Scott Knight's Blog

Homelab Update

Scott Knight — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 09:00:28 -0500

Some time last year I wrote about using a cheap Lenovo Thinkcentre I bought as a lab machine to run my homelab server. Initially I used it to try out a new (to me) Linux distro, which I installed straight onto the machine. I enjoyed test driving it, but it never replaced my primary system.

So, this week I decided to repurpose the ThinkCentre as a general lab server to locally host open-source applications and dust off some of my brain’s cobwebs around server configs and networking.

This YouTube video from TechHut provides a really easy way to get set up if you’re interested in doing something similar.

For now I’m running Ubuntu Server LTS with Docker and Portainer for container management.

On top of this, I installed Cosmos as a dashboard which looks nice and has a really decent OOTB feature set. So far, I dig it.

A tiny view of the Cosmos dashboard. The default color scheme reminds me of Mardi Gras.

Future plans include trying out some new apps (this sure beats more software subscriptions) and adding a NAS to the lab, so if you have any recommendations send me an email reply using the button below.

Personal Automations

Scott Knight — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:36:43 -0500

Since I learned to code, I’ve always been a fan of eliminating boring and/or tedious stuff with automation. This can involve anything from custom scripting (usually with Python, in my case) to using a service like IFTTT, Zapier, or Make (formerly Integromat). With these tools you can connect most common services that expose an API.

While automation use cases are usually born out of some personal pain point or specific challenge, I’m always interested in seeing what other people automate and how they choose do it. I’ve also taken great inspiration from pieces like Al Sweigart’s Automate the Boring Stuff with Python and this classic Github repo.

I recently bought an IFTTT subscription and audited my personal life for a list of things that take up too much time or involve a tedious process.

Here are some of my favorites:

Email/SMS to Brag File (IFTTT): Sending an email or text to IFTTT creates a new row in my career brag file with text I include. (My “brag file” is what I humbly call the personal doc where I track my professional accomplishments so I don’t forget about past wins.)
Blog RSS to Socials (IFTTT): Each time I publish a new post on this site, it gets automatically posted to my Twitter and Mastodon accounts. (Bonus—Buttondown also sends an RSS-driven email to readers subscribed to my posts)
Instapaper to Trello (IFTTT): New articles saved to Instapaper automatically get added to a “future blog posts” list on my personal Trello board.
Trello Board Automations (Trello): Using Trello’s built-in automation capability, I’ve set up rules and buttons that keep my task board organized so I never lose track of any reminders, tasks, or projects. These are driven by due-dates, sources (cards added via email, etc.), and task age (highlighting overdue items and so on).
Smart Home/IoT Automations (IFTTT): Various applets turn on/off lights and appliances using smart plugs driven by my location, times, alarms, etc.
Custom Transaction Categorization (Python): A custom script I wrote using Python which can take a CSV export of my bank transactions and categorize them for my accounting. It can categorize a year’s worth of transactions in less than a second, which is pretty neat. It’s also more secure and private than granting access or uploading my bank info to some third-party company’s database.

Is there anything useful or cool that you’ve automated? Send me an email, I’m interested to learn more about it!

A Week with Linux Mint

Scott Knight — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 15:31:48 -0500

Last week I posted here about open-sourcing my decision on which Linux distribution to use on my new lab machine. The overwhelming majority voted for Linux Mint, so that’s what I went with.

Not having used Linux in many years, I couldn’t recall anything particularly good or bad about my experience with the OS. That is to say, I’m going into this with an open mind.

The hardware I’m using isn’t anything special, which personally I prefer in the sense that it will allow me to additionally evaluate my chosen OS on an average system.

If you’re interested, here are the basic specs:

Model: Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 (2017, Refurbished)
Processor: Core i5-6500T
Processor speed: 2.5GHz
Intel HD Graphics 4000
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 256GB
vPro
Support for USB 3.0

The intention here is that it will serve as part of my home lab on which I can run experiments and projects without affecting my primary machines. So, with that in mind, it should be sufficient for its purpose.

