[X] My Assistant

Time to revive this thread. I need help (just pointers, I can set everything up myself) setting up a backup server at my folks' place.

- Will be used for 2 main purposes: backing up media from my main PC (so remote access is required), and running a media server accessible from the internet (mostly to stream my music, maybe anime as well). The latter I can just copy my docker-compose over there and everything should be up and running in half a minute. The former is what I have zero experience with.
- I will back up, well, some spicy contents to this server, so the HDDs need to be encrypted so my brother can't check what is on it if he gets curious enough to take the HDDs out. This part I also have zero experience with.
- I'm leaning towards getting something like the Synology D423 or D423+. Building a full PC from scratch is out of the question since I will be asking my friend to set the thing up. He can do simple assembly and is decently tech-savvy but building a full PC is out of his level.

Throughout the entire process, I will not have physical access to the thing and any initial setup will go through my friend, after that the server will stay online 24/7 (my parents can help press the power button if it goes out during a power outage) and all maintenance/backup/access/etc. afterwards are to be done remotely from my main PC.

tl;dr: need help setting up remote encrypted server that is to be run as a media server accessible from the internet

This post has been edited by Ass Spanker: Jan 22 2024, 15:53

Synology should make set up, further configuration and remote access extremely easy through their web interface. You can additionally set up an ssh server.

You will have to set up a VPN, preferably wireguard if you want to access it outside of your local network. Synology probably provides an easy solution for that too.

In fact i would recommend that all your services should only be listening to your wireguard address/interface, so that only you can connect to the NAS through the VPN.
Adds a little bit of extra security and privacy from other people using your local network.

It sounds like Synology don't support LUKS, or at least don't allow for an easy way to configure LUKS through their GUI. That's probably what you'd want for full disk encryption on Linux.

From what i understand you can encrypt specific folders through their software.
Or maybe full volume encryption is a thing now, but only on specific devices, i am not sure, gotta do your own research. [dongknows.com] https://dongknows.com/synology-dsm-7-2-adds...n-nvme-storage/

I haven't used disk storage encryption since the days of truecrypt. So I'll be of very little use there.

I know lots of people rave about synology, but i just host my VPN on a VPS and it's been fine. Probably more controllable, too, since I have a root shell on it if needed. Via key-based authentication only.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jan 23 2024, 12:42

I also considered a VPS but with my storage usage, 4-6 months of unlimited bandwidth VPS renting will exceed my initial hardware cost. Also not sure how lenient they are with hosting pirated contents.

A VPS provider won't know the content you host unless you are exposing it as a publicly accessible website or torrenting from it directly from the connection on the VPS. They *could* know it, but most if not all of them do not browse VPS content or encrypt it as no corporate entity would contract with them if they just browsed corporate data all the time. You can also just encrypt it on the VPS as well, especially the backups easily with tools like Kopia, rclone, etc. Setting this up at a friend's house will be a pain for maintenance imo, so even at increased price I would suggest a cheap storage VPS (tend to be in the US, I use Interserver and Crunchbits), a cheap storage provider mounted to a vps (like hetzner storage boxes), or a cheaper dedi (like hetzner auctions). Lowendbox is a nice forum for that kind of stuff on the cheap.

However if you insist on having your friend host it w/o you having physical access to set it up, stick to brands with simple setup like Synology, though I do not know the exact setup process and how easy it is to manage remotely and deal with encryption and what not. You'll probably want physical access to it if you are also unfamiliar with it (or one you also have physical access to). I would suggest setting up whatever you want yourself at your home and shipping it out to them in a plug-and-play state if the shipping cost is not outrageous. If you can do a set up yourself and ship, I would suggest an OS which allows for limited messing with the root OS to avoid messing things up and needing physical access, so a virtualized solution like Proxmox (can be lightweight with LXCs).

And for remote access I would suggest installing something like Tailscale and a VPS as a wireguard relay. Tailscale is good as an emergency access tool though I find the bandwidth can suck behind heavy NAT which your friend may have. A VPS acting as a relay will have the best bandwidth in my experience from behind NAT-to-NAT

This post has been edited by upside-down-human: Apr 13 2024, 05:39

A VPS provider won't know the content you host unless you are exposing it as a publicly accessible website or torrenting from it directly from the connection on the VPS. They *could* know it, but most if not all of them do not browse VPS content or encrypt it as no corporate entity would contract with them if they just browsed corporate data all the time. You can also just encrypt it on the VPS as well, especially the backups easily with tools like Kopia, rclone, etc. Setting this up at a friend's house will be a pain for maintenance imo, so even at increased price I would suggest a cheap storage VPS (tend to be in the US, I use Interserver and Crunchbits), a cheap storage provider mounted to a vps (like hetzner storage boxes), or a cheaper dedi (like hetzner auctions). Lowendbox is a nice forum for that kind of stuff on the cheap.

