of a Halloween party just as things were shutting down and everyone was leaving.

As she was walking by, she randomly announced that she was going to see a band next week. One that I had already bought tickets for. We talked briefly and exchanged numbers. We saw the band together and hung out a few more times but I think after the third time we hung out, we knew we were best friends.

We both weren’t even supposed to go to that Halloween party. Both of us had very different plans and somehow ended up at the party as something to do. The timing for us to meet was just so tiny and it doesn’t even feel real sometimes.

https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis

It has a list of Text User Interfaces for terminals. Handy since I work in a terminal mostly with my network devices. A TUI for file management made life a lot easier for myself.

Container databases seem as simple as shutting down a container, running a backup and then starting the container again. Although my my experience is only from hosting a Lemmy/PieFed instance. I did make many backups and restores with no issues to the database. It all worked as I intended it to work.

I would imagine a similar process for non container databases. Stop, backup, restart. Although someone with more experience would be better to answer that.

I personally use rsync since I do most my work by command line these days. It’s taken nearly half a year really understand it but it offers the flexibility I desire.

I have a small network with only a handful of devices. I keep all my incremental backups on encrypted partitions and encrypted detachable SSD’s which I manually decrypt. Rsync is set up to use SSH so there’s some form of encrypted transfers but that’s not actually a priority for me, just an added benefit.

I also use rsync to sync files and directories while maintaining additional system attributes across multiple systems. That is to say, what’s root or user accessible stays root or user accessible after the transfer is complete.

If I desired more protection, I’d probably look into Borg backup. Currently I just use encryption as an annoyance deterrence method. I also stick to the base Rsync command because every other option I tried brought with it complexities which have all failed me. I at least have a high level confidence in my backup/restore process now.

How do you think Ansible can help me? I’ve read about it a few times but it’s hard for me to understand it’s actual usage without spending time playing with it.

I can possibly look into it a bit more in the future. I’ve got a few things I’m working on like learning how to do TLS with Caddy so I can reduce my dependency with Cloudflare.

I haven’t tried arch at all. I used Linux Mint for a year, LMDE for a year and only really started working with command line since last December. I think I chose to try Alpine because I wanted my web facing devices to have the least amount of software installed. Security-wise it made sense to me to have less surface area to exploit.

It took a bit extra effort for me to learn how to use OpenRC as the init system. As well as learning Linux from a bare bones linux perspective.

I actually found using Busy-box Ash interesting to work with and that’s the only shell I currently use. I even wrote a whole script around Rsync in a POSIX friendly way because I liked the idea portable scripting.

If you’re interested, I can send you a link that contains the setup notes for my server. It’s about 85% of my setup process, the rest being some files that are mostly customization that I rsync into place towards the end of the setup process. That can give you an idea of what Alpine on ARM is like.

I can appreciate that about Debian. Common tools and stability can be both convinient and reliable. Learning linux is already overwhelming with choices.

Even though I use Alpine for all my Pi boards and laptop, I keep a live usb partition of Linux Mint Debian Edition as my emergency backup. It just works.

My frustration with Raspberry Pi OS is that the packages available were constantly out of date. Some were 2 to 3 years out of date.

I eventually started using Alpine linux on my Pi boards and have been happy since then. Now I can use the latest Docker and Podman packages without manually adding new repositories.

If I didn’t prefer Alpine’s minimal approach, I would have probably gone with Debian because of it’s history in stability.

I have a few small services I’ve been hosting on a Raspberry Pi 5 but ever since I saw a list of no JavaScript/CSS/HTML sites, I’ve been interested in hosting some simple pages just for myself. I’ll probably look into something that can create simple pages with markdown because it’s something simple that I’m already comfortable with.

I was born in Canada and was essentially raised Canadian. Both my bio parents were born in Guyana. Go back in history and their relatives were from India. My stepdad is from a Scottish background.

In Canada I lived in a city with a noticeable Indian and Pakistani population. People there assume I am Indian.

When I travelled Europe, everyone assumed I was African, French or French Canadian. I can’t speak French. In Germany, people assumed I was German or Muslim. I know being Muslim isn’t a nationality but the Turkish people in Berlin would greet me all the time. While I was in Australia, I was just treated like I was exotic… Yeah… And in Cuba, people thought I was Cuban. Luckily I had a pasty white, Spanish speaking Californian guy with me for a short time to speak to the locals.

It’s such a trip what people assume about me. Even more trippy with the amount of people who thought I was a local when I was abroad in Europe, especially in Germany where I only had a year with a work/travel visa.

Even though I have no pride in being Canadian, that’s what I am. That’s the culture I was born in and raised up as. The people who ask “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?” Tend to be closed minded people who I actively avoid.

I’m not a fan of labels because I can never keep up with the constant changing of meaning or the new labels that keep appearing.

Instead I focus on peoples actions to figure out how I am to handle them. The most common behaviour I see in people who act more in their own self interest is manipulation. They want to control as much as possible. That includes the situation and the people around them.

The simplest thing to do is observe. Watch what they do. Watch how they interact with people around them. I often ask myself a bunch of questions about that behaviour. Do the words they say match what they do? Where is the attention coming from and where is it going? What tools do they use to bring attention to themselves? Is there a power imbalance between them and someone else? What tools do they use to control that power imbalance? Who is gaining something and who is losing something in those interactions? Why do they care so much about something that seems insignificant?

That’s not a complete list or anything. People are creative in good and bad ways so it’s more of a developed skill which takes time to grow. You may find other observations or questions to help you filter out manipulative people.

As a quiet person who has spent more time observing than talking, I’ve always been a target for manipulators. They seem to think my quietness is submission. I’ve dealt with far too many manipulators so much of what I said comes from those experiences.

I often deal with manipulative people by either acting dumb or figuring out the tools they are using or willing to use on me and deny them the chance to use those tools on me any further.

I hate flirting. I just don’t understand it. It’s this weird social dance that no one explains but expects people to understand. It all feels hypocritical that comes with unreasonable expectations.

The biggest source of frustration for me comes from the fact that I have to act in a way that says I am interested while not saying I am interested. That just does not work for me.

I don’t flirt. I don’t even try. I don’t want to be with someone flirty because from my past experiences, flirty people are also not straight forward about other parts of their true selves.

Flirty people also misinterpret a lot of my actions as a result of me not understanding flirting as well. Many flirty people from my experiences have assumed I am flirting. I was just being nice. I was treating them like a person. Just like I treat family like people. And friends like people. And strangers like people.

As a not flirty person, the number of times people have pushed me up against a wall and kissed me, or just jump to kissing me has been way more than I ever expected out of life. Each time has been equally confusing. I wasn’t flirting. I was just treating them how I wanted to be treated.

I have no advice to give but I have some thoughts to share from my life experiences. People like being treated like people. People who make mistakes. People who have their own thoughts and feelings. People who are themselves. I’ve made more genuinely close connections with people, intimate or not, by just treating people as people. And it’s really something as simple as that. Also having a genuine smile helps quite a bit too. When I smile because I’m enjoying the moment, I notice that it draws people towards me. It’s a type of energy that draws people in and it makes me feel even better about myself too.

I don’t believe all raccoons live near roads. It is entirely possible for some animals to have minimal or no contact with human infrastructure. The world is a big place even if it feels small at times.