Heute habe ich den Blog von einem DigitalOcean Droplet auf einen V-Root Server bei Strato umgezogen. Da der V-Root etwas mehr Power hat, werde ich einige Dienste, die ich bereits privat auf meinen Proxmox Servern hoste, auch auf den Strato Server umziehen. Bisher habe ich meine Anwendungen überwiegend in LXC’s (Linux Containern) oder auch VM’s installiert. In Kombination mit ZFS als Dateisystem (mit der großartigen Snapshot Fähigkeit) bin ich damit die letzten 4 Jahre ohne Probleme gefahren. Bei einem V-Root ist diese Möglichkeit nun nicht mehr gegeben. Daher habe ich die Chance genutzt, tiefer in das Thema Docker einzusteigen. Bisher habe ich nur vereinzelt Docker Container genutzt und die wenigen jeweils auch nochmal in einem LXC (vereinfachte mir das Snapshot handling). Nun also mal der Versuch, komplett auf Docker umzusteigen.
Der WordPress Blog ist als erstes in einen Docker Container umgezogen. Danach habe ich noch Nextcloud (plus OnlyOffice & Collabora) und Bitwarden aufgesetzt. Hier werde ich jedoch noch ein paar Tage testen, bevor ich mit all meinen Daten rüber migriere. Da man immer wieder von Traefik als Reverse Proxy in Kombination mit Docker liest, habe ich diesen probiert, jedoch nach mehreren Stunden etwas gefrustet wieder sein lassen. Auch wenn die ersten Services ganz gut damit liefen, scheint mir der Aufwand erheblich höher und die benötigten Labels für jeden Container nicht grade intuitiv. Da in den meisten Dokus Beispiele für Nginx zu finden sind, bin ich zurück zu dem Nginx Proxy Manager, welchen ich bereits seit Jahren erfolgreich zuhause im Einsatz habe. Auch wenn das bedeutet, dass ein Docker Container nun nicht “automatisch” via Traefik (durch 10-20 vorher zusammen gesuchte Labels je Service….) nach außen bereitgestellt wird, sondern nur nach “einigen wenigen” Klicks im Nginx Proxy Manager…. Nach meinem Gefühl, gibt sich das irgendwie nicht viel.
Einige weitere Dienste stehen noch auf der Liste und auch ein paar neue Sachen möchte ich mit aufnehmen. Bereits installiert sind:
WordPress
Nginx Proxy Manager
Nextcloud
OnlyOffice
Collabora
Bitwarden
MyPhpAdmin
Es folgen noch:
Portainer
Wallabag
Gitlab
Jitsi
Teamspeak
PiHole
Wireguard
OpenLDAP
Und je länger man nachdenkt, desto mehr fällt einem sicherlich noch ein. 🙂 Die Docker-Compose Dateien werde ich dann final auch hier Veröffentlichen mit allen zugehörigen Links, die mir bei der ein oder anderen Schwierigkeit geholfen haben.
Damit beim Filme schauen auf dem Fernseher nicht immer händisch der Mauszeiger aus dem sichtbaren Bereich geschoben werden muss, habe ich nach einer Lösung gesucht und wurde mit Unclutter fündig: “Unclutter ist ein kleines Hilfsprogramm, das den Mauszeiger verschwinden lässt.”
“Unclutter startet ab dem nächsten Neustart automatisch. Wenn man das oder die Optionen ändern will, kann man es durch Bearbeiten [3] der Datei /etc/default/unclutter mit Root-Rechten erreichen.” Standardmäßig verschwindet der Mauszeiger nach einer Sekunde. Kann aber natürlich beliebig angepsasst werden.
Git-based CTS (the evolution of the classical CTS)
abapGit
An open-source Git client that allows you to import existing code into your ABAP system
Repository
A Repository is a collection of objects, their directory structure, and metadata
Transport requests
A transport request records all the changes in your ABAP development system. With gCTS: Once a transport request is released, the changes are pushed into your central Git repository in the cloud as a commit represented by a commit ID.
Until recently, I only used my RaspberryPi 3 as Bluetooth Speaker with the HifiBerry AMP2 and two old B&W DM601. This setup only consumes about 3 Watts idling, so its running 24h. I used the VLC Android App on my smartphone to access my music on my NAS and streamed it via Bluetooth to the Pi.