However if you insist on having your friend host it w/o you having physical access to set it up, stick to brands with simple setup like Synology, though I do not know the exact setup process and how easy it is to manage remotely and deal with encryption and what not. You'll probably want physical access to it if you are also unfamiliar with it (or one you also have physical access to). I would suggest setting up whatever you want yourself at your home and shipping it out to them in a plug-and-play state if the shipping cost is not outrageous. If you can do a set up yourself and ship, I would suggest an OS which allows for limited messing with the root OS to avoid messing things up and needing physical access, so a virtualized solution like Proxmox (can be lightweight with LXCs).

And for remote access I would suggest installing something like Tailscale and a VPS as a wireguard relay. Tailscale is good as an emergency access tool though I find the bandwidth can suck behind heavy NAT which your friend may have. A VPS acting as a relay will have the best bandwidth in my experience from behind NAT-to-NAT

The shipping option is actually decent considering I would likely be shipping it if I followed through with the plan since the pricing is much better at my current place than at my parents'. Though, circumstances change and I will be going back home for a month anyway so it's gonna be me physically handling everything in the end.

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Not sure if I should ask this in the tech or adult chat but well I guess it goes here. NSFW link but you know what forums you're on: [kemono.su] https://kemono.su/fanbox/user/310779/post/5673209

The final image is the way the artist distributes his uncen. Getting back the uncen version is as simple as slapping 4 layers together under additive blend mode. What I'm wondering about is why I'm seeing the already uncensored version as a thumbnail on kemono instead of the original version. Not sure how the kemono importer works, did the uploader spend time to stick the images together or is there some hidden thumbnail rendering magic that I don't know about?

This post has been edited by Ass Spanker: Jun 7 2024, 15:40

The shipping option is actually decent considering I would likely be shipping it if I followed through with the plan since the pricing is much better at my current place than at my parents'. Though, circumstances change and I will be going back home for a month anyway so it's gonna be me physically handling everything in the end.

------------

Not sure if I should ask this in the tech or adult chat but well I guess it goes here. NSFW link but you know what forums you're on: [kemono.su] https://kemono.su/fanbox/user/310779/post/5673209

The final image is the way the artist distributes his uncen. Getting back the uncen version is as simple as slapping 4 layers together under additive blend mode. What I'm wondering about is why I'm seeing the already uncensored version as a thumbnail on kemono instead of the original version. Not sure how the kemono importer works, did the uploader spend time to stick the images together or is there some hidden thumbnail rendering magic that I don't know about?

they might have either had the uncensored version uploaded originally and then edited the post, or they might be using the EXIF tag thumbnail metadata for it.

There's a nicer way of doing what they did, if you take two images and put zebra stripes on both copies but put them in places where they don't overlap with each other. Then you don't have to do any manual cropping or image editing beyond opening the two layers and doing the additive thing.
Or using imagemagick.

This post has been edited by Moonlight Rambler: Jun 26 2024, 18:14

Hi, may I ask how I'll be able to adjust the offset in extracting 5pd games?
Currently I'm following the instruction of thie "https://github.com/rdavisau/sg-unpack" toolset to extract character CGs from chaos;child.
Eventually what I got is pngs like this.



When searching for answers, someone mentions this can be resulted by some "offset errors", but I cannot get into further information about this.

May I ask how I can solve this issue and get complete character cgs?

——————————————

[www.bilibili.com] https://www.bilibili.com/opus/996240908694323205
nevermind I found the tutorial

This post has been edited by CASSHARN: Nov 14 2024, 03:37

i do not know off the top of my head, but "offset errors" means the program is starting looking at the wrong spot in the file and so everything is off by a bit or entirely wrong.
if you can manually tell it to start at a certain offset (or address) in the file, maybe you can correct for this.

Anyone here have experience with HD Sentinel?
If the software claimed that (one of my just recently out-of-warranty 4Tb) hdd suddenly have tons of bad sector and health drop to 40% from 100%, how likely that this HDD have real problem?

It was connected to my PC not with sata cable but usb cable+ Orico HD dock.
I assume there are no problem with the cable and HD dock, but I can't be sure now.
I just finished copying stuff from other HDD to it (Maybe like 1Tb data) and when I tried to safely removed it, Windows refused.
I tried waiting for a few minutes, but it stay like that.
Soon the electricity was cut off, and when I turned on the PC it said the HDD have tons of bad sector.

I forgot what exactly I pick, but I either pick HD Sentinel read+write test or reinitialize disk surface to try fixing the bad sector.
Right now it seems the HDD now is usable, but is there any way to make sure the HDD actually usable like before or restore the health to 100%?

Anyone here have experience with HD Sentinel?
If the software claimed that (one of my just recently out-of-warranty 4Tb) hdd suddenly have tons of bad sector and health drop to 40% from 100%, how likely that this HDD have real problem?

