d00phy

All the mention of me.com email addresses being badges of honor.... Me over here laughing in mac.com!

Waffle cut are a novelty. Crinkle cut are the best. Fight me.

Have to say I’m not impressed so far. I think the glass look has a retro vibe that just isn’t sitting well with me.

I know it's CoM, who is basically Apple propaganda (forever living up to their name), but I've seen these iPhone 17 mock-ups before, and I really think they look like Pixels! Seriously, I have a Pixel 9 Pro that I use for work, and the design of the iPhone 17 is the definition of uninspired. Please, Tim, hire some good industrial designers. It's been a long boring stretch since Ive left.

I'm trying to boot some VMs using a script w/ a kickstart file. I'm using the following script that I found online and modified:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#set -x
## Define variables
MEM_SIZE="8192"      # Memory setting in MiB
VCPUS="2"             # CPU Cores count
#OS_VARIANT="rocky9"   # List with osinfo-query  os
OS_VARIANT="rhel7.9"   # List with osinfo-query  os
ISO_FILE="~/Documents/software/os/RHEL-7.9-20200917.0-Server-x86_64-dvd1.iso" # Path to ISO file

case $OS_VARIANT in
        rhel7.9)
                KS=ks7.cfg;;
        rocky9)
                KS=ks9.cfg;;
esac

echo -en "Enter vm name: "
read VM_NAME
OS_TYPE="linux"
echo -en "Enter virtual disk size : "
read DISK_SIZE

DISK=~/.local/share/libvirt/images/${VM_NAME}.qcow2

echo "Creating disk"
sudo virt-install \
     --name ${VM_NAME} \
     --memory=${MEM_SIZE} \
     --vcpus=${VCPUS} \
     --location ${ISO_FILE} \
     --network network=default \
     --disk path=${DISK},size=${DISK_SIZE} \
     --graphics=none \
     --os-variant=${OS_VARIANT} \
     --console pty,target_type=serial \
     --initrd-inject ~/virt/${KS} --extra-args "inst.ks=file:/${KS} console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8"

I've obfuscated the directory paths, but they're all full paths and the script will build a VM. So basically just setting up a basic system, using the default network. Here's the config for that:

<network connections='3'>
  <name>default</name>
  <uuid>61afc7f1-9c5e-4cra-8d18-e3cf4f9358e9</uuid>
  <forward mode='nat'>
    <nat>
      <port start='1024' end='65535'/>
    </nat>
  </forward>
  <bridge name='virbr0' stp='on' delay='0'/>
  <mac address='52:54:00:7c:32:9b'/>
  <ip address='192.168.122.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
    <dhcp>
      <range start='192.168.122.2' end='192.168.122.254'/>
    </dhcp>
  </ip>
</network>

Looking at the XML for the VM, I see the following for the network:

<interface type='network'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:07:82:78'/>
      <source network='default' portid='800dfd67-d90a-42te-a0b7-c4c78cdae481' bridge='virbr0'/>
      <target dev='vnet7'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <alias name='net0'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>

When this VM is installing, and when it's booted, it does not have an IP. Meanwhile, if I go through virt-manager and select the default network, it gets an IP just fine. I've tried running the virt-install command w/ and w/o sudo (I run virt-manager as me - I'm in the libvirt group). Looking at the virt-manager built VM:

    <interface type='network'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:5e:f5:05'/>
      <source network='default' portid='d57dbc56-759e-40f9-856f-9623f4801a93' bridge='virbr0'/>
      <target dev='vnet8'/>
      <model type='virtio'/>
      <alias name='net0'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>

Looking at virbr0:

$ ip link show master virbr0
11: vnet7: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master virbr0 state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fe:54:00:07:82:78 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
12: vnet8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue master virbr0 state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fe:54:00:5e:f5:05 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

Only difference I can see is one is created using virt-install and the other using virt-manager (which calls to virt-install, no?). I thought there was a way to see the actual virt-install command virt-manager was about to use when creating a VM, but I can't find it. Also can't find any logs to give me an idea why the VM isn't getting an IP. Running ethtool on the VM interface shows a link. I've wasted too much time getting this to work, and all the documentation suggests it should "just work!"

ETA: PEBKAC! Remember where I said I was using kickstart? Yeah, well it helps to actually include a network configuration, even if it is just DHCP! Feeling stupid, but it's working.

Current setup is PMS running on a Synology 5-bay, and another PMS running on a Shield Pro. The NAS server is primarily used for remote streaming, while the Shield serves to my home LAN (AppleTVs mainly).

I've been seeing stuttering on larger files, either using the Plex app or Infuse, and I'm fairly certain the Synology is the weak link. Network performance in the house has pretty solid, though admittedly I could stand to test it more thoroughly. I've been looking at moving my library to a standalone system. I've been looking at the Beelink ME Mini (which happens to be on sale!). What I don't know is the best way to build this out.

I don't want to have to buy all 6 SSDs (ar at least 6x4TB ones!) at once, so I'd be looking at either a stock Linux (Ubuntu or Rocky) install w/ I guess a BTRFS pool for the SSDs (I'm guessing I can use the eMMC for OS depending on how big the install is - that or use the SSD in slot 4). Alternatively, i could possibly set up TruNAS w/ the Plex pp to manage the storage.

As for populating the media, I plan to keep the Synology as the central repo of my data. I have it replicating to another NAS at my dad's house, with movies/music/tv replicating using Syncthing. I plan to also use Syncthing to populate the Beelink.

Anyway, please poke holes in this plan and/or suggest a better one. My main goals are to get the media I'm streaming off spinning disk w/ minimal power draw (didn't mention that above) in a way that I can expand storage as necessary to accommodate the media library. Nothing's purchased yet, so I'm not married to the hardware. I would ideally like to convert the library to h.265 or even AV1 if I can make it work.

ETA: For clarity: I'm not transcoding AFAIK. My Shield mounts the Synology over SMB and mostly works fine, until I try to play anything 4k - then I get stuttering. On the surface, this sounded like a network issue, but I can't find a problem w/ the LAN. My thought was to move the PMS to a single location w/ local storage, and use the Synology just as an archive.

ETA2: FWIW, I have not expanded the memory on the Synology or installed any cache drives.

There comes a point in the career of every contemporary Republican politician when they will be forced to do, say, or defend something that is broadly unconscionable. This mandatory inevitable heel turn is the price of conservative political ambition in the Donald Trump era. In exchange for the right to seek and attain national office in the party that he leads, Trump—in a curdled neofascist parody of the wedding scene from The Godfather—always eventually requires his supplicants to prove their loyalty to him by taking on his vendettas, bigotries, hatreds, and obsessions as their own. What’s more, he prefers that they do it with gusto.

Archive link

Watched it with my wife over the weekend, and had some thoughts. First, the acting is exceptional throughout. Seriously, I don’t think there was a weak performance from anyone. Second, the cinematography was clever, but I’m not sure it was anything more than that. Shooting each episode as a oner brings some limitations with what you can do plot-wise. This brings me to my third thought: I think they missed an episode. Each of the 4 episodes focuses on one person or small group of people, but there isn’t really an episode that focuses on the boy and the victim before the “incident.”