But I wanted to control the music on different devices (like Tablet, HTPC, Desktop) and was annoyed, having to reconnect my smartphone Bluetooth connection all the time when coming home. Also there is still a loss of quality with Bluetooth and i have many FLAC files now. That’s why I gave Music Player Daemon (MPD) a try. A daemon which runs on the Pi and can be controlled from different clients. It accesses my music library via Wifi directly on the NAS.
These are the steps I had to make on my Raspberry Pi:
I had some audio cracking when switching a song or just pressing play and pause. Following this blog, they released a fix with in a newer firmware version, unfortunately after a while they broke it again with a later firmware version…. nevertheless I made the update and somehow I get less cracking, even if it doesn’t disappear completely.
sudo apt install autofs
sudo nano /etc/auto.nfs
sudo nano /etc/auto.master
sudo service autofs restart
mount
ls /mnt/nfs/music/
sudo reboot
#check again after reboot
ls /mnt/nfs/music/
auto.nfs
music -fstype=nfs,rw,retry=0 192.168.178.100:/data/music
auto.master
/mnt/nfs /etc/auto.nfs
4. Install MPD and the clients MPC and ncmpcpp
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mpd mpc ncmpcpp
5. Edit MPD config file and restart service
Open the mpd.conf file in your favorite editor and after editing, restart the service.
The Music Player Client (MPC) acts as client (as well as ncmpcpp) to MPD. MPD itself is just the daemon and has no music controlling capabilities.
#check if the output(s) is enabled
mpc outputs
#update the database (will take while)
mpc update
#look up the commands to adjust volume and play a file as test
mpc help
7. Configure ncmpcpp
When using ncmpcpp as client, you have to do a small configuration to tell the client to which server it should talk to. So open the config:
sudo nano ~/.ncmpcpp/config
and insert the following lines. When using ncmpcpp directly one the raspberry, set 127.0.0.1 as mpd_host. When using it on another machine (like your desktop), insert the IP of the raspberry pi.
Yesterday evening I got an email that on my Proxmox server a disk had failed. In my ZFS Raidz1 I have 4 different drives of two manufactures: 2x HGST and 2x Seagate. In the last 7 years I also used some Western Digitals. The only faulty hard drives I had in this years were from Seagate. This was the third… So this morning I bought a new hard disk, this time a Western Digital Red, and replaced the failed disk.
SSH into my server and checked the zpool data. Because I already removed the failed disk, it’s marked as unavailable.
failed disk: wwn-0x5000c5009c14365b
Now I had to find the Id of my new disk. With fdisk -l, I found my new disk as /dev/sde, but there was no id listed.
sudo fdisk -l
To be sure I checked again with:
sudo lsblk -f
With disk by-id I now got the Id.
ls /dev/disk/by-id/ -l | grep sde
new disk: ata-WDC_WD40EFRX-68N32N0_WD-WCC7K1CSDLRT and again the failed disk: wwn-0x5000c5009c14365b
Before replacing the disks, I did a short SMART test.
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sde
sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sde
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sde
The new disk had no errors. And because it is a new disk, I don’t had to wipe any file systems from it.
So first I took the failed disk offline. Not sure if that was necessary, because I already had removed the disk.
sudo zpool offline data 2664887927330352988
Next run the replace command.
sudo zpool replace data /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c5009c14365b-part2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD40EFRX-68N32N0_WD-WCC7K1CSDLRT
The resilver process for the 3TB disk took about 10 hours.
In February this year, I built a tiny second Proxmox Host using an ASRock DeskMini A300 and the following parts. I chose an AMD Ryzen 5 3400G (with integrated APU) CPU. As HTPC I always used a RaspberryPi 3 running LibreElec (Kodi) with the Jellyfin for Kodi Plugin to access my media. But the Raspberry reached its limits when it comes to 4k content or 10bit Audio lines. So why not use the DeskMini A300 as Proxmox Host and also as HTPC? It has enough power to play all types of media, and even some Steam games would run on it. So a few things had to be done.
