sam

@sam@cablespaghetti.dev

Father of two, husband, lover of dogs but owner of many cats. Runner. Technology enthusiast. Metalhead. AuADHDer. Cloudy DevOps type person. Formerly known as @sam@running.cafe.

803 following, 745 followers

📌 24 ★ 12 ↺

[?]sam »
@sam@cablespaghetti.dev

Time for another blog post, about hosting a fediverse instance on my ancient Raspberry Pi. Obviously I had to share it on the fediverse.

https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-fediverse-instance-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html


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    [?]Natanael Copa »
    @ncopa@fosstodon.org

    @sam this was fun!
    I spotted a typo: `apk install acme.sh`
    Should be `apk add…`.

    I also wonder if the periodic script actually runs with the .sh suffix? If my memory serves me correctly you may need to drop the .sh suffix or it will now run.

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      1 ★ 0 ↺

      [?]sam »
      @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

      Thanks. Fixed! And it wasn't initially because I didn't put the shebang at the top of the file, but the .sh seems to not be an issue. It is diligently running at 2am every day.

        [?]Mitch Rose »
        @mrose@universeodon.com

        @sam

        amazing! well done!

          [?]jamesb (MW1CGG) »
          @jamesb@fedi.duckduckpigeon.co.uk

          @sam
          Can I send my replies back via a UUCP gateway?

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          0 ★ 0 ↺

          [?]sam »
          @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

          @jamesb@duckduckpigeon.co.uk @sam Not a clue. Maybe. 🤷 😆

            📌 23 ★ 4 ↺
            Jason Davis boosted

            [?]sam »
            @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

            If you’re reading this you have been successfully migrated as a follower to my stupidly underpowered Raspberry Pi hosted instance. Let’s see how it does with nearly 700 followers. 😆

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              2 ★ 0 ↺

              [?]sam »
              @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

              @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk that boost did not help my load situation. 😆 I may have some work to do for this to be properly stable.

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                [?]Justine Smithies »
                @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk

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                1 ★ 0 ↺

                [?]sam »
                @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk It’s all fun! So far it is mostly not falling over. It takes a few minutes to get through sending my posts out to all the different servers though.

                  [?]Michael »
                  @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                  @sam MUST - RESIST - URGE - TO - BOOST. 😁

                  Also, very inspired domain name for a Homelab. 😂

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                    2 ★ 0 ↺

                    [?]sam »
                    @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                    @mmeier@social.mei-home.net @sam Thanks! Feel free, after the initial wobble during transfer of my followers it’s doing ok. 🙂 I’ll write up how I pulled it off over the next few evenings.

                      [?]Hedders »
                      @hedders@mas.to

                      "Butter me an otter, I'll be back for breakfast" is a thing I just said to Mrs Wife.

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                        [?]HighlandLawyer »
                        @HighlandLawyer@mastodon.social

                        @hedders
                        Did the otter eat the kippers?

                          ...

                          [?]Hedders »
                          @hedders@mas.to

                          @HighlandLawyer It smoked the kippers.

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                            [?]sam »
                            @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                            @hedders@mas.to @HighlandLawyer And said it’ll be back for breakfast?

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                              [?]sam »
                              @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                              @hedders@mas.to Ah crap this isn’t as good a reference when the original post already has the reference. Didn’t see it before replying. 😆 Red Dwarf ftw…

                                ...

                                [?]Hedders »
                                @hedders@mas.to

                                @sam Oh smeg, indeed!

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                                  1 ★ 0 ↺

                                  [?]sam »
                                  @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                  You absolute smeghead hedders...

                                    [?]Hedders »
                                    @hedders@mas.to

                                    @sam More squeaked than said, But yes.

                                      [?]HighlandLawyer »
                                      @HighlandLawyer@mastodon.social

                                      @hedders
                                      Must have been a little otter then.

                                        40 ★ 21 ↺

                                        [?]sam »
                                        @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                        Here's a blog post on setting up Alpine Linux on my old 256MB Raspberry Pi in diskless mode and having it host a static site (and now my blog). I'll write up another on how I got Snac installed to have it host my fediverse presence over the next few days. Enjoy!

                                        https://cablespaghetti.dev/hosting-a-static-site-on-an-original-raspberry-pi.html


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                                          Older...

                                          [?]Michael »
                                          @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                                          @sam I think there might be something wrong with it?

                                          A screenshot of the blog post, with text in code boxes visible, but otherwise there is no text, just a couple of icons.

                                          Alt...A screenshot of the blog post, with text in code boxes visible, but otherwise there is no text, just a couple of icons.

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                                            [?]sam »
                                            @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                            @mmeier@social.mei-home.net @sam I ever so slightly broke the Pi posting the link to the fediverse and every instance hitting it all at once. Is it good on your end now?

                                              ...

                                              [?]Michael »
                                              @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                                              @sam No, it still looks the same for me:

                                              Another screenshot of the post, similar to the first one, only text in code blocks is visible.

