DaveKnowsTech

Found a new favourite youtube podcast today.. its a bit backgroumd, however its interesting and very unproduced..

@TheLinuxCast@www.youtube.com

General linux chat...

#daveknowstech #podcast #linux

I'm finding #sailfishos to be verymuch like using Windows Mobile back in the day, where there were no apps avaialble, however when you found a gem of an app, it was usually better than the original one on android.

Found a nice couple of dropin apps for youtube/youtube music, discord and hopefully an rss feeder..

I have noted that there are some Android apps which just won't run, i tried Micro-G and that hasn't helped, however nothing i can't live without or run in the browser...

I'm investigating the nextcloud integrations currently..

#daveknowstech #linuxmobile

Done a bunch of research around Sailfish OS (Linux on the mobile phone) and I've bought a Sony mobile phone (Sony Xperia 10 III 5G) which is the device apparently which Sailfish works the best on. So next week the hope is to see if for 3 months I can migrate to and use this as my Daily driver. If i can, i will move wholesale to Sailfish OS on my phone and use my Android tablet for the Apps that don't work..

This may involve using a payment ring for NFC payments since i've stopped using my smartwatch.

Everything i've read, seems to point to this being possible.. The important things will be battery life, wifi/5G data and using the licenced version of Sailfish OS so i can side use Android apps.. (its the OS not the apps, i have issue with)

Has, infact Does anyone reading this use Sailfish? Be interested to hear your thoughts

#daveknowstech #sailfishos #mobilelinux

Another Self hosted software roundup

Termix - https://github.com/Termix-SSH
A central location for all your SSH, SCP needs, the interface is a bit 1908s retro, however the functionality is there. Its the commercial Termius solution without the monthly payments which works across multiple platforms.

Syncthing - https://syncthing.net/
I've got 3 devices running Linux which i need to keep things like ssh and ansible configs the same on all three systems, this is what syncthing does. I've got it setup so if i change the ssh config on any of these desktops, the other 2 get the update, with a rollback if needed.. A very handy solution..

Patchmon - https://patchmon.net/
Out of the box, a dashboard which tells you which servers need patching, with which updates and the ability to select those updates and deploy them to multiple hosts. While its not perfect, it is a nice interface and very handy.

Open-notebook - https://www.open-notebook.ai/
This is the self hosted version of Googles NotetbookLM, the thing which made AI podcasts from your docs a thing. OpenNotebook will connect to almost every AI provider and model and can be tweaked by project to use the model that you want providing a lot more flexibility and safety than Googles offering (which will be sent to the google graveyard at some point). I upload payslips and tax docs to mine as an example and can ask questions about HMRC letters

CachyOS - https://cachyos.org/
Sometimes the hype is real, if you're new to Desktop linux, don't Ubuntu/Fedora.. Cachy, this is by far the best Linux desktop out there today.. Its rock solid, simple to use, has all the Desktop Environments and plays steam properly..

#daveknowstech #selfhosted

Theres a lot of negativity around plex, a few observations.

Emby and Jellyfin are ok, but not anywhere near a full replacement, no matter how you spin it.

Plex is a business with bills to pay, if they crunched the numbers, the choices won't resonate well, however I think at this point anyone who wants a lifetime pass, has one..

The storm is much like the one around Sonos, I was told my Sonos kit would stop working and years later its still working as it always has..

Just my thought, I dont wish to fight over it

#daveknowstech #plex

Occurred to me today that the wayland DE dont have screensavers.. I mean im ok with the screen going blank, I just had an inkling for an old skool matrix falling code screensaver today

#daveknowstech #linux

Found a nice #selfhosted Google Keep alternative called #blinko

https://github.com/blinkospace/blinko

Seems ok, got an apk for Android

#daveknowstech #notesapp #androidapps

Kasm isn't suppported on any arch distro out of the box, however its installer file does work with an edit

The instructions here: https://docs.kasm.com/docs/tutorials/install/single-server-install will fail is
1) docker is't installed and running
2) docker-compose isn't working

Then it get to a point and ar setup to use the service command to restart docker, however needs the systemctl

The issue was that the installer called sudo service docker restart, which doesn't exist on systemd-based systems like Arch/CachyOS.