Install a Desktop Environment & Login Manager on the Host
Add a user
Install some basic software (Firefox, VLC, JUK…)
Set up YouTube Leanback
Consuming Jellyfin media
Set up Plasma Activities for each service
Controlling media with KDE Connect
Of course it’s not recommended to install more than necessary on the host itself, so this shouldn’t be done on a productive Proxmox-System. Proxmox Wiki says: “Installing additional packages could lead to a hardly upgradeable system and is not supported from the Proxmox support team and therefore only for expert use.” Because I’m using my Proxmox Host just for my Homelab (pi-hole, nextcloud, reverseproxy etc.) I’ll take the risk. When using a host with a dedicated graphics card, you could also create a VM and pass it through, so you don’t have to mess around on the host like I have to do.
As simple as always. Edit the visudo for root permissions and
adduser newusername
visudo
add the following line to the end
newusername ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
Afterwards you have to start the login manager
systemctl start lightdm
Now you’re ready to login.
3. Install software
As I took the plain KDE Plasma Desktop, there is nearly no other software besides the necessary programs for the DE. I installed just a few things on top:
In September 2019 YouTube announced to end YouTube Leanback TV (a web interface which could simply be opened in any browser via youtube.com/tv). But it still exists and can be used with a quick workaround I found on reddit. Simple install the Firefox Add-on User Agent Switcher and add the following line in userAgent:
Mozilla/5.0 (SMART-TV; Linux; Tizen 4.0.0.2) AppleWebkit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko)
When browsing to youtube.com/tv you should get the Leanback interface in which you can easily navigate via keyboard. Now just press F11 to go to full screen mode.
Of course, you can connect the YouTube App of your Smartphone and just cast videos to it, just like with a Chromecast or the native YouTube Smart TV app. I would recommend using the Vanced App if you want to receive fewer ads.
Update 19.10.2022: Since I could only get 720p60 using the YoutTube for TV add-on, I’ve now gone back to the User Agent Switcher with the following userAgent:
Mozilla/5.0 (PS4; Leanback Shell) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/65.0 LeanbackShell/01.00.01.75 Sony PS4/ (PS4, , no, CH)
Update 11.09.2023: Suddenly, some ads were playing with black screen and audio before each video, despite uBlock. To get rid of them, add the following Filter to uBlock:
Update 21.04.2021: Jellyfin recently released the Jellyfin Media Player which I’m using from now on.
I tried two ways of consuming media of my Jellyfin server (which is running in an LXC on the same Host) and both work fine. First I used Kodi plus the Jellyfin for Kodi plugin. If you are already using Kodi for other stuff, integrating your Jellyfin content here is probably the best. As second option, and what I’m using still today, is simple the Jellyfin Web Version via browser in full screen mode. Just activate the TV mode in the Jellyfin settings. There are some minor bugs when navigating via keyboard, but most of the time it runs perfect. But because Firefox is still not playing MKV files (see bug 1422891) I had to install Chromium for proper use of Jellyfin.
apt install chromium chromium-l10n
Just enter the full screen mode with F11, and it looks pretty well on your TV.
6. Plasma Activities
When using KDE Plasma you can simply create Activities (click here to see how to create an activity) for each of your full screen running application and easily switch between them. In my case I created three Acitivites, one for YouTube Leanback, one for Kodi and one for Jellyfin. And of course there is the StandardActivity, which is just my normal desktop for viewing other content like photos or playing a Steam game. This way, I can switch through all my full screen applications via Super + Tab (or backwards with Super + Shift + Tab).
7. KDE Connect
If you don’t want to use the keyboard the whole time to control your media on your HTPC, you should try KDEConnect on your Smartphone. You’ll get the app from the F-Droid Store: KDE Connect. Next, just install the application on your host with:
apt install kdeconnect
and pair the two devices. By default, whenever media is played on your HTPC the app will now present you an interface to control it (with play, pause, next etc.). Also, you are able to control the mouse via touch on your Smartphone. And there are some other functions you should check out as well.
I’m really enjoying this new setup. It’s much more powerful, flexible and easier to handle than my old Raspberry Pi 3. I will keep an eye on whether there will be problems with a system update in the future.
Recently I had to setup a new Proxmox host and also had to setup a VPN to access the network of the host. This time I gave PiVPN a try, since it recently added support for Wireguard. So first I installed Wireguard on the host like here (without adding the TUN device to the containers config), set up a new unprivileged container running debian buster, set up port forwarding in the router, installed curl followed by the one liner for PiVPN.
