Spontaneocus

Hi Guys, I just wanted to raise the fact that LTT's logo is featured centrally on influencerstuff.com (see attached screenshot). I don't know if LTT actually does business (or has done business) with Richard Little at InfluencerStuff.com, but wanted to raise a serious issue of allegations of him running what amounts to a giant ponzi scheme. A number of large companies have cut ties with him due to him failing to pass on payment to content creators. These companies have paid him, but he has then failed to pass the money on to those who have actually done the work for him. see video by Greg Salazar: 

Wanted to raise this with LTT because of the obvious exposure to the LTT brand if you guys were unaware of this going on. Apparently it is not only content creators which have been jipped out of money, but also employees. 

5 minutes ago, Budget DIY said:

Think about what you just suggested. Do you REALLY think Microsoft would do this kind of dirty tricks?!?

  Hide contents

Answer is: ofcourse it would.

 

Yup, which is exactly why I raised it. The site is first saying that it is checking to make sure that my connection is secure, and then going to the "at capacity" screen on chrome, or to chatgpt on edge. The reason for the post is to see if the community can establish if it is checking which browser a person is using for the purpose of said dirty tactics, or whether it is down to a security difference between the two browsers. 

I found something rather interesting today and just wanted to know if anyone had experienced anything similar.

When ever i try to use chatgpt using chrome, I get a ChatGPT is at capacity right now, message. However, if I use edge, it works immediately. I'm wondering if microsoft is checking the browser being used and giving priority to those using edge over other browsers?

Hey guys,

Doing a custom retrofit to my server (conversion to water cooling). Really constrained on space so was wondering if there is any such thing as a combined small resevoir-block-pump or if you have any recommendations on the three for a constrained space.

Cheers

Martin

14 minutes ago, OddOod said:

 

Ooof, those *are* trash.I'd just be so tempted to try sourcing a lot of 40 SFF optiplexes from a local uni or something

Honestly, I'd separate concerns here. Grab something consumer for the plex server. 8-10thgen i5 with some ram and an NV GPU for the video stuff, then work on sourcing a hypervisor server from somewhere and let that be its own thing.
Maybe even go so far as to have a storage box, a PLEXetc. box, and a hypervisor box. All three of those have very different requirements

My general advice would be to scour local liquidators for decent deals and cobble together what you can with whatever budget you can squeeze 

Just spoke to the supplier. Got him to give me a deal on 40 Dell OptiPlex 3040 SFF's, Intel i5, 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD. Being used, works out £200 cheaper than the atoms. Exxxthhhheeeleeent

Just now, Spontaneocus said:

 

16 rooms 36 mini pcs. 

Expectation of up to 20 in operation at one time due to staggered visiting hours. 

11 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Unless someone is doing real heavy computing, most minipcs should be able to handle the lifting for old folx internet usage. 
How many clients do you anticipate? Both peak concurrent and total

16 rooms 36 mini pcs. 

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you have hardware raid cards, Id use them. You get good performance from then, and they generally work well.

 

This also really depends on the card thats included

 

What are the specs of the mini PCs? Most mini pcs should be plenty for playing back videos, basic web browsing, email checking, word processing and other tasks. I don't see the point of vms unless your running some heavy tasks(and then a single epyc/dual xeon probably won't be enough). Id probably go with a x86 pc, just gives you much more options for os and much easier to change the os. Id pick something like a optiplex 3040 micro here. Small, low power, fairly fast.

 

What standard for 10G?

 

10G seems way overkill here, 1g is more than plenty for 50 users watching hd video at the same time.

 

 

Intel Atom Z8350,2 GB RAM

The VM option is easy of administration. I'll be administering things at a distance and accessing the pc's themselves would be a pain in the butt. 

The 10G is for other things as well, separate vlan for another project we're working on. So it's 10G switch to switch, then 1G out to machines. 

9 minutes ago, OddOod said:

There is a ZFS plugin for Unraid, but you can't run only ZFS pools. 

Is there O_O - (googling for my own unraid server). LOL

As for drives. Managed to get 5 ironwolfs. 10TB each

Also have 4 1TB samsung SSD's

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you need epyc? Id probably go with something like a dell r730 here. Pretty cheap used and a very capable server.

 

What drives do you have? Id probably avoid unraid here and go with something based off zfs or hardware raid for the much better performance

 

HOw would the users connect to the vms? Id suggest just getting cheap desktops/laptops for the users to have computers to use, esp with unraid thats really not made for vdi deployments

Open to alternatives, but was just thinking in terms of load and resources. 

