Category Archives: computers

PDF Convolutions and TrueNAS Scale

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If you’ve dealt with either the government, businesses, or obnoxious forms online, you’ve probably ran across a PDF that isn’t really set up for editing…or if you applied for a job that required letters of ref/transcripts/resume/CV but only allowed one file upload, you’ve probably ran into problems with trying to get the PDFs to work well.

Which is EXACTLY what Adobe wants. They want you to be in pain so that you pay them to allow adjustments to files you already own and have created. And they require a subscription, which as I’ve already stated, I find really obnoxious and stupid.

Well, I ran into some merge difficulties tonight because I had to upload like 6 files, but they only allowed four files to be uploaded. Because, y’know, storage? Bad coding? Outright jerkishness? Any and/or all of the above really. And yeah, there are sites that will merge files for you for free on the internet…but I don’t like sharing personal data with rando sites.

So, with the NAS, I decided why not? Let’s look for a PDF editor. And right away, in the TrueNAS community apps section, was Stirling PDF. It is now self-hosted and running in a docker container…and it was free, does everything I need it to, and is only available on my network.

Highly recommend, really easy to use.

Love me some BattleTech

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We’ve had a lot of time from work recently due to circumstances which I’ll share at some point (not bad, pretty good actually), so there’s been more time to read and play video games. And you’ll notice from the ol’ “Read list” on the right side of the blog, I’ve been working through the 131 BattleTech books that I got last year from a Humble Bundle.

I love eBooks because they don’t take up more space on my shelves (after moving several times in the last decade, I’m only moving books that I love and want the physical copy of (sorry collected works of Mark Twain(I know the guy loved cats, but his books are available for free online))). I can read them on my Chuwi Minibook X 2 in 1, and I’m looking into serving them from the NAS server.

I, unfortunately, haven’t been playing as many video games because it’s tougher to do so. Rather, I’ve been playing the ever living bejeebus out of Terraforming Mars (which I got on Steam with ANOTHER Humble Bundle last year. So, when and if anyone plays Terraforming Mars with me, well I hope to put up a challenge at least.

That’s just to say this morning I tried loading up some BattleTech on the ol’ Minobook X. It’s an older game, but I enjoy it quite a lot and figured I’d give it a go and see if it works. I was not hopeful…this thing is using an N100 intel chip with the integrated graphics that it puts out. Sure it’s got 12 gb of RAM, and I replaced the SSD with a 1tb one…but it’s not made for games, let’s be honest.

I’ll also be honest: I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that the game worked. I turned all GFX settings down to the lowest, of course, but hey…it played smoothly, there was no delay in the action (I mean, it’s a turn based game, so there shouldn’t be), and it worked and played like it does on the desktop. I was just as pleasantly surprised when this laptop played Skyrim, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age games (except Veilguard, that one is too new…and too crappy to try to get it to work on this system).

Also, it made the laptop heat up significantly less than Terraforming Mars, which is really strange…considering one is a Turn Based action game with explosions, and one should be a pretty static board game. THAT I was really pleasantly surprised by.

Good times.

Some more NAS server stuff

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So it’s been a few weeks, largely because of other non-techy stuff that is going on in our lives. However, I thought I’d update on the old TrueNAS Scale server going on.

Firstly, I installed Tailscale. Paul Bunyan’s servers don’t allow incoming server requests, but with TailScale installed, it routes everything through that system. It’s free, which is good, and really easy to use. I’m sure that eventually it will change from free to cost, in which case I’ll look for other options.

But as you can see from the picture above, I was able to watch my animaniacs show through tailscale over my cell phone data. It worked really flawlessly, really happy with it!

If you’re wondering which cell phone plan, I have Mint Mobile, and I pay for the $15 a month plan, which has 5 gb of data. It’s a solid system, works pretty well 95% of the time, and since I own the phone, it’s a good system to have.

I’ve also attempted installing some custom docker containers to help with task management, like TimeTagger (to track time on specific tasks) and Grocy (to track our pantry and our chore list). It was a bit of a challenge to get them installed, but once I figured out the bash situation (TrueNas Scale doesn’t seem to need the additional escape $ that docker environs usually require), they work flawlessly.

On my to-do list with the server is to figure out how to get some security cameras up in here running locally.

Google you’re chasing me into the arms of my NAS

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Google destroying workable options in their apps for zero reason like the music controls in maps is yet another reason I’m working on moving away from corporate resources.

Honestly, there’s no customer-based reason for them to have limited it only to a couple apps. It was working fine for Musicolet (which is what I use for my cell phone based music), but I suppose they’re not getting any cash or advertising from a free service instead of a subscription service. I guess it still works for Spotify. Back room deals anyone?

In the TrueNAS Scale department of divorcing myself from corporate overlords, I’ve been using some TailScale for away-from-home access to my storage (mainly for Immich, since my wife and I take a lot of pictures). I mean, accessing my home library of movies is great too, but MUCH less of a concern. The photo gallery is the big one. I’d set up proxy and protective services myself, but Paulbunyan.net uses CNAT addressing, and don’t allow incoming connections. So Tailscale it is, for the time being.

In the coming months (once I sell enough old comp equipment to afford the new hard drives), I’ll be also installing and working with Home Assistant instead of the Amazon Alexa ecosystem. I’ve loved using the Alexa for things like playing Pandora, asking about the weather forecast(hello middle age), controlling wifi plugs/lights, and mainly setting kitchen timers…but similar to Google, I’m getting leery of allowing corpoorate entities that much of a peek into my day-to-day.

