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Jim's Projects: Community Server - Jim Rockford - 03-31-2026

No big, I was kind of bored and curious. I'm just glad that it will be easy. I was originally researching what it would take to set up a vpn tunnel and it is far more complicated than it is worth. I came across the forum post and started reading more about ssh. It kind of fascinating (to me).

Jim's Projects: Community Server - Jim Rockford - 07-11-2026

So after over 3 months I've managed to get a little work done on the server. Running new power to the server closet became a stumbling block for a few reasons, mostly that I needed to do things the "right way" (by installing either a terminal box or a plug) and that I would have to run cable in the crawl space. And I've been entirely in my head and unmotivated by... ::gestures around again::

I found some time to work on things recently when I'm not paralyzed by existential dread. About a month ago I wired and installed a plug, and then that sat until today when I finally wired in the new service, ran the cabling, and transferred everything from the old extension cord/powerstrip and into the UPS. And...it worked. I'm really glad it worked because I was NOT feeling doing anything else because it is so hot I start pouring sweat if I'm not sitting still in air conditioning being blasted in the face with a fan.

After I cool off for a bit, I might get into server assembly, but my energy is only going to last so long.

Jim's Projects: Community Server - Jim Rockford - 07-14-2026

Managed to get the server built this evening and get Debian/KDE on it. This took most of the evening, so I'm going to break for now. Here are some pictures:

Front:

.png   server_front.png (Size: 7.57 MB / Downloads: 8)

Back:

.png   server_back.png (Size: 5.26 MB / Downloads: 8)

You may notice that the bottom hdd is sitting upside down. This is because of a flaw in the design of the case. For whatever reason, the mount where the drive housings sit does this weird taper in two places.


.png   drives_problem.png (Size: 2.17 MB / Downloads: 7)

That taper actually makes it impossible to plug in the power and sata cable for the drives that sit in those positions. I moved things around a bit and realized if all of the drives are installed the same direction, cable mass is going to build up on that side and probably be a mess anyway. So, I flipped the bottom drive and ran two power chains - one going bottom- to-top to power the right-side-up drives and the other going top-to-bottom to power the upside-down drives. I went ahead and ran those cables in prep for the drives that will eventually live there.


.png   drives_cables.png (Size: 2.12 MB / Downloads: 7)

That's all for now.

EDIT: Hey [USER=28507]@Digital Prophet[/USER] - remember that DDR4 ram you gave me like 5 years ago because you didn't have anything to use it in? Well, I found them and the speed is identical to what I bought, so I went ahead and slotted them for +16MB (48MB total) woohoo!

Jim's Projects: Community Server - BigPete - 07-14-2026

Jim Rockford, post: 2270080, member: 28508 Wrote:Hey [USER=28507]@Digital Prophet[/USER] - remember that DDR4 ram you gave me like 5 years ago because you didn't have anything to use it in?
dude was just throwing ram around like tech Mansa Musa

Jim's Projects: Community Server - Digital Prophet - 07-14-2026

5 years ago it was cheap as fuck.

For whatever reason floorp cannot open embedded images on here. It opens it and then immediately closes it again. Works fine on firefox. No idea. I have gone through the settings, and turned all of my extensions off and nothing. It treats it like a popup and kills it.

Jim's Projects: Community Server - BigPete - 07-14-2026

Digital Prophet, post: 2270085, member: 28507 Wrote:5 years ago it was cheap as fuck.

For whatever reason floorp cannot open embedded images on here. It opens it and then immediately closes it again. Works fine on firefox. No idea. I have gone through the settings, and turned all of my extensions off and nothing. It treats it like a popup and kills it.
If you middle click it to open in a new tab does it work?

Jim's Projects: Community Server - BigPete - 07-14-2026

BigPete, post: 2270087, member: 4840 Wrote:If you middle click it to open in a new tab does it work?

I'm guessing it's a lightbox issue. I can't replicate it in Floorp on Linux. I'll boot into Windows and see if I can there.

Jim's Projects: Community Server - Digital Prophet - 07-14-2026

BigPete, post: 2270087, member: 4840 Wrote:If you middle click it to open in a new tab does it work?
Yes.

Im not really asking you to troubleshoot my browser, tho. It's just weird.

Jim's Projects: Community Server - Jim Rockford - 07-16-2026

Did some work tonight setting up the virtual network, which I struggled with a bit as I expected. Also as expected, finding info for help using internet search was basically useless (fucking LLM web pages)

So it was time to RTFM...

...and it was actually pretty easy after I spent an hour understanding the issue through the man-pages. Once I figured that out, I spun up a VM to test out the network and everything seems to be working well.

Other than that, doing the slow march of configuring a new linux machine from scratch. Formatted and mounted my hdds in preparation for setting up the nextcloud vm (the next big hurdle).

Jim's Projects: Community Server - Jim Rockford - 07-17-2026

Another day, more server configuration:
  • Copied down backup and old cloud files to new drives
  • Developed backup plan and installed remainder of my hdds for that purpose
  • Finished setting up network (totally forgot local DNS settings)
  • Started configuring nextcloud VM (fun fact, nexcloud is designed to run on a classic LAMP server, but they REALLY don't want you to do that. They want you to use their docker containers which I have never had luck with. I'll stick with the tried and true, thanks - even if it takes me twice the time!).
  • Set up and tested samba/SMB with windows machine
Next up:
  • Set up nfs for volumes shared with VMs
  • Configure share for cloud VM and finish installing nextcloud
  • Finish setting up VM infrastructure (templates, services, etc)