Heaven (to me)

Dark Carnival, Oakland CA

Posted on January 31st, 2025 in android | No Comments »

Thinkpad Homelab Upgrades

You can spend a lot of money building a homelab that competes with small office networks. Or, you can do what I did and build a network of cast-off, unwanted hardware.

A thrift-store Synology NAS, “parts-only” Thinkpad laptop with a cracked screen and broken keyboard, and a $5 goodwill router, flashed with OpenWRT forms the basis of my home network. Proxmox, a free hypervisor allowed me to test LXC and docker containers, block ads on my network with Pi-Hole, run a test Windows Active Directory environment, run Windows95 as a client VM, and host my BBS on this collection of cast-offs.

I’m happy with it, and am always looking for new ways to upgrade on the cheap.

I’ve wondered if I could add another hard drive to the system, or speed up the storage. I found this post after a web search – apparently, Thinkpads support SATA Express, an older technology meant to bridge support between SATA and NVMe drives. The drive interface is backwards compatible with SATA, but provides 2 PCI-x lanes (instead of 4 with native NVMe).

While a compromise, it appear to be quite a bit faster in testing.

And, I’ve found adapters that support 2 NVMe drives on one SATA port. Add 2 drives, set up a ZFS pool, on a laptop – the mind boggles.

Posted on January 30th, 2025 in blog | No Comments »

Proxmox Datacenter Manager: Centralized Management for Proxmox VE

Proxmox Server Solutions announced the first Alpha release of Proxmox Datacenter Manager, an open-source server management software designed to provide a unified overview of all nodes and clusters in Proxmox VE environments. This new tool aims to simplify the management of virtualized environments by offering a modern user interface and centralized control.

Key Features of Proxmox Datacenter Manager

Centralized Overview: The Datacenter Manager offers a centralized view of all individual nodes and clusters, making it easier to monitor and manage resources.
Basic Management: Users can perform basic operations such as shutdown, reboot, start, and remote migration of virtual guests between different data centers.
Modern User Interface: The tool features a redesigned front end, optimized for accessibility, speed, and compatibility.
Resource Management: It allows for better organization of resources, including hierarchical groups or resource pools, and simplifies adding remotes.
Integration with Proxmox VE: For more complex configurations, the tool links directly to the full web interface of Proxmox VE.
Future Enhancements: The roadmap includes plans for improved health state overview, support for multiple VRFs across clusters, and off-site replication copies for manual recovery.

The Alpha version of Proxmox Datacenter Manager is available for testing and collaboration. Installation is similar to Proxmox VE Server, with a straightforward process that includes selecting the target disk, configuring network settings, and setting up user credentials.

Proxmox Datacenter Manager is a promising tool for administrators managing multiple standalone nodes or clusters. While still in the Alpha stage, it provides valuable features that streamline administrative tasks and improve resource management. The Proxmox community is encouraged to test and provide feedback to help shape the future of this project.

More information and a download link are available on their wiki at https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_Datacenter_Manager_Roadmap

Posted on December 23rd, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

RIP tteck, creator of Proxmox Helper Scripts

tteck’s Proxmox Helper Scripts are what helped me dig more deeply into Proxmox; they automate upgrades and made it simple to try out homelab apps from a shell scripts. Sorry to hear that he was in failing health, but the time I read the post below, he had already passed away.

It looks like there’s a major change coming to one of our favorite repos: Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts Project Update (EDIT) · tteck/Proxmox · Discussion #4009

Recently, TTeck was diagnosed with incurable appendix cancer that has already spread. If you appreciate his scripts, now’s the time to show him some love. TTeck’s work has been a tremendous help to me over the years, probably for you too.

The repository has already been migrated to a GitHub organization and will now be managed by the community (thanks guys).

Posted on November 24th, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

Proxmox VE 8.3 released

Proxmox VE 8.3 has been released, and it was a painless upgrade from version 8.2. The new version includes:

Support for Ceph Reef and Ceph Squid
Tighter integration of the SDN stack with the firewall
New webhook notification target
New view type “Tag View” for the resource tree
New change detection modes for speeding up container backups to Proxmox Backup Server
More streamlined guest import from files in OVF and OVA

I’ve been extremely happy with my Proxmox instance; I’ve moved quite a few docker containers to standalone LXC containers, configured backups using the built-in tool (I’m going to set up Proxmox Backup Server next…) and gotten more use out of a system that had previously been running one application on bare metal.