                                              Alt...Another screenshot of the post, similar to the first one, only text in code blocks is visible.

                                                ...
                                                0 ★ 0 ↺

                                                [?]sam »
                                                @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                @mmeier@social.mei-home.net @sam Very interesting. Which browser are you using? It works fine on all my devices/browsers.

                                                  ...

                                                  [?]Michael »
                                                  @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                                                  @sam Yeah, see my other answer (possibly not fetched by our poor Pi yet? 😉 ), I only have the issue on Firefox, Chrome displays it just fine.

                                                    [?]Michael »
                                                    @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                                                    @sam Okay, just tried it in Google Chrome (previous screenshots were Firefox), and there it's looking fine.

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                                                      1 ★ 0 ↺

                                                      [?]sam »
                                                      @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                      @mmeier@social.mei-home.net @sam I am also a Firefox user but don’t have the same issue. Very strange. Thanks for flagging.

                                                      There are some HTML validity issues I’m seeing if I put it through validator.w3.org that I will endevour to fix. Maybe it’ll help. 🤷

                                                        ...

                                                        [?]Michael »
                                                        @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                                                        @sam Okay, in that case it really looks like the issue is on my end, when you're seeing it properly in Firefox.

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                                                          [?]sam »
                                                          @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                          @mmeier@social.mei-home.net @sam I think you probably loaded it at the peak of it being overloaded and something only partially transferred and then that got cached for you. That’s my theory anyway. Have you tried a Ctrl-Shift-R which I think forces a refresh?

                                                            2 ★ 1 ↺
                                                            Jo Hawkins boosted

                                                            [?]sam »
                                                            @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                            If anyone is having issues loading my blog post or it renders strangely in your browser, please let me know. I think it might have been a result of all the Mastodon servers trying to download it at the same time and causing partial transfers of the html

                                                            At no point did I say this was an optimal configuration for a website and social media account!

                                                              [?]Ivor Hewitt »
                                                              @ivor@social.ivor.org

                                                              @sam looking all good now. 👍 Definitely on my to-do list moving my blog over and running on a static site.
                                                              I like the look of github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog i saw @cartron mention.

                                                                [?]Natanael Copa »
                                                                @ncopa@fosstodon.org

                                                                @sam Nice article! I love how you managed squeeze out more by compressing the pages

                                                                A few tips and tricks:

                                                                - you dont need to type the ssh key from the installer. at the "enter ssh key" question you can write "al <user>", "gl <user>" or "gh <user>", which will download your gitlab.alpinelinux.org, gitlab.com or GitHub.com <user>s ssh keys. or you should enter an https URL to your keys.

                                                                - `echo rc_after=ntpd >> /etc/conf.d/lighttpd` to make it start after ntpd.

                                                                  ...

                                                                  [?]Natanael Copa »
                                                                  @ncopa@fosstodon.org

                                                                  @sam you can set up a headless machine by adding a USB stick (or any partition) with vfat label "cidata". on this you add a file meta-data with:
                                                                  local-hostname: myhostname

                                                                  and a file named user-data with:
                                                                  -config
                                                                  ssh_authorized_keys:
                                                                  - ssh-ed25519 ...
                                                                  packages:
                                                                  - lighttpd
                                                                  - tmux

                                                                  A subset of cloud-init's config is supported.

                                                                  With this you don't even need a screen or keyboard.

                                                                    ...
                                                                    0 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                    [?]sam »
                                                                    @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                    @ncopa@fosstodon.org @sam@fosstodon.org Thanks these are really great tips. I’m new to Alpine but really enjoying playing with it. I’ll try them out and maybe even add them to the blog post. 🙂

                                                                      5 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                      [?]sam »
                                                                      @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                      I think this is why crashed last night when I posted the link to my blog post. The combination of the load from sending out to many ActivityPub servers and all those servers trying to generate a thumbnail card thing by hitting the website was just too much for the little Pi. I'll have to see if I can do anything to optimise caching...

                                                                      Screenshot of dmesg output showing many "TCP: too many orphaned sockets" from last night.

                                                                      Alt...Screenshot of dmesg output showing many "TCP: too many orphaned sockets" from last night.

                                                                        sam boosted

                                                                        [?]Curated Hacker News » 🤖
                                                                        @CuratedHackerNews@mastodon.social

                                                                        Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time

                                                                        vidarholen.net/contents/wordco*

                                                                          Benjamin Han boosted

                                                                          [?]Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: »
                                                                          @atoponce@fosstodon.org

                                                                          The Boston Athletic Association has introduced new qualifying course restrictions.

                                                                          Any course with a net downhill of:

                                                                          - 1,500 and 2,999 feet (457.2 and 914.1 meters) will incur a five-minute (+5:00) time adjustment to results.
                                                                          - 3,000 and 5,999 feet (914.2 and 1,828.5 meters) will incur a ten-minute (+10:00) time adjustment to results.
                                                                          - 6,000 feet (1,828.6 meters) or greater will not be allowed for Boston Marathon qualifying purposes.

