On 19 Apr 2023 at 08:46a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

I'd like to revisit the idea of a homelab echo - I think we might have enough people here interested to support such a thing.

Hi there

Can you outline for me what it would be about etc and why you feel the echo would work? I'm a novice in this area so just seeking to understand more about it all... also interested in any others input to this thread too to gauge interest etc.

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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On 19 Apr 2023 at 02:03p, Khronos pondered and said...

A home lab echo would be great as most of us have a use for a group such as this.

Noted, thanks Tom

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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Avon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Can you outline for me what it would be about etc and why you feel the echo would work? I'm a novice in this area so just seeking to
understand more about it all... also interested in any others input to this thread too to gauge interest etc.

I can give it a try - anyone out there who'd like to contribute/change
this, feel free to chime in.

Most sysops are familiar with running a second PC as a server - we've
had that box in the corner running the BBS for years. What if, when you
wanted to run a 3rd, 4th or more systems at home, you didn't have to
run any additional hardware?

That's part of what homelabbing nowadays is about. Instead of setting up additional hardware, people have started virtualizing their home server environments. Having a virtual environment at home where you can run
multiple virtual servers helps systems administrators to have a home
sandbox to try out systems outside of work, to prepare for tech
certifications, for freelancers to set up test environments/sandboxes,
to sysops wanting to run BBSes and services on modern hardware and to
people looking to automate their homes using Home Assistant, sharing
movies and music with media servers, or playing with old operating
systems and game consoles without needing to set up new hardware.

Over the past few years, the price of entry for hardware has dropped considerably - a Raspberry Pi and serve several virtual servers. An
off-lease used Dell desktop can act as a home lab -- even an older
laptop can serve as a homelab. The number of free virtualization platforms
has increased as well, making it inexpensive to try out a homelab in
your home.

Somewhat related to homelabs are free tiers with cloud providers - you
can start off your Homelab journey using free services from Amazon,
Google or Microsoft, then later integrate services into a homelab, or
keep both connected.

Part of the allure of homelabbing is that you can build out a home lab
with as much power as some small corporate networks, or create a small
lab for a fraction of the cost (or even free!)

Mine started out with a $5 Goodwill router and a $10 "parts only" laptop
with a broken keyboard and scratched screen. It ran the BBS, a Windows
Active Directory test environment and a network-wide ad-blocker, and
shared videos to my Smart TVs.

What you do with a home lab is up to you. There are several people here
running some version of a homelab, and we've been sharing tips in the
echoes for some time. It'd be nice to have a single place for all of the discussions for reference and to facilitate future discussions.

--k


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On 24 Apr 23 08:32:00, Poindexter Fortran said the following to Avon:

That's part of what homelabbing nowadays is about. Instead of setting up additional hardware, people have started virtualizing their home server environments. Having a virtual environment at home where you can run

I don't think I'll ever go back to "real hardware" the night I virtualized the BBS to Vmware EXSI. Now it can live out the rest of its life future-proofed and hardware independant.

The IBM R51 that ran Darkrealms and the Fido Hub for two decades was almost immediately retired. Packed up in a box with other tech memorabilia buried at the bottom of a bedroom walk-in closet.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

Hi Poindexter,

On Monday April 24 2023, Poindexter Fortran said to Avon:

Can you outline for me what it would be about etc and why you feel the
echo would work? I'm a novice in this area so just seeking to
understand more about it all... also interested in any others input to
this thread too to gauge interest etc.

I can give it a try - anyone out there who'd like to contribute/change this, feel free to chime in.

Most sysops are familiar with running a second PC as a server - we've
had that box in the corner running the BBS for years. What if, when you wanted to run a 3rd, 4th or more systems at home, you didn't have to
run any additional hardware?

[...]

That was such a great write up. It tells the story of how well virtulation
can help everyone. My homelab server is a Xeon(R) CPU E31240 @ 3.30GHz, with 32gb of ram. It's still on ESXi, with one vm having hardware passthrough.

The server has a total of 7 vm's running, 24/7.



\/orlon
aka
Stephen

Rocking FSXnet with an Amiga 4000 and Zeus BBS.

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On 24 Apr 2023 at 08:32a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

Avon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Can you outline for me what it would be about etc and why you feel th echo would work? I'm a novice in this area so just seeking to understand more about it all... also interested in any others input t

[snip]

That's part of what homelabbing nowadays is about. Instead of setting up additional hardware, people have started virtualizing their home server environments. Having a virtual environment at home where you can run

[snip]

What you do with a home lab is up to you. There are several people here running some version of a homelab, and we've been sharing tips in the echoes for some time. It'd be nice to have a single place for all of the discussions for reference and to facilitate future discussions.

Thanks poindexter I really appreciate the summary and can see the appeal. I need to get into this as I'm currently a bunch of metal boxes all whirring away in an upstairs 'radio room' that serves up fsxNet NET 1, Total FM (totalfm.nz), the NNTP server (news.bbs.nz), and on it goes..

Could you give some thought (with the input of others here) as to what you think the echoarea tag should be, what the short description / title of the echo should say, and what the longer description wording would be against the echo tag in the fsxnet.txt file?

I'm supportive of creating the echo and seek others feedback on the creation of it also.

Best, Paul

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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Avon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

<SNIP>

What you do with a home lab is up to you. There are several people here running some version of a homelab, and we've been sharing tips in the echoes for some time. It'd be nice to have a single place for all of the discussions for reference and to facilitate future discussions.

Thanks poindexter I really appreciate the summary and can see the
appeal. I need to get into this as I'm currently a bunch of metal
boxes all whirring away in an upstairs 'radio room' that serves
up fsxNet NET 1, Total FM (totalfm.nz), the NNTP server
(news.bbs.nz), and on it goes..