Release notes
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Roadmap

Download
https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads

Posted on November 24th, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

New Outlook – not ready for Prime Time?

I’ve been fighting with and against the “New” Microsoft Outlook, as I’ve written about. My biggest issue revolves around the replacement of Outlook’s Tasks functionality with Microsoft ToDo. I use Tasks heavily, sorting by category and using dates to prioritize daily lists.

My email and meeting workflow ties closely to OneNote and Outlook – and I can’t get the same level of integration with the new Outlook.

Windows Central published an article entitled “Microsoft is wrong: The new Outlook for Windows is not ready for prime time”, and after some time trying to work with the new Outlook, it seems that I’m not alone.

From the article:

So, what can Microsoft do to improve Outlook for Windows? First, it should really think about abandoning web tech in favor of a native Windows UI framework such as WinUI 3. I can’t fathom why Microsoft thinks it’s acceptable for a first-party, pre-installed, essential Windows app such as a mail client to not showcase the best of Windows.

Second, it needs to support basic touch functionality at the very least. Microsoft’s best-selling PC is a tablet called the Surface Pro, and now that device is going to suffer significantly when it comes to reading email in the default Windows client. It’s just shocking.

Third, it needs to be faster and lighter. If it’s not as fast as the old Mail & Calendar apps, I don’t want it. Those are so lightweight and easy to use, the only problem they have is Microsoft abandoned them. I wouldn’t be mad if Microsoft decided to unabandon them and deliver new features, functionality, and UI improvements to these older apps instead.

In short, I think Microsoft needs to go back to the drawing board. The default Windows mail client should be a native Windows app, not a web app.

[via windowscentral]

Posted on August 3rd, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

Walkabout

“did you see that?”

Posted on July 11th, 2024 in android | No Comments »

State of the Home Office, 2024

I’ve worked out of my home since 2020. My home office has evolved and has become a place where I enjoy working. With a little effort, you can improve any home office environment with some of the tips I’ve discovered.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on June 20th, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

Homelab Maintenance

I work out of my home office full-time. I spend a lot of time here, and so I’m used to the way things look – and sound. I was on a video call this week when something felt off. I took off my headphones and heard it.

clunk.

One of the drives in my homelab was beginning to fail.

My Proxmox server hosts an Active Directory domain, Windows test environment, LXC containers and Docker containers. It hosts media services, ad blocking and backs up data from my family’s computers.

This “homelab” isn’t one of those half-racks full of industrial-grade servers in closets you see on YouTube. I assembled mine over the years from end-of-life, unwanted and discounted hardware. My primary server is a laptop purchased on eBay for parts, with screen burn in and missing keys. It did, however, come with 20 GB of RAM. My firewall and NAS came from thrift shops. I’d thought about upgrading it, but it serves my needs well and cost less than a used Dell desktop.

Looking at the NAS logs, I saw one drive was logging an I/O error every 30 seconds. One drive might be failing. I deactivated the drive (turns out it was one of the newer white-label drives) and replaced it with a spare I had laying around. Once let the consistency check finished, all was good.

I deactivated the failing drive and replaced it with a spare drive I had laying around. I would have set up a hot-spare, but I needed all of the bays in my NAS.

clunk.

While the NAS drive was beginning to fail, the clunk was coming from an external USB drive used to back up the NAS. The drive was sitting vertically as was designed. I turned it around so the drive lay horizontally, and the noise went away. When I was starting out in IT, we had a superstition about running spinning drives sideways, thinking it could make a head crash easier. Turns out that superstition still lives in the back of my head.

I spent the rest of the afternoon pruning backups, putting a replacement external drive on my Amazon wishlist, and re-routing cables, like you do when you run a homelab.

Posted on May 11th, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

Old Iron

IBM 360 Mainframe at the Computer History Museum.

Posted on May 3rd, 2024 in android, blog | No Comments »

Proxmox VE 8.2 released!

With all of the changes at Broadcom affecting smaller customers, it’s great to see Proxmox adding the ability to migrate directly from VMWare. While VMWare is a best-of-breed hypervisor, many customers use a fraction of VMWare features – and tools like Proxmox VE can provide an effective hypervisor with commercial support and a great feature set.