Fix applied: I patched three locations in the installer to check for systemctl availability and fall back to service for legacy init systems:
• Line 699 in restart_docker()
• Line 713 in install_logger_plugin()
• Line 814 in install_network_sidecar_plugin()

Each now uses:

```
if command -v systemctl &> /dev/null; then
sudo systemctl restart docker
else
sudo service docker restart
fi
```

Installation result: All Kasm services are running:
• 8 Docker containers active (proxy, API, manager, database, agent, RDP gateways, Guacamole)
• systemd service kasm.service is enabled and active
• Admin credentials generated and ready for use on https://localhost/ (or your configured hostname)

I'm going to create my own OS Container so i'll post up how i do that

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #linux

I thought, huuum this AUR issue, its not getting any better, maybe I will try another distro till it calms down, after trying 5 I will just reinstall #cachyos back tomorrow

I will pretent its a restore session test for my backup and never talk of it again..

#daveknowstech #linux

I've been looking into using local ai agents to replace warp-terminal

so far i've come up fish shell redirecting to gptme or opencode when it sees a command not found..

Why:
• Sometimes I instinctively type a question into the terminal (e.g. “what is the disk usage on this pc”) and fish/basically every shell just errors.
• I wanted that to become useful: if it’s not a real command, send it to gptme automatically.

How (fish 4.x):
• Implemented a custom fish_command_not_found handler (~/.config/fish/functions/fish_command_not_found.fish).
◦ If the unknown input is multi-word, treat it like a question and run: gptme -y ""
◦ If it’s a single word (likely a typo like sl), keep normal behavior (don’t spam the LLM).
• Added explicit “slash commands”:
◦ /ai "question" → routes to gptme
◦ /code "question" → routes to opencode
• Made /ai and /code work two ways:
1) via fish abbreviations (so typing /ai ... expands cleanly)
2) even if abbreviations don’t expand, the command-not-found handler special-cases /ai and /code and routes them anyway

Commands/functions added:
• ~/.config/fish/functions/ai.fish → gptme -y ...
• ~/.config/fish/functions/code.fish → opencode run -- "" (important: plain opencode treats the first arg as a project dir)
• ~/.config/fish/conf.d/ai-routing.fish → defines abbreviations + a quick toggle

Outcome:
• Typing: what is the disk usage on this pc now automatically runs gptme and answers, instead of failing.
• /ai ... reliably routes to gptme
• /code ... reliably routes to opencode run (after fixing the “project path” gotcha)

Safety / reversibility:
• Built-in quick toggle:
◦ ai-router-disable (turn it off)
◦ ai-router-enable (turn it back on)
• It only triggers in interactive shells and only auto-routes multi-word unknown commands.

Open to any other suggestions on how to get that natural language in FIsh, this is a good start, I've got gptme and opencode routing via openrouter.. gptme is very close to what i need.

https://gptme.org/

#daveknowstech #linux #homelab

Started using #kagi a few weeks back, I like it, happy to pay for it as well.
The ai.kagi.com is also really handy

#daveknowstech #homelab

Updated the underlying android img file to get yhe sound working and now just working through native and android apps on #sailfish

This toot is from the phone

#daveknowstech #linuxmobile

I moved off anything chrome based in the browser world last month and went Firefox, then I found https://floorp.app/ and wish the Android world had this as an option too..

Im sure the features in #floorp can be added by the way of Firefox addons, ootb this does what I need.

What Firefox forks do you run on Linux desktop and why?

#daveknowstech #webbrowser

I dont know if its an old or a new product, I just found Flipboard Surf on Android and I like it..

#daveknowstech #flipboard #android

Having learned a lot from my 3 node #kubernetes cluster, I have consolidated my entire homelab environment (mainly to reduce power cost) into my HP #zbook. (4tb of SSD space and 128gb ram) so that's how running #proxmox and supplies core servers and #rancher managed k8s

I appreciate its a single point of failure, however the data is backed off to an external nas and its a risk im willing to take.

#daveknowstech #Homelab ##selfhosted

Got my 3 node home #kubernetes cluster setup via #rancher today, got monitoring working and Longhorn, however my termix HELM chart broke some stuff
Tomorrow is another day, one of repairs and resolutions.

I lost all my notes from a couple of years ago, kept them separate from my github reader, silly error

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #Homelab

As i sit on the Bangalore office on Day 4 of 5, some valuable lessons I think I knew but had forgotton because of the lack of travel..

