Home lab testing / projects

huh really I’ll delve a bit into that, didn’t notice that as a requirement … (not saying your wrong)
but if so is worth noting.

I didn’t write that Kali was special… did I? Or that it was a black box? I simply criticized it (a little) for the CLI interfaces…? I prefer the Lubuntu distro over Kali.

Yes, I understand the security perspective. I just think it’s less helpful than simple measures for most home use cases. Most people do not do backups of their home systems. I will continue to be a proponent of backups and redundancy. Perhaps my evidence for this is anecdotal, but, there’s quite a bit of data to support the assertion.

Again, some might think (from your post) that there’s good reason to spend several $k on a cyber security system, black boxes and proprietary software. I’m not one of them obviously… I’ll stick with Lubuntu/linux and cheap redundant storage.

Uh, I’d rebuild the system… with its useless information completely intact.

I am quite serious. Again, have I given any reason for you to not believe so?

@eeyore
Hmm … funny part is I totally agree with you . WAY more than you think.

Actually if one reads I’m advocating simple pentesting ( now one can use just packages on a existing system or like I did use a laptop that I had setting around) as well as reading the router logs, another tool is a password change strategy.

Backups well I must believe in them as I clearly mentioned having set one up.
Which I thought I was clear was in the recovery process.
I’m afraid that you took my post out of context.

Sorry but I don’t see where I stated I didn’t believe I stated

which means exactly what I stated above. Don’t panic Develop a strategy.
Which doesn’t involve little black box’s super squirrel secret software.
Just simple knowledge and a strategy goes a long way.

While I did use a at your username it was for discussion … NOT to belittle what you wrote or said.
But discussion that has more than just the two of us viewing. So yes I get long wind elaborate etc…
I do regret and saddened that you misunderstood my post.

and as far as this

I never took nor thought anything you said as a criticism of the Kali - Linux … personally I prefer the CLI apps. Very few of my systems have a GUI which drives my daughter mad. My post was in agreement that it isn’t special … it’s just a distro geared at selected tools simple Debian based distro.

On the Plex application I did try the snap install which went on really nicely.
However the files from the NFS mount point on the media server was not present nor could be accessed.
Makes sense as it’s in a container as @eeickmeyer pointed out.
While I’m sure I could have established a link in the container to the files ( media ) on the NFS.
Me being lazy, I just went back to the basic non-snap install. ( already pulled the old media server offline, and this new one is up and running better than the old HP system)

The pointer to Plex via snap wasn’t bad advice at all, as I can actually see the benefits of doing that method. So honestly Thank you for the pointer. In reality is most likely better than what I did.

The installing the Virtual Machine software is kind of slow in the implementation.
Because I am seeking a simple process (I “think” KVM/QEMU is way I want to go maybe).
My first thoughts on this was to setup the media server first then install the VM software and run some VM for testing. What I keep coming back to is this the best way, I’m sure it can be done or at least “think” it can be. Then again in the back of my head I have a nagging thought is one shouldn’t go this route.
(more researching on my end)

In the case of the snap, you may have had to connect removable media to get your NFS mount point on it.

sudo snap connect plexmediaserver:[tab] shows you what can be connected. In this case:

$ sudo snap connect plexmediaserver:
desktop          home-all         network          network-bind     opengl
removable-media  system-observe   

So sudo snap connect plexediaserver:removable-media would likely have given you what you need.

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Probably would have worked if I had thought of it … again thanks for the replies and input

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This post is just a update as

  1. I’m bored
  2. And I just wanted to post something today that isn’t a problem or failure of some sort.

Outside usual maintenance i.e. scrubbing zfs pools , updating, performing backups, adding media files, and reading the post on here not much is going on from my end here.

Couple the above with me considering replacing the main pool drives (on the NFS) from 4 TB to 6TB drives. And of course doubling the vdevs from 1 to 2.
Allowing a practical usable storage of about 59 TB (calculating a 20% free slope )

Or just go with the original plan of just adding a additional vdev of nine 4TB drives to the existing pool.
which will allow a practicable storage of about 39 TB again considering a 20% free slope.

Which these ideas can be done at a later date as currently I’m only at 23% usage so there is absolutely no rush to do this, only a desire. So it’s not a " I have to do something". The down side to doing the expansion regardless of the method will be cost of adding hardware and drives. Which honestly either way is pretty much a wash cost wise.

As a side note on the backup server when I used plucky from when it was still in development phase. I was surprised on the last update that it actually pushed over to the official released version. It was a nice touch as it saved me a bit of interaction. Kudos to that simple feature.