Installation

I didn’t have any major issues installing Linux Mint on the machine. LM provides detailed installation docs that were easy to follow, and the process was a standard one: create a bootable USB, boot it up using the BIOS, then install.

One thing I appreciated was that, when booting with the install media before the main installation, you’re actually loading a live boot of Linux Mint, which allows you to preview and check for compatibility issues before you fully commit.

Once I ran the full installation, it probably took less than ten minutes to get fully set up. Another plus in my book.

By the way, I’m running Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera”.

User Experience

The one challenge I had in getting things fully operational was setting up the wi-fi adapter drivers on the system. Unfortunately, the Realtek RTL8188FTV that came with the ThinkCentre (the hardware does not have internal wi-fi support) was not recognized by the OS.

So, after some diligent research I was able to identify a solution that got it working. For those interested, I may write up a separate post on how specifically I accomplished this, but suffice it to say that it took some advanced tinkering to get things running. This is something that could be a major turn-off to

This Github repo was critical in getting the drivers installed and adding the appropriate kernel modules: https://github.com/kelebek333/rtl8188fu

After that minor inconvenience, everything in general has been pretty smooth. The OS itself is snappy and efficient. The themes and color options are a nice touch for those who like customization.

The overall feel is similar to Windows, so it is not alien to someone who might be wanting to migrate to Linux from that domain. Many of the folder actions, start menus, and general functionality are akin to what you’d find in Windows. I’ve heard that Linux Mint is a good starter Linux experience for those coming from a strictly Windows background, and so far I say that notion holds up.

My only small gripe is that some of the software packages seem to be intentionally held back by the distro maintainers from the publisher’s latest releases. For example, I wanted to set up the new Supernova release of Thunderbird, but at this time that does not appear to be possible. However, after some research I realized that this seems to be common practice in the Linux community and should not be unexpected. Some may see this as a negative, but I realize that this may also be a mechanism to protect against zero-day vulnerabilities as well as other issues by waiting a bit before integrating brand new releases. So for now, I’m okay waiting for a bit longer.

All things considered, the experience has been positive after one week. We’ll see how things progress as I continue to build out the machine.

Using Data to Choose a Linux Distro

Scott Knight — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 16:51:29 -0500

The Problem

I recently decided that I wanted to beef up my home lab a bit by adding a small, inexpensive machine that I can use as a sandbox for server projects and testing operating systems. When I realized that StackSocial had a Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 on sale for less than $200, I ordered one.

I also knew I wanted to try something besides Windows and MacOS on this new machine, so I decided to evaluate Linux distros. As it turns out, choosing a Linux distro is a really tall order for someone who’s only superifically familiar with the domain; there are hundreds, if not thousands, of distributions.

So, knowing the membership to be Linux and FOSS fans, I turned to the Mastodon community to help me decide what to try out first.

Data Collection

I posted a poll on Mastodon asking everyone to vote for their favorite Linux Distro.

I didn’t expect to get much engagement as a new member with few followers, but it seems as though this topic is something everyone has an opinion on.

Having set the poll to stay open for a week, I received 58 votes, not accounting for recommendations from replies on the post (I asked everyone with an “Other” vote to specify their preference in a reply).

After a week, I combed through the comments to create the full dataset analyze the results.

Analysis

I used a Jupyter Notebook for the basic analysis. Pandas helped me to import and transform the data, and I used Matplotlib for the visualizations. As there were two types of recommendations, I classified the recommendations as either distros or desktops (what’s the difference?).

From there, I added a few blocks of code to clean things up, sort the data, and create the bar charts.

Results

Now that I had a couple of visuals to evaluate, the results were quite interesting and unexpected. Zorin OS was one of my personal preferences going into the poll, but it hadn’t received a single vote (since the poll closed, I’ve had some comments recommending it).

Linux Mint was by far the winner in the distro category, followed by Fedora and NixOS. So, it looks like I’ll be starting off with Linux Mint.

For desktop environments, KDE Plasma was the most recommended.

I’ve since posted the results on Mastodon, in case anyone who participated was interested in the overall outcome.

I’ve pushed the project files to my Github, but I recommend checking it out here using the Jupyter Notebook Viewer if you just want to see the results.