1. My work Windows laptop the HP Elitebook people who use outlook edition has 3hrs battery life.. I had to charge it twice.
2. USB2.0 is king outside of my tech bubble. While all of my (and probably most of your) devices are new USB3.0 the outside world still relies on USB2.0 connectors in planes and power strips in offices.
3. I've moved my work life for this trip to my Samsung tablet (Onenote, Outlook, Teams and Edge) because its easier to take hand written notes in meetings.
4. No one likes the smart arse with the little rectangle thing recording the meeting and transcriing it with AI..
5. Having plex and youtube media downloaded to the same tablet is a life saver..
6. Saily, Nomad choose what you will, a local eSIM is a requirement... especially with tethering..

Some other things ive noted about India in no particular order

• Paying with a QR code is a thing.. had an issue paying for the Uber from the Airport to the hotel because only Revolt provides such a service
• Doing anything from buying a McDonalds to getting a vistors visa requires a local phone number..
• Potholes take priority over actual usable roads in Bangalores suburbs
• I've eaten soooo much local food, and its all soooo good.

#daveknowstech #travel #techtips

There's an old saying "never sit in front of a computer and think, this will be easy"

Kinda sums up tonight, I thought i had my k8s cluster working, rebooted all the nodes, it all fell apart like a house of cards..

Then longhorn tumbled and grafana fell

However armed with a well meaning llm and some pointed questions, its all up and running..

Next step tomorrow, helm chart redeployment test...

#daveknowstech #homelab #kubernetes

Had a couple of days of banging my head solving issues, however I now have a working k8s cluster at home, using rancher. Im using #tailscale as my ingress point, which keeps in line with the rest of the infrastructure and helm for deployment.

I have got a couple of vibe coded apps as well as things like termix running in there, prometheus and grafana setup

Next challenges

Monitoring to alert to discord
Using #Gitea to host the helm code
Investigation into ArgoCD

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #homelab #k8s

Interesting day, I was using pulse (https://pulserelay.pro/) for monitoring, its good, however It wasn't what i needed. So I've spent the day pulling pulse out and implementing the Prometheus/Grafana stack from Rancher.

I'm not a huge fan of Prometheus/Grafana, its overly complex for what it does. However it is pretty well documented in LLM's so using AI i was able to get it setup on Rancher, then setup Netdata and setup the prometheus endpoint on that and have PRometheus scrape that data and present it as a Grafana Dashboard.

I was also able to create a patchmon exporter and have prometheus scrape that and push that data into grafana too.

On the latter I've also got a daily digest (hopefully) being pushed into Discord.
Netdata pushes its alerts into Discord and tomorrow i'm going to work on Alert manager and ping alerts from PRometheus/Grafana into Discord too.

Once thats working, I think the next stage is to push alerts into the bridge, the bridge runs the alert through an Ollama LLM, provide more context to the alert and push that to discord..

Why? Why not.. its interesting..

#daveknowstech #homelab #selfhosted

Slowly getting my #Homelab diagrammed out..

#daveknowstech #selfhosted

THe next step of my degoogle is migrating off notebooklm onto open-notebook, just deployed using helm

Notebooklm has been great sorting my tax, payslips etc, and someone suggested tracking podcast rss links into it.. be interested to see what I can do using that

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #homelab

Ive come up with an interesting solution for not running AUR packages on my CachyOS until this is resolved

Kasm running locally for the AUR apps.
I know this is supposedly only happening to orphaned projects on AUR, however better safe than sorry

https://kasm.com

A single local install

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #linux

I have to day the forums following the recent AUR issue with Arch or the absolute worst, elitist and raw terrible side of Linux users

Also the handling of these type of incidents is just terrible.

If you want to maintain a popular tool, be that an Arch Distro or CachyOS you have certain responsibilities

1) create a read only page
2) keep it updated hourly
3) dont use a forum, reddit etc
4) provide (in this case) clear instructions on what to do your grandmother could follow.

Basic incident management

Instead the userbase has to scroll through 200 pluss forum posts of opinionated individuals, who feel everyone should read code, not be using AUR and not running provided scripts.

Even to the point of "noobs shouldn't use distros based on Arch, they are for grown ups" on one post.