Just now, Spontaneocus said:

I had a look at r730's, (I have an r720 in my office). What's the script with their raid cards, do they need to be reflashed for HBA or is there an option now to select between it and raid?

 

Any recommendations on alternate ZFS?

 

Access to the VM's as I said in my reply above, the boxes I have are more mini pcs. Intention is to go the thin client route. Plex app on the VM. As for connection, I have the hardware (donated) for 10G to each room. 

Ceiling panels throughout the ward are just the business liftable ones so can run the cables no problem without creating a mess. 

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you need epyc? Id probably go with something like a dell r730 here. Pretty cheap used and a very capable server.

 

What drives do you have? Id probably avoid unraid here and go with something based off zfs or hardware raid for the much better performance

 

HOw would the users connect to the vms? Id suggest just getting cheap desktops/laptops for the users to have computers to use, esp with unraid thats really not made for vdi deployments

I had a look at r730's, (I have an r720 in my office). What's the script with their raid cards, do they need to be reflashed for HBA or is there an option now to select between it and raid?

Any recommendations on alternate ZFS?

Access to the VM's as I said in my reply above, the boxes I have are more mini pcs. Intention is to go the thin client route. Plex app on the VM. As for connection, I have the hardware (donated) for 10G to each room. 

Just now, OddOod said:

First, we need a budget.
Second, why specifically epyc? GPU prices are crashing and you can get an NV card to do all the transcode heavy lifting and you can pipe an HDHomeRun or similar networkable tuner into Plex and let it do all the DVRing. You should be able to get several dozen clients out of consumer hardware that way. As for using VMs for general computing, do they already have thinclients that are just not powerful enough for a web browser or what's the deal there?

I have about $1500 left in the budget. So it's a biggest bang for the buck.

As for epyc, that's just personal preference a but would certainly be open to other alternatives if I can get bigger bang for the buck. My thinking with epyc is the load of 16 rooms each pulling from the plex server and the VMs obviously. 

With the transcoding and HDHomeRun/DVR/Plex, was exactly the way I was thinking of going. 

As for thin clients, probably should correct myself. The boxes are not specifically android. They are mini pc's so my intention was to take android off, go thin client route with them and install plex app on whatever OS we are going to use.

Not much experience in setting up thin client to access unraid VM's, any recommendation on a guide for that? 

On 1/20/2022 at 11:38 PM, Chase Douglas said:

Due to what we've observed with other events over the course of the past year, we've made the tough decision to delay LTX until 2023.

 

This wasn't an easy decision, but with COVID-19 still affecting events worldwide, this is what we felt we needed to do. Our goal with LTX is to increase interactivity each year as we grow, and we feel that this isn't yet possible for us to do in a safe manner.

 

We want LTX to return, it's just a matter of when. We've been working on a lot of ideas and partnerships behind the scenes, and are looking forward to sharing those when the time is right.

Sorry for the bad news, we can't wait to see you all in person again.

-The LTX Expo Team

Will defo be travelling over from Scotland for that. 

On 2/16/2022 at 3:43 AM, vic.MDX said:

This is my first time hearing about LTX if anyone can PM me more about the event :)) or ill do extensive google searching

Think comicon for tech geeks, and less klingons  - Put simply, one hell of a tech fest. If you go onto the LTT youtube channel they actually have videos of the previous events. 

Hi Folks,

Im looking for a bit of assistance sourcing a cheap (relatively speaking - on a budget) Epyc processor, ram and motherboard for a media server project for a elderly care unit. Used would be fine. Doing this as a volunteer/donation thing. 

Simply put, the ward has been decimated resource wise because of the pandemic. The ward has patients staring at the ceiling with very little interaction, not good for elderly people. Many have dementia and are stuck in their long term. Ive sourced a load of TV's and adroid boxes. Got 50TB worth of drives and multiple SSD for cache pool, multiple network ariel tuners (HD home run). 10G switch, cabling etc etc. Just need to build a media server and need to source processor, ram and motherboard on a tight budget.

Intending to go unraid, which I intend to setup as both a plex server and to run multiple VM's which they can use for watching/recording TV from central tuners over the network, watching movies which have been ripped from DVD (donated). Perfectly legal in the UK because it's considered a backup so long as you own the original DVD. And, of course with the VMs, the ability to use video conferencing, check email etc. 

Any pointers to potential places to pick up an epyc (preferably 32 core) processor, MB and Ram would be great. 

Cheers

Martin

Any ideas?

Daft Query but I am up to my eyeballs in word documents and I want to know if there is either a piece of software, or website script whereby I can setup a standard template for my letters, go in, type the text in a box, hit submit and it will allow me to print it, but also file it away in date order / recipient etc. 