Based on Debian Bookworm (12.5)
Latest 6.8 Kernel as new stable default
QEMU 8.1.5
LXC 6.0.0
ZFS 2.2.3
Ceph Reef 18.2.2
Ceph Quincy 17.2.7

Highlights

- New import wizard to migrate guests directly from other hypervisors.
  
  Connect to other hypervisors using their public APIs and directly migrate guests to Proxmox VE.
  
  First implementation is for VMware ESXi.
  
  Guests can be started on Proxmox VE while their data is still being imported to the target storage in the background.

More information is available here.

Posted on April 24th, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

25 Years…

I realized that my blog and this domain (kataan.org) are 25 years old today! I started a project to move the older items from a text archive (downloaded from blogger, remember them?) into my WordPress database. I hadn’t realized that with blogger, I used it like Twitter as a microblog – there are some days where I posted multiple times a day, on different trains of thought.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on April 15th, 2024 in blog | No Comments »

Another Nikon

I’ve had a string of good luck lately.

Shopping at thrift stores can be a hit-or-miss proposition. My latest find is a Coolpix 5400, a logical progression from my Coolpix 995 and 4300.

This one has the same lens, a 5 megapixel sensor, swaps the swivel-body design for the body-with-grip design that took Nikon through the 2000s, and uses the same batteries as my other Nikons – all with strap, battery and lens cap in great shape for $15.

I’ll take it out for some test shots and write a review shortly.

Posted on February 22nd, 2024 in coolpix5400 | No Comments »

It’s a mystery…

Ever go through your camera roll and have no idea what you took a picture of? I know this is somewhere in Las Vegas, but that’s about it.

Posted on February 22nd, 2024 in android, digital | No Comments »

Cirque

Cameraphones are getting pretty good in low light…

Posted on February 21st, 2024 in android, digital | No Comments »

Cinque Terre, Italy

There’s an old photographer’s saying – “Don’t shoot postcards.” Don’t take time to shoot a traditional tourist photo that you could buy for a dollar/euro. Save your time for the experience.
Some rules need to be broken, sometimes.

Posted on January 6th, 2024 in android, digital | No Comments »

Another retro digicam – Nikon Coolpix 4500

Nikon Coolpix 4500, another thrifting find…

Here’s another couldn’t-pass-up bargain camera, the Nikon Coolpix 4500. it’s a slight upgrade from my Nikon Coolpix 995 – 4x zoom instead of 3x, slightly higher resolution, and a metal body. The chattery, constanf focusing is much quieter, and it’s a smaller, more solid feeling camera. Photos to come…

Posted on January 6th, 2024 in digital | No Comments »

My Powershot

There are many Canon Powershot cameras — but this is mine.

My first digicam was a Canon Powershot S100 purchased back in 2000, and it changed my perspective on photography. Being able to review images in real-time, for the first time, helped me improve as a photographer. 23 years later…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on November 11th, 2023 in canon, digital | No Comments »

List of new and missing features in the “New” Outlook

I found a good list of of new and missing features in the “New” Outlook; I’ve been swapping back and forth between the two at work and have been concerned about the features and workflows that have been part of Outlook from the beginning are being dropped.

One example is Microsoft ToDo replacing the Tasks folder in Outlook. I rely heavily on Outlook task categories for task tracking and ToDo has a long way to go.

Microsoft develops an Office app suite for Windows, another app suite for Mac, and the web components. With this “new” Outlook, essentially a web app wrapped in a Windows app, I can see the direction Microsoft it going -single code base, less effort, more parity between platforms.

New features:

Pin/Unpin Email
Snooze email
Density has 3 choices instead of 2
Can preview message body next to subject in message list (replaces 1/2/3 line message preview – see below)
Board
Integrates MS Loop cloud components

Features removed (in no particular order):