Im sure there are many talented volenteering individuals scouring AUR trying to resolve the issue and decide the next steps, i have huge appreciation for them, for everyone else other than the odd diamond in the rough..

You are why Windows and MacOS exist and are still the dominant OS... and linux will never be much more than it is.. you are toxic

#daveknowstech #cachyos #linux

Started the day vibecoding my own outline <-> anythingllm bridge only to get to the point where i was reminded the npm security in outline restricts access to local IP's for the API.. (theres a name for this, i forget it, again)

So i went back to n8n and have after a couple of hours work got what i thought was an error, but turned out isn't an error, it was an errent monitoring script pinging the server as a test. So I added a gate in the N8N workflow

So i added some Discored alerting for goot measure

#daveknowstech #n8n #selfhosted

It never fails to amaze me how most people think you need a "traditional" looking camera to take decent photos, i have a Sony A6000 and love it however 90% of the photos I take are on my Samsung phone...

So many people hear this and sldiscount the outcome

Gallery: https://daily.photowalkmyworld.com

#daveknowstech #photography #mobilephotography

Been watching the Google I/O keynote and coverage, im interested if anyone at Google took a look over the wall at Microsoft and how adding Copilot to everything diluted the brand and they are doing a uturn on it.. but thought, hey, lets add Gemini to everything...

Also, 1000 products with names (exaggerating) all which should be gemini app features and most of which won't make it past the Google graveyard in the next 12 months

#daveknowstech #comment #googleio2026

Whats on your phones desktop?

#daveknowstech #android #tech

I was looking at Cosmos Cloud yesterday as an alternative to CasaOS, for me its not a replacement, it looks nice and has a nice interface, however the group of apps it provides toesn't help me.

@daveknowstech@flipboard.social

#daveknowstech #selfhost #homelab

Same #thelinuxcast episode on old hardware, loved this episode, I have 3 core systems, all refurbs a Dell 5550 (2Tb Disk, 64Gb ram), Thinkpad T41 (1Tb disk, 32Gb Ram) (I think) and a Zbook 4TB Disk and 128Gb ram) I've paired down my hardware sprawl a lot. I do have a 2012 Imac running CachyOS and a MacMini running Ollama and Plex.

I'm not a gamer, and hardware hasn't leaped forward that much in the last 10 years.. so for the stuff I do, used is always good..

And yes, the batteries are always in need of changing..

Each of those PC's if i pulled the ram out of them, i could today sell the ram for 2 to 3 times what i paid for the laptops.. insane

#daveknowstech #homelab

Just ran my first #argocd lab on my home lab, updated the version number in values.yaml, pushed to local gitea server, and 3 minutes later Termix is running the latest updated release..

Living in the future :-)

#daveknowstech #selfhosting

Ive gone non smartwatch for the first time in years.. The technology does nothing for me a fit bit air couldn't and for that privilege I charge it every 2 days...

Ive gone for a nice Timex Expedition digital watch that tells the time and date..

Im getting phantom buzzes on my wrist, apparently its a thing post smartwatch

#daveknowstech

I've got #umbrel os on my local laptop thanks to https://hub.docker.com/r/dockurr/umbrel and Ollama helping update the docker-compose to
```
services:
umbrel:
image: dockurr/umbrel:latest
container_name: umbrel
pid: host

# Bind Umbrel ONLY to your Tailscale interface
ports:
- "100.xxx.xxx.xxx" # Replace with your actual Tailscale IP

# Persistent storage
volumes:
- ~/.umbrel:/data
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

# AMD Radeon 680M GPU passthrough
devices:
- /dev/dri/card1:/dev/dri/card1
- /dev/dri/renderD128:/dev/dri/renderD128

environment:
# Optional: force hardware acceleration for apps that support it
- LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi
- DRIVERS=radeonsi

restart: always
stop_grace_period: 1m
```
This saves things locally, uses the AMD GPU on the laptop and I can run these apps locally.

#daveknowstech #selfhost

The migration keeps moving forwrd, last night, it was off Spotify onto #deezer
Not i'm not sure if using Deezer if a punch in the gut to the commercial overlords, provides stuggling aritsts with more of a payout..
What I do know is that it focusses on music, provide better sounding output without paying for an additional tier and has let me import all my spotify (and to be honest YTM) playlists into it..

