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.
The diff command tells you what files were changed/added/deleted between snapshots.
#list snapshots of a dataset
zfs list -rt snapshot | grep zpool/dataset
zpool/dataset@zfs-auto-snap_monthly-2020-03-01-0552
zpool/dataset@zfs-auto-snap_monthly-2020-04-01-0552
...
#choose two snapshots and use the diff command
zfs diff -FH zpool/dataset@zfs-auto-snap_monthly-2020-03-01-0552 zpool/dataset@zfs-auto-snap_monthly-2020-04-01-0452
The diff command can also show the difference between a snapshot and a current dataset.
For music playback at home I have built my own Bluetooth Speaker. It’s a RaspberryPi 3, on top a HifiBerry AMP2, and they are powering two B&W DM601. I have used this script to setup bluetooth and configure the audio settings. Because bluetooth is the only way to pass audio to the raspberry (besides running music on the raspberry itself, e.g. via MPD/MPC), I was thinking of a way passing audio via chinch cable. I grabbed an old USB Soundcard I had laying around and connected it to the raspberry. Now I had to forward the USB Soundcard Audio Input to the HifiBerry AMP2. I found a way using PulseAudio for this. Got it from here.
#find input device (my USB Soundcard)
pactl list sources
#find output device (my HifiBerry AMP2)
pactl list sinks
#set loopback
pactl load-module module-loopback source=src_name sink=sink_name
But most USB Soundcards only have Mono-Audio-In and often there a annoying noises through the input… So this was really no joy and I will continue using bluetooth.