And yes, yes, yes, I know I KNOW about the dangers of cell phones and apps constantly listening (*cough cough* FACEBOOK *cough*), and I’m running almost everything through Brave browser on the phone to try and cut that down. I still have to be part of the Googly Moogly system, though, due to work and access (though much of my private day-to-day email is still very much handled via Froyd.net servers). Heck, I use Duckduckgo for 99% of my internet searching now.

I just want to take back control of what I can, using open source programs created by like minded individuals as opposed to corprations who answer to stockholders. It’s the independent Norwegian in me…to do it all myself, I don’t need help. That and my disgust with things changing ALL THE TIME without even a notice or a how-do-you-do.

TrueNAS and Processor

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So I pulled the old GTX 1080 out of my computer that I’m using for the TrueNAS server. I was a little hesitant to do this because I had read a couple places that having a GPU would help with streaming videos.

My processor is an Intel Core i7-4770 Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.4 GHZ LGA, and I’ve had zero issues streaming to the Roku tv in the house (I’m in the garage, hardwired in for my work computers and my server box). All videos have streamed with no problems, and the subtitles (that I used Subtitle Edit to do with their auto generation with a LLM database) work great.

So one doesn’t need a brand spanking new stuff to have a good workable TrueNAS setup, and it’s great.

Plex vs. Jellyfin

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So I started with Plex because Jellyfin was a bit more of a pain to set up. But I REALLY got tired of it constantly having me sign in and register different emails for different devices, and then not seeing that the account had access to the folder because it was on my home network and I didn’t appreciate it trying to shove things down my throat.

That being said, it handled the library pretty well (though its cache refresh was astoundingly slow for reordering movies after editing metadata and having it refresh the list after metadata had been put in). Roku had an app, which was good.

However, I got sick of the nonsense, to be honest. It was slick, sure, but it was also yet another corporation trying to sell me something.

So I also installed Jellyfin. I like it a lot more, to be honest. Similar style of movie/tv show display as Plex, but without the corporate spying overlord requiring you register with them off network in order to use the app.

The biggest problem was where to add the storage, and what network address was required. Once that was figured out, then it was great. Easily edited, almost immediately reordered, and easy to use. Plus, it ALSO had a Roku app…that we got before either the wife or I got used to the way the Plex app operated.

Now I’m just getting all our DVDs up on the server…of which I’ll have to upgrade my storage (right now the images are on the mirrored hard drives, while the videos are on a usb external drive not mirrored, which TrueNAS absolutely hates). I’m going to probably upgrade to two 8TB hard drives to set up in mirror mode.

I’ll get those once I sell a bunch of the old computer equipment I’ve got laying around here to pay for them.

TrueNAS Community Edition: Awesome

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So, this was really easy to set up, especially if you’re already used to assigning DHCP addresses in your router. I downloaded the ISO, burned on a DVD (because really, what else am I going to use those for?), and installed it on my old system, replacing Windows 10.

I then used the “App” to add Immich to the system. I am REALLY impressed with this app. I realize it’s beta right now, but it’s stupidly easy to use, and very similar to how photo apps are set up (like Google Photos), it allows users to share images, allows auto backups of images on the phone, and…AND…it checks for duplicates when uploading, so if you’re uploading from downloads you’ve made before, you’re not duping them. It’s really fantastic.

10/10 would recommend. Now I need to try and get media sharing going, perhaps on an old external hard drive.

To update in the future is to add larger drives and recreate the mirror setup. At the moment, I only had a 320gb drive and a 500gb drive. So TrueNAS isn’t too happy that I’m mirroring drives of different sizes, but since the 320 is primary, I’m not worried.

But yeah, highly recommend doing this if you don’t want Google to start nickel/diming you to death.

RIP Original Zycarus Computer

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It is with heavy heart that I’m putting to rest my first computer I built myself (without Jon Hatch’s help). I built it back in 2013, it was top of the line components (except for the GPU, which was only a 770).

It was awesome, and did great until I swapped out for new mobo/processor/hard drive/PSU a year and a half ago.

It was still holding a bunch of my FroydTech data, and it had 24gb of RAM. It’s the RAM I’ll miss the most, I think.

Luckily I’ve got an old MOBO that is newer than this one with a celeron processor that should do the trick for the NAS. Only 8gb of RAM, which is sad.

But I’ll part out the old computer and sell off the components, and maybe make enough to buy some more RAP for the NAS. ANnd maybe a used processor? Who knows!

GOOGLE *shakes fist* (Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love a NAS)

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So we updated one of our phones to a Pixel 9a (one of our Pixel 4a phones was the earlier one, that GOogle deployed a “fix” that completely tanked the battery). We then noticed that the Google Drive account with that was dangerously pushing the 15gb limit…and we could update to Google One for a low monthly cost.

It was then my wife made the astute observation of “No wonder they were giving such a large trade-in value on the pixel 4a…now they don’t offer unlimited photo storage.”

That, plus a lot of other things, has made us seriously reconsider the pixel 9a. But, being the annoying tech person I am, I decided to say screw it and find a photos solution myself. The 9a is probably the best midrange phone out there considering the camera and the like. It was less expensive with the trade in and the store credit that they gave for screwing up the Pixel 4a, and so it comes to figure out how to remove us from the Google ecosystem (at least when it comes to photos).

So today begins my setup of TrueNAS Scale and Immich. Following a solid setup instructional from XDA, I’m turning in one of the computers I’ve got around the house (that was slated for recycling) into a NAS and backup for our photos.

Because there are few things worse to my mind than being forced to pay a subscription cost when I can do it myself for much cheaper and much easier.

Might throw jellyfin on the NAS too, dependent on how things go.