Thoughts?
Is Deezer just "as bad as theothers" in the music space?

#daveknowstech #music

A productive evening, deployed several local docker services on my laptop, then had the LLM in warp-terminal create a howto guide and push it to my outline server.

Using a bridge ive created, now AnythingLLM automatically has that doc as part of its RAG.

So when I ask in the Mobile app, its cited as a source

Slowly getting there, the next push is my kubernetes monitoring into an n8n api endpoint, then n8n to an ollama prompt the output of which goes to discord as a meaningful alert

Then combine the two..

#daveknowstech ##selfhosted

I think the #googlebook is going to do exactly what it says it will, in spite of the influencer community mocking the "its not a mac" device, the same hypocritical bunch who are swooning over the Apple Neo are no the audience for the Googlebook, its looking like a solid Development/Middle management device, solid battery life potential to get those tasks snd calls done all day.

We dont all edit video eith proprietary apps which are locked to hardware.. some of use do actual work, and this device has potential.

However knowing google they can also fumble this the same way they did the Chromebook Pro..

Time will tell

#daveknowstech #tech

I have been looking for a service i can use to manage ssh keys on my homelab, I found keywarden, its still very alpha however I've found it stable enough for my needs and managed to deploy to kubernetes using helm

https://git.techniverse.net/scriptos/keywarden

I think I will ask the dev if they would add a revoke key feature

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #linux

The current #cachyos bandwagon feels like an easy one to ride on, its been my daily driver since November 25.

The reason for that requires a little history, back when I really started using Linux I was living in Bangkok, eith slow dial up, cutting my teeth on Fedora Core 2, Red Hat Linux 9 (not RHEL, its predecessor) or suse linux 9.1. These were all obtained in Pantip Plaza..

These took ages to install, updates usually required a rebuild and drivers taught me a lot about ./configure, make and make install..

Then came a distro which changed everything, the same way for me CachyOS has, ubuntu shipped 4.10 party warthog on CD to me via ship it.

It installed and worked.. this os, it got out of its own way and let me get on with other things, I didnt need to compile drivers, things just worked..

Im finding CachyOS is doing the same thing, its getting out of the way..

Any individual who tells you its all terminal and scary, they are wrong, sure it can be, or its not, its up to you.

Also while im not a huge gamer, the few I do occasionally pick up, work on steam.. a win

#daveknowstech #linux

I bought a projector a couple of hundred ££ on ebay, very much impressed by how watchable it is outdoors.

#daveknowstech #summer

Today's random find is #cosmoscloud I usually use casaos (love a nice gui) however saw this and am trying it locally on my laptop

https://cosmos-cloud.io/

#daveknowstech #selfhosted

I've updated my AILog App so it works with Helm now and can be built as a docker app which in turn fixes some ssh issues, Its all working for me now..

https://github.com/mightywomble/ailog#

Its a #vibecoded app, and its a pet project for me to do monitoring better, I'm slowly building it up, its very much a work in progress for a self hosted homelab and some AI and Discord notifications..

#daveknowstech #selfhosted

My longhorn storage broke on my k8s cluster, no idea why.. however the current focus is backups.. :-) Always best to shut the door after the horse bolts.. :blobpats:

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #homelab

Slowly rebuilding the non k8s homelab servers, checking my builds are correct, borg and rancher both worked seamlessly..

Tonight's effort is to get the k8s cluster running with longhorn and monitoring

#daveknowstech #selfhosting #homelab ansible

Watching #thelinuxcast episode about using old hardware, and there was an oft misconstrude statement about Chromebooks in schools being used because they are cheap.. Thats only half the story, Google have also got a highly effective ChromeOS management solution for centrally managing the devices and lessons..

Can you do this on Linux, sure.. but its a pita..

#daveknowstech

Turns out Kubernetes is a wild ride, this evening that ride has been about AnythingLLM installed via a helm chart. It ust want' communicating, and it turns out it was nothing to do with Kubernetes it was proxmox and a lack of awx support. Changing the processor to Host and bingo a working AnythingLLM

and in tech this is the journey, its not supposed to work and in fixing it you get to learn about it..

Tomorrow I will finally diagram (and share) what i'm building out..

#daveknowstech #homelab #selfhosted

Got argocd installed today, should figure out how to use it tomorrow

#daveknowstech #homelab #selfhosted