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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I am very happy with mine and have only ever had one hiccup during updating that was due to my Dockerfile removing one dependency to many. I’ve run it bare metal (apache, mariadb) as well as containerized (derived custom image, traefik, mariadb). Both were okay in speed after applying all steps from the documentation.

    Having the database on your fastest drive is definitely very important. Whenever I look at htop while making big copies or moves, it’s always mariadb that’s shuffling stuff around.

    In my opinion there are 2 things that make nextcloud (appear) slow:

    1. Managing the ton of metadata in the db that is used by nextcloud to provide the enhanced functionality

    2. It is/was a webpage rendered mostly on the server.

    The first issue is hard to tackle, because it is intrinsic and also has different optimums for different deployment scales. Optimizing databases is beyond my skillset and therefore I stick to the recommendations.

    The second issue is slowly being worked around, because many applications on nextcloud now resemble SPAs, that are highly interactive and are rendered by your browser. That reduces page reloads and makes it feel more smooth.

    All that said, I barely use the webinterface, because I rarely use the collaboration features. If I have to create a share I usually do that on the app because that’s where I send the link to people. Most of my usecase is just syncing files, calendars and contacts.



  • I did too, but shortly after decommissioning that server the drive became unresponsive. I really dodged a bullet without even realizing at the time. SMART data did not work and may have alerted me in that case.

    Also, unrelated to SMART data, the server failed to do reboots because the USB-SATA adapter did not properly reset without a full power cycle (which did not happen with that mainboard’s USB on reboots). It always git stuck searching for the drive. Restarting the server therefore meant shutting it down and calling someone to push the button for me - or use Wake-On-LAN which thankfully worked but was still a dodgy workaround.




  • Intel’s low power offerings are sometimes even less power hungry than a RPi and handle more stuff. I like Asrock’s line of CPU-onboard motherboards and use one myself. You get the convenience of a full x86 machine but it sips power. Mine peaks at ~36W with full load on CPU, GPU, RAM and 4 SSDs or disks. Usually it is much much lower. You can always go smaller with an Atom x5 z8300 (~2W Idle without disks or network, 6W with both and some load), but those are getting a little old and newer stuff is better and more feature-rich. Maybe an N100 machine with 4 or 8 gigs of RAM are a good option for you? Don’t go overboard with RAM if you are using docker for everything anyways. I use 8 but 4 would be more than enough for me and my countless containers. I run Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Paperless-ngx, Resilio, Photoprism and a few more. Only the minecraft server benefits from more than four. Very happy with my J5005 board.





  • At current power costs in Germany (~0.3€/kWh) that 10W becomes 26€ per year. If you are still on a contract from a few months ago (~0.4€/kWh), you’ll be paying ~35€ per year. Over a span of around 3 to 5 years of continued use, the cheap Aliexpress knockoffs definitely become reasonable at that price point. You’d still need a proper 230V to 12V PSU though, which costs <20€. I first tried one of the industrial ones with metal cage, but they have horrible efficiency especially at low loads. I would always suggest getting a consumer PSU with ErP rating and other certifications. Adding all the cost up, a good regular ATX PSU with 80PLUS certification might be competitive to such a combo too.

    I am not too sure this problem is entirely about the PSU though. Maybe the mainboard is simply designed very cheaply and inefficiently. There’s no way of testing a new PSU combo without trying it though.



  • Podman is on my todo list! I like the ideas behind Podman and because I am already familiar with docker containers, I hope that I can transfer most of my stuff over almost pain free. But I heard the linuxserver.io images are unsupported on podman/rootless docker and might give me trouble. We’ll see!

    On the other hand, I have recently fallen in love with NixOS and would love to consolidate on a common Nix config for all my servers, Raspberries and maybe eventually desktops. It’s the perfect time to try out podman!