Just need to improve my organisation and tracking due to my disability. 

20 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Set default gateway to the router's ip address.

Deh! Thank you! If only we could defrag our own brains. Or at the very least run a disk cleanup. LOL

I have a very simple issue, but one of those ones I just cannot remember how to do.

The situation is pretty simple.

I have BT fibre broadband with my router from them in bridge mode. It runs to a Unifi Dream Machine Pro which just uses it as a modem effectively via PPPoE login. 

BT have allocated me 5 external static IP addresses.

I have created a forwarding rule for ports 443, 80 & 8080 from the external IP ***.**.***.57 to the local IP of the server 10.0.1.87.

My issue is to do with traffic going out the way. The server is seeing my main IP address for my fibre connection, not the ***.**.***.57 address above. I can't remember how to manually set the IP address for the traffic to go out via the fixed external IP address on CentOS

I know its a stupid setting somewhere but simply, for the life of me can't remember where to input it. I'm sure its somewhere in the normal NIC settings for IPv4, but can't remember. 

22 hours ago, alpha754293 said:

So....if I watched their previous video correctly:

 

 

at about timestamp 4' 54", it shows that they are using a LSI SAS 9305-16i SAS 12 Gbps HBA. (https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9305-16i)

 

So assuming that they were using the Storinator 60 from 45 Drives, they would be using four those of SAS 12 Gbps LSI 9305-16i SAS HBAs in order to be able to handle 60 drives simultaneously.

So pretty standard stuff. Nothing too special about the SAS 12 Gbps HBA.

Thanks!

14 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

Gentleman

 

 

never underestimate the power of IT admin and developer laziness.

Just out of curiosity, what HBA cards are you guys using?

Hi Linus. With respect to the thermostats in all the rooms and the 2 wires conundrum, don't use the wires for thermostats. Instead, at the room/zone end of the cable, put a temperature sensor. At the boiler room end, hook that to the controller (which ever you choose). This is exactly what I did here in Scotland with Honeywell kit, which their controllers allow individual sensors for each zone. From that you can then control the temperature you want in each room from their app (because the actuators are at the hot water end, not in the rooms/zone), or even alexa etc. In otherwords, don't put the thermostatic controls in the rooms, put it next to your boiler/furnace) and just use the wires to provide the temperate readings from those rooms to the controller. As long as you have wifi in the boiler/furnace room, you'll be able to use the app for the controller. Heck, you could even cover up the mess from removing the old thermostats by putting a pad/mobile dedicated to using heating app, which could also be used for mood lighting or any other gizmos in that particular room

Im in Scotland and the reason I preface this article with that statement is because here the law on copyright isnt too bad. If you buy a DVD or other disk and you copy it, then it is not illegal, so long as the copy is for your own backup purposes. For many years I have bought new DVD's (and while some might laugh at that now with streaming etc, there is just something about a wall of DVDs on a rack) and copied them, then used the copy as the one to watch and put the original back in the box and stored away just incase. That way if the copy gets scratched, no big deal, I just make another one to watch.

However, having two racks of DVDs has become extremely clumbersome so a while ago I  constructing a rack mounted plex server just to fiddle arround and see if I could get it to do a chain of things in unraid for a number of different things. One of these was copying the files from the DVD to an ingest folder for it then to be converted into H264 for the purposes of compression and a more conducive format for playback across the network. 

I stumbled across the Tdarr project which was in pre-alpha at the time (big shout out to HaveAGitGat) https://github.com/HaveAGitGat/Tdarr

Now Tdarr runs on pretty much every OS, but it also has a docker version which runs on unraid.

In a nutshell, it watches folders you designated for new footage, then uses handbrake or FFPEG to convert to H264, H265 (which I am now using on my new plex server finished yesterday) and it really is as simple as drop and go with the files.

With the recent introduction in plugins, it means that you can specify different folders, different plugins etc. There are also features for setting schedules, allocated resources to it etc etc.

Tdarr was obviously designed for home video conversion etc and its still in active development at alpha leve, but from what I can see, this could be an absolutely MASSIVE programme for not just footage ingest for content creators, but also the post editing conversion for all of the different upload platforms. On that basis, I think it would be really cool to try and spread the word and maybe get the LTT community to trial the software, help HaveAGitGat develop it and of course, perhaps get a few interested people from the forums assisting with its active development.

Did you find a solution to this because I am having the same issue with a ryzen 2600 with a aorus M board. I found that if I pull the NVMe (SN500 WD Blue), which should be compatible with this board according to the manufacturer, when I do that, it will post. I've updated the bios and still nothing. Would be interested if any of you found a fix.