Customize ribbon
Ribbon cannot be hidden
Preview 1, 2, or 3 lines of message body in message list
Choose columns to show in message list
Separation of categories from subject in message list
Shared categories cannot have color
Cannot “view source” of HTML emails
Status bar
- Item count, server connectivity status, zoom level, etc.
Rearranging folders in folder tree
Cannot set folder to show item count
Outlook forms
Notes view
Folders view
Folder pane cannot be “minimized” to show folders sideways
“Share to Teams”
“Send to OneNote”
Find/replace within message when composing email (Ctrl+F)
Outlook Today (although may be replaced with “My Day” or “Board”)
PST file support
Translate
Search ribbon
Advanced Search (Ctrl+Shift+F)
Search Folders
- “Unread Mail” in favorites is an example
Cannot right-click and “Add to favorites” for shared mailboxes
Reply with IM (opens Teams chat with sender)
Copy email attachments
Sort/Filter options greatly reduced
Rules are far less capable
- Can see, but not access/use better rules from old Outlook
- Rule to move message to another mailbox
OneDrive link does not honor policies and be hidden
“To Do” opens in browser instead of within Outlook
No contacts from shared mailboxes
No print options in Mail view. Must open each message and print one at a time
No print options in Contacts view
“Clean up” mailbox
Send/Receive/Sync Now
Creating email signatures via script
Recall email
Resend email
Work offline
Quick Access Toolbar and Previous/Next email buttons when viewing a message
Public folders must be manually added to favorites to see them
Accessibility is basically gone
Using Outlook without mouse/touch is not possible
To Do bar (although may be replaced with “My Day” or “Board”)
View Settings is extremely gutted. (old Outlook is insanely powerful here)
Rich text format for composing email
Voting options (replaced with browser-based MS forms)
Does not use Word as email message editor, so these features are gone when composing email:
- Styles, smart tables, thesaurus, find & replace, paragraph formatting, advanced character formatting, page color, effects, themes, smart art, word art, OLE objects, etc.
- Set bullet type/style in bulleted list
- Quick Parts
- Right-click
Does not use Word as description editor for calendar event entries. So, above features are gone here too
Email composer does not support:
- Message expiration
- Hanging indents or tab customization
- Reply-to alternate email address
- Digitally signing or encrypting emails
Auto pick time for creating meetings
High importance & low importance tags for calendar events
Dictation
No way to open address book within “Create calendar event”
Looking at Settings/Options reveals dozens (hundreds?) of missing options when compared to old Outlook

New features (from the comments):

None

Features missing (from the comments):

Alt-R and Alt-W hotkeys
Not having Word as email editor:
- Cannot put border or shading around inserted images
- Can only select from a subset of Windows fonts
Does not migrate quick steps from old Outlook even though they are stored on the server.
Cannot open .EML or .ICS files
COM and VTSO add-ins
MAPI is gone. No more “Print PDF to email”, or other apps using email workflow
- Can’t “share as attachment” from the other Office apps.
- Mail merge using Word and Excel may not work
Message Templates
Unable to sort by name, then type in the name to go to that grouping.
Custom follow-up reminders for email
“Next 7 Days” Calendar view
Tasks view
Can’t delete attachments from emails and still keep the email
Can’t save an attachment where you want, it goes to downloads
Cannot setup multiple languages for spell checking within a message.
Read Aloud (text-to-speech) is only available within Immersive Reader instead of right-clicking
Right-click on message -> Find Related
Auto correct shortcuts are gone
Sort messages by category
Does not work with on-prem Exchange Server
Lots of missing Enterprise controls, such as using Group Policy to prevent users from adding their personal accounts.
Cannot drag-n-drop emails into other Office apps
Quick Steps cannot create new email
Cannot import Holidays into Calendar (.hol files)
Cannot minimize to system tray
Can’t view headers of attached emails
Gray theme missing, only white and dark available
Cannot change icons of quick steps

[via reddit ]

Posted on November 10th, 2023 in blog | 2 Comments »

Windows 11 to support RAR, tar, gz and other compression formats

Windows support for compression standards like RAR, tar and gz has been lacking. RAR, for example, was released in 1993, for example, while we ran Windows 3.1 with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows.

Buried in a blog post by Windows chief Panos Panay discussing AI and cloud-based improvements to Windows in a blog post today “We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project, you now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.”

As a sysadmin, I run into .tar.gz files frequently. Running a BBS means running into old files archived with .arc, .lzh, .7z, and other less common compression formats. The latter format gives me pause. As much as I’d like to see Windows functionality extended, 7-Zip has been a part of Windows builds for me since Windows 2000, and I’d hate to see their software become irrelevant.

Posted on November 1st, 2023 in blog | No Comments »

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