Could you give some thought (with the input of others here) as to
what you think the echoarea tag should be, what the short
description / title of the echo should say, and what the longer description wording would be against the echo tag in the
fsxnet.txt file?

I'm supportive of creating the echo and seek others feedback on
the creation of it also.

I think it's a great idea for a new echo, and would gladly carry it here
and participate. Thanks to PF for suggesting it.

On a related topic, which has been previously discussed, I also think
there are a few current echos which could be pruned, and perhaps a few
that could be merged/consolidated.

For example, I think that the DIY, Food/cooking, Gardening, and Arts
echos are not really needed; and do we really need seperate echos for
Magicka and Enigma BBS software? They could be covered by the more
general BBS Support/Dev echo.

Cheers!



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Atreyu wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

I don't think I'll ever go back to "real hardware" the night I
virtualized the BBS to Vmware EXSI. Now it can live out the rest of its life future-proofed and hardware independant.

Between being able to take a live snapshot of the BBS, and migrating it
to another host when I need to do maintenance, I'm sold.

The IBM R51 that ran Darkrealms and the Fido Hub for two decades was almost immediately retired. Packed up in a box with other tech
memorabilia buried at the bottom of a bedroom walk-in closet.

Funny, I have a T60 in a similar box. Can't get myself to e-waste it.



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On 25 Apr 2023 at 08:19a, Gamgee pondered and said...

I think it's a great idea for a new echo, and would gladly carry it here and participate. Thanks to PF for suggesting it.

Noted thanks :)

On a related topic, which has been previously discussed, I also think there are a few current echos which could be pruned, and perhaps a few that could be merged/consolidated.

Yep thanks, I am doing some work on this at present and will have an announcement in due course.

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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On 25 Apr 23 07:04:00, Poindexter Fortran said the following to Atreyu:

The IBM R51 that ran Darkrealms and the Fido Hub for two decades was almost immediately retired. Packed up in a box with other tech memorabilia buried at the bottom of a bedroom walk-in closet.

Funny, I have a T60 in a similar box. Can't get myself to e-waste it.

When I make my inevitable grand departure from this life and be reincarnated
as a sleazy producer of wonderful 80's B-movie trash, my daughter will likely just toss all of my tech crap to the curb.

Its all tech crap to her, totally nothing of interest or value.

To be fair, I have parents with a zillion things I will never use or have
the space for... or really care to inherit.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

poindexter wrote (2023-04-19):

I'd like to revisit the idea of a homelab echo - I think we might have enough people here interested to support such a thing.

Never heard the word homelab in this context before. Is this a new thing? And what is so special about a homelab? It's just computers at home. I guess in a time where everything is in the "cloud" and people use dumb clients (smartphones) all the time someone had to invent a new word for it ;).

(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homelab)

Anyway, we have a lot of homelab related discussions already in other areas and a dedicated echo is not a bad idea at all.

⁂

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Oli wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Never heard the word homelab in this context before. Is this a new
thing? And what is so special about a homelab? It's just computers at home.

IT people have always had systems running at home, but now the cost of
entry has dropped. You can run Proxmox on desktop hardware to provide
virtualization, Open-WRT and DD-WRT provide pretty amazing router OSes
on commodity hardware, and you can install PFSense for free on a cheap
PC (or as a VM) to get pretty incredible firewall capabilities.


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On 25 Apr 2023 at 07:39p, Avon pondered and said...

Thanks poindexter I really appreciate the summary and can see the
appeal. I need to get into this as I'm currently a bunch of metal boxes all whirring away in an upstairs 'radio room' that serves up fsxNet NET
1, Total FM (totalfm.nz), the NNTP server (news.bbs.nz), and on it goes..

Could you give some thought (with the input of others here) as to what
you think the echoarea tag should be, what the short description / title of the echo should say, and what the longer description wording would be against the echo tag in the fsxnet.txt file?

I'm supportive of creating the echo and seek others feedback on the creation of it also.

Hi there

Just wondering if you have had a chance to ponder this request?

Shall I have a crack at it and share something here so we can confirm I'm on track with a potential echomail description etc.?

Best, Paul

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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Re: Re: Homelab echo
By: Avon to poindetxer FORTRAN on Mon May 01 2023 12:48 pm

Could you give some thought (with the input of others here) as to
what you think the echoarea tag should be, what the short
description / title of the echo should say, and what the longer
description wording would be against the echo tag in the fsxnet.txt
file?

Sorry, I missed your request. I'll see what I can come up with. If anyone else wants to take a crack at it, that works, too.



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On 30 Apr 2023 at 06:50p, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

Sorry, I missed your request. I'll see what I can come up with. If
anyone else wants to take a crack at it, that works, too.

No prob, it doesn't have to be overly long, just model it on the length of what we have against other echos etc.

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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Re: Re: Homelab echo
By: Avon to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon May 01 2023 04:10 pm



How about this?

FSX_HLAB

Here's a place to discuss running networks and services in your Homelab. A homelab can be as simple as a spare PC or Raspberry Pi running a BBS or media server to a full-blown server environment with a rack, servers, switching and storage. Any and all discussions welcome.
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On 30 Apr 2023 at 10:31p, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

How about this?

FSX_HLAB

Here's a place to discuss running networks and services in your Homelab.
A homelab can be as simple as a spare PC or Raspberry Pi running a BBS
or media server to a full-blown server environment with a rack, servers, switching and storage. Any and all discussions welcome.
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Win32

Thanks :) Reads well. I may tweak things a little.

Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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