Immutable Nixos. My entire server deployment from partitioning to config is stored in git on all my machines.

Every time I boot all runtime changes are “wiped”, which is really just BTRFS subvolume swapping.

Persistence is possible, but I’m forced to deal with it otherwise it will get wiped on boot.

I use LVM for mirrored volumes for local redundancy.

My persisted volumes are backed up automatically to B2 Backblaze using rclone. I don’t backup everything. Stuff I can download again are skipped for example. I don’t have anything currently that requires putting a process in “maint mode” like a database getting corrupt if I backup while its being written to. When I did, I’d either script gracefully shutting down the process or use any export functionality if the process supported it.

I use rclone and the Round Sync Android client.

Supports a ton of back ends, self hosted, and commercial options. You can transparently encrypt with private keys you control.

I personally use B2 Backblaze for storage.

My phone backs up every night and Round Sync pushes them to B2. On my desktop I can mount as a volume. I can also access my storage from my phone going the other direction.

I’ve done the same using SFTP if I don’t want the overhead of persistent file storage.

It does not support indexing or previews for searching or finding say a photo. You can put whatever you want for data. So I have caches, indexes, and thumbnails that work in Linux. I can’t really make use of those on my phone though.

Rclones bisync feature is also a bit dangerous when I tried to use it a year ago. I more than once “deleted” everything. B2 doesn’t delete by default, just hides, so I was able to recover. I now do unidirectional syncs from my machines to different buckets until I’m motivated to investigate a proper 3-way merge solution.

Has not worked for me in ages on Graphene. Same issue. It quits right away. Even tried messing with the hardened malloc and it was no go. Been a pain trying to use Zelle or deposit checks. Other than a handful of core apps I just use the web mostly at this point.

Oh nice! I’ll have to dig into that. Wonder if its an implementation issue across vendors. I was always under the impression that DHCPv6 was the common convention if not static.

Ok. So a device didn’t get a dhcp address? No problem… It creates it’s open IP address and starts talking and try to get out on internet on its own…

Its not that different from a conceptual point of view. Your router is still the gate keeper.

Home router to ISP will usually use DHCPv6 to get a prefix. Sizes vary by ISP but its usually like a /64. This is done with Prefix Delegation.

Client to Home Router will use either SLACC, DHCPv6, or both.

SLACC uses ICMPv6 where the client asks for the prefix (Router Solicitation) and the router advertises the prefix (Router Advertisement) and the client picks an address in it. There is some duplication protection for clients picking the same IP, but its nothing you have to configure. Conceptually its not that different from DHCP Request/Offer. The clients cannot just get to the internet on their own.

SLACC doesn’t support sending stuff like DNS servers. So DHCPv6 may still be used to get that information, but not an assigned IP.

Just DHCPv6 can also be used, but SLACC has the feature of being stateless. No leases or anything.

The only other nuance worth calling out is interfaces will pick a link local address so it can talk to the devices its directly connected to over layer 3 instead of just layer 2. This is no different than configuring 169.254.1.10/31 on one side and 169.254.1.11/31 on the other. These are not routed, its just for two connected devices to send packets to each other. This with Neighbor Discovery fills the role of ARP.

There is a whole bunch more to IPv6, but for a typical home network these analogies pretty much cover what you’d use.

I haven’t tested in Windows, but this is my setup Linux to Linux using rclone which the docs say works with Windows.

Server

• LUKS
• LVM
• Volgroup with a mishmash of drives in a mirror configuration
• Cache volume with SSD
• BTRFS /w Snapshots (or ZFS or any other snapshotting FS)
• (optional) Rclone local “remote” with Crypt if you want runtime encryption at rest and the ability to decrypt files on the server. You can skip this and do client side only if you don’t want the decryption key on the server.
• SFTP (or any other self-hosted protocol from https://rclone.org/docs/)

Client

• Rclone Config /w SFTP (or chosen protocol)
• (optional) Rclone Config /w Crypt
• Rclone mount with VFS.

I use this setup for my local files and a similar setup to my Backblaze B2 off site backups.

The VFS implementation has been pretty good. You can also manually sync. Their bisync I don’t fully trust though.

I can access everything through android using https://github.com/newhinton/Round-Sync. Not great for photos though as thumbnails weren’t loading without pulling the whole file last I tested a year ago.

Hard agree with this. Its just rage bait distractions.

Hotline for the MacOS warez scene to get games in high school (circa 1999ish).

I accidentally pirate crap I have legitimate access to because I can’t be bothered to figure out which damn platform its on. I have access to quite a few through work due to my industry at no out of pocket costs.

The times I try to actually search for something, it’ll be listed on multiple platforms but 0 to 1 of those platforms will actually have what I’m looking for included with the subscription forcing me to manually check each one.

It is easier to just pirate.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

• Goodhart’s law

Advertisers made it a target to have a high review score so now they are just another advertising cost.

SEO did the same to the web.

Bots and now AI are infecting social spaces as users figured out reviews are now shit and would turn to special interest groups.

And track this stuff in git so you don’t need to remember how you did it when you inevitably forget, lol.

I use Nix, even on my Ubuntu machines, to install tooling in my user profile.

Nixpkgs unstable stays pretty up to date. The few I want something on release day or bleeding edge nightlies, I override the derivation source. I use nvfetcher to pull the latest release or head of the default branch as part of my update routine.

I’m pretty new to Nix, so its been slow integrating into my workflow, but I plan to start integrating flake’s into my repos. My team seems to have constant issues with keeping their tooling up to date which breaks things locally from time to time.

One method depends on your storage provider. Rsync may have incremental snapshots, but I haven’t looked because my storage provider has it.

Sometimes a separate tool like rsnapshot (but probably not rsnapshot itself as I dont think its hard links interact well with rsync) might be used to manage snapshots locally that are then rsynced.

On to storage providers or back ends. I use B2 Backblaze configured to never delete. When a file changes it uploads the new version and renames the old version with a timestamp and hides it. Rsync has tools to recover the old file versions or delete any history. Again, it only uploads the changed files so its not full snapshots.

Yes. You compose a crypted vault over your storage vault. I pay about $1/mo for B2 Backblaze. Around 150G last I checked.

Important stuff (about 150G) is synced to all my machines and a b2 Backblaze bucket.

I have a rented seed box for those low seeder torrents.

The stuff I can download again is only on a mirrored lvm pool with an lvmcache. I don’t have any redundancy for my monerod data which is on an nvme.

I’m moving towards an immutable OS with 30 days of snapshots. While not the main reason, it does push one to practicing better sync habits.

I believe you will see OOM errors in journalctl. Also considered a systemd service or something to restart the process?

Glad you figured it out though!

I use EteSync to sync my contacts. It can do calendars also and has a self-hosted option. Personally I just use Proton for my calendar at the moment.

I haven’t tested any desktop syncing with EteSync, but maybe it will work for you.

I use DavMail to proxy an Exchange account so I don’t have to install Outlook on my phone.

I use Mullvad and Proton. I have a grandfathered Proton Ultimate Visionary plan so I use theirs when I need the port forwarding. I had just started my privacy journey with Proton and didn’t sign up anonymously. Mullvad is my daily driver paid with XMR.

If the curriculum format teaches students to be test takers, I’d give them extra points for working smarter.

If my job gave me work while on my vacation, I’d be talking to the labor board if they didn’t pay me at my consultation rates.