It was connected to my PC not with sata cable but usb cable+ Orico HD dock.
I assume there are no problem with the cable and HD dock, but I can't be sure now.
I just finished copying stuff from other HDD to it (Maybe like 1Tb data) and when I tried to safely removed it, Windows refused.
I tried waiting for a few minutes, but it stay like that.
Soon the electricity was cut off, and when I turned on the PC it said the HDD have tons of bad sector.

I forgot what exactly I pick, but I either pick HD Sentinel read+write test or reinitialize disk surface to try fixing the bad sector.
Right now it seems the HDD now is usable, but is there any way to make sure the HDD actually usable like before or restore the health to 100%?

People usually recommend Crystal Disk Info to check HDD health. There's the anime girl version (3 of them even) so go grab one. It's free.
If you have a PC and not a laptop, spend a bit of time to plug the drive in directly via sata. That removes all the variables (unless you have a shitty sata cable or your psu is busted).

I'm asking whether anyone has encountered an error with their external hard drive where all copy-paste got stuck midway (write speed abruptly drop down to zero). Looking at the SMART reading by the disk utility software CrystalDiskInfo, there's a warning on the "Pending Sector Count" parameter (highlighted in yellow; otherwise blue if healthy). Then when I looked through the Windows Event Viewer, I found a log that states "controller error". I'm a bit confused whether it's just the controller chip problem or if there's also bad sectors on the disk itself.

This post has been edited by elda88: Jan 2 2025, 01:36

Went on vacation for a few days and I did a big retard move disabling my home wifi while accessing it using Teamviewer from a mac because mac shortcuts are retarded. Which leads me to this question: is there any method to make sure my windows never go offline, i.e. in the worst case that I do a dumdum and disable wifi, it turns itself back on in 15-30 minutes.

Went on vacation for a few days and I did a big retard move disabling my home wifi while accessing it using Teamviewer from a mac because mac shortcuts are retarded. Which leads me to this question: is there any method to make sure my windows never go offline, i.e. in the worst case that I do a dumdum and disable wifi, it turns itself back on in 15-30 minutes.

as people that use laptop i always use this setting to make sure when laptop goes off-display it wouldn't put into sleep or else.

> in windows taskbar search "control panel"
> click these menu : hardware & sound > Power option > change when computer sleep
> in choose when computer would sleep,choose never both in battery and plugged.

the result is my laptop even the display is off it didn't goin sleep
i dunno much side effect of it,what am i know it will reduce battery health

as people that use laptop i always use this setting to make sure when laptop goes off-display it wouldn't put into sleep or else.

> in windows taskbar search "control panel"
> click these menu : hardware & sound > Power option > change when computer sleep
> in choose when computer would sleep,choose never both in battery and plugged.

the result is my laptop even the display is off it didn't goin sleep
i dunno much side effect of it,what am i know it will reduce battery health

I run servers so it's online 24/7 pretty much. But I did a fucky wucky the other day when I was accessing my pc remotely. I pressed command + A to select some text then typed without looking. It's the mac keyboard layout. But when converted to windows, it's windows + A. Windows + A pops up the quick setting menu, then space toggles the first option in quick setting, which is the wifi option. So I turned off the wifi.

(IMG:[live.staticflickr.com] https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54294939937_7031a68765_c_d.jpg)

"8 sectors reallocated"

Can still continue to stress the disk with 14-16 hours of video encoding on almost daily basis? Or get a replacement immediately? Warranty ended last year. (bought in early 2019)

This post has been edited by elda88: Jan 30 2025, 04:24

You should always have backups but just keep a watch on it and see if it continues to rise. I've had disks with a couple reallocated sectors that are still alive 5+ years later without ever rising again in reallocated sectors.

(IMG:[live.staticflickr.com] https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54294939937_7031a68765_c_d.jpg)

"8 sectors reallocated"

Can still continue to stress the disk with 14-16 hours of video encoding on almost daily basis? Or get a replacement immediately? Warranty ended last year. (bought in early 2019)

Replacement? Not too urgent, though I would say do keep one on hand when your load is that high.
Backup? Definitely. Always keep a backup, even a drive with spotless smart can go poof tomorrow.
That's a pretty high power counts for that uptime. My drives with around that number of hours have 13 count.

"8 sectors reallocated"

After another 8 hours+ video encoding, I checked the SMART reading again and now it stated "16 sectors reallocated".

Yup. As advised by -terry- and Ass Spanker, I need to start a backup. As soon as my external 2.5" HDD returns from RMA.

Update:
After one encoding session & backup, "reallocated sectors" increased to 24.

This post has been edited by elda88: Feb 3 2025, 09:31

You should always have backups but just keep a watch on it and see if it continues to rise. I've had disks with a couple reallocated sectors that are still alive 5+ years later without ever rising again in reallocated sectors.

i'm a bit late but yeah, i have a disk from 2008 with one reallocated sector that it's had for at least seven years of near constant uptime.

This post has been edited by Moonlight Rambler: Feb 20 2025, 07:12