March 23, 2025

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I decided to try and add some updates on what I have been working on, kind of a blog style. I'll aim to have an update every week or every other week.

This week I did not get much done on any of my main ongoing project because I was working on setting up a server. I have been planning on setting up a home lab eventually to host the DK App and other projects, but didn't have any extra hardware to do it. Then while looking around Facebook market place I found a local business that was having a liquidation sale.

I ended up getting:

  • 19U 18" depth server rack
  • Optiplex 7010
  • Optiplex 3010
  • Monitor
  • Printer
  • Many Cables
  • Misc. Office stuff
  • poe injectors
  • rack mounted power strip

All for just under $100.

The rack was meant to be wall mounted and just had bolts sticking out the bottom, so it would have damaged to floors If I just set it there. I got some casters and bolts from homedepot and added those. Drilling the hole through the metal was fairly painless with the preparations I made. A pair of selves, and a switch off Amazon and I had a functional server rack to hold the computers and can easily roll around as needed.

I then spent the rest of the next two weeks setting up the servers. I wanted to try out NixOS as I like the idea of the declarative configuration files. It feel familiar to making make files or pyproject tomls.

I don't quite have the hardware I want to fully setup the functionality I was so a am mostly just using these to learn and test stuff. They are running with no desktop environment so I had to refresh on Linux commands. And NixOS is pretty barebones, it doesn't come with much at all pre install or configured so I had to learn how all the Linux administration stuff worked to set up my users, ssh keys, permissions, automate services to run at start up.

I have learned to love vim, and will probably look to add a vim like controls addon to vs code when I get back to those projects. I have also learned where to find various log files and how to read them to trouble shoot problems, which is pretty important when you run commands you think should be doing something but can't see anything happening.

I have been studying for security+ the last 6+ months and am planning to take the test soon, so I am also trying to keep in mind what I have learned for that as I set up my server and try getting some hands on experience with some of the tools and concepts I only had flash card knowledge of.

So far I just have a couple small samba shares set up to set the configuration and mounting process, and making multiple users, along with a navidrome server to host music. I have a large external hard drive that I might add to the server and try using that to set up a more long term setup.

While this server is mostly a NAS and host for services like navidrome, homemanager, etc. the other server I am planning to set up for a remote VS Code project environment.