                                                                          baa.org/2026-and-2027-registra

                                                                            ...

                                                                            [?]Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: »
                                                                            @atoponce@fosstodon.org

                                                                            What does this mean for popular marathons?

                                                                            - Big Cottonwood: +10:00
                                                                            - Deseret News: +10:00
                                                                            - Huntsville: +10:00
                                                                            - Ogden: N/A
                                                                            - Salt Lake City: N/A
                                                                            - St. George: +5:00
                                                                            - Sun: +5:00
                                                                            - Top of Utah: N/A
                                                                            - Utah Valley: +5:00

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                                                                              1 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                              [?]sam »
                                                                              @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                              @atoponce@fosstodon.org Hah! I had no idea people were gaming the system like this. Those are some hefty declines!

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                                                                                [?]Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: »
                                                                                @atoponce@fosstodon.org

                                                                                @sam Yup! I bet REVEL is not happy with this news. Their marketing has been strong on their net downhill for Boston qualifying.

                                                                                Now that Boston has leveled the playing field, there is little-to-no interest in spending money and traveling to run these courses, when you could stay home and run the local qualifying course instead.

                                                                                I've met many out-of-state runners on some of these courses who were there to take advantage of the downhill. I bet the race directors see a drop in registrations now.

                                                                                  sam boosted

                                                                                  [?]K8sContributors »
                                                                                  @K8sContributors@hachyderm.io

                                                                                  📌 23 ★ 4 ↺
                                                                                  Jason Davis boosted

                                                                                  [?]sam »
                                                                                  @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                  If you’re reading this you have been successfully migrated as a follower to my stupidly underpowered Raspberry Pi hosted instance. Let’s see how it does with nearly 700 followers. 😆

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                                                                                    2 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                    [?]sam »
                                                                                    @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                    @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk that boost did not help my load situation. 😆 I may have some work to do for this to be properly stable.

                                                                                      ...

                                                                                      [?]Justine Smithies »
                                                                                      @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk

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                                                                                      1 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                      [?]sam »
                                                                                      @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                      @justine@snac.smithies.me.uk It’s all fun! So far it is mostly not falling over. It takes a few minutes to get through sending my posts out to all the different servers though.

                                                                                        [?]Michael »
                                                                                        @mmeier@social.mei-home.net

                                                                                        @sam MUST - RESIST - URGE - TO - BOOST. 😁

                                                                                        Also, very inspired domain name for a Homelab. 😂

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                                                                                          2 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                          [?]sam »
                                                                                          @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                          @mmeier@social.mei-home.net @sam Thanks! Feel free, after the initial wobble during transfer of my followers it’s doing ok. 🙂 I’ll write up how I pulled it off over the next few evenings.

                                                                                            0 ★ 0 ↺
                                                                                            in reply to »

                                                                                            [?]sam »
                                                                                            @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                            @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk @sam The Raspberry Pi 1 with 256MB RAM on the other hand is having a very hard day. I think I might need to do some optimisation to the proxy config so snac itself doesn’t get hit so hard every time I post something.

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                                                                                              7 ★ 2 ↺

                                                                                              [?]sam »
                                                                                              @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                              Part of running a instance on a 256MB Raspberry Pi is working out how to do "stuff" without installing more packages than you have RAM for.

                                                                                              Here's a script to backup to Backblaze B2 with just Jq as an additional dependency (and the included curl, tar, openssl etc.). It works so far...

                                                                                              https://gist.github.com/cablespaghetti/01862b9d8252223719cbe2586145f686

                                                                                                ...
                                                                                                3 ★ 1 ↺
                                                                                                Sam boosted

                                                                                                [?]sam »
                                                                                                @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                I have started writing up all this Raspberry Pi related nonsense into a blog post, but true to form it is far longer than I originally intended. The first post will cover Alpine diskless mode, static site hosting and benchmarking and I'll write a second about snac after that.

                                                                                                  7 ★ 1 ↺
                                                                                                  Sam boosted

                                                                                                  [?]sam »
                                                                                                  @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                  Me and the boys are going camping in Wales next weekend. I looked at the price of bike racks and was almost not going to bother taking their bikes. However £80 on eBay and Facebook (sorry) Marketplace later and we have a workable solution. 😁 Love a bargain…

                                                                                                  A black SUV with two children’s mountain bikes mounted to a bike rack on the roof

                                                                                                  Alt...A black SUV with two children’s mountain bikes mounted to a bike rack on the roof

                                                                                                  1 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                                  [?]sam »
                                                                                                  @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                  The AMD stock cooler is such trash. I upgraded my eldest son’s system to a Ryzen 2300X I got super cheap and came with the cooler. Under moderate load it hits 80 degrees! 🥵

                                                                                                  I’ve got a very cheap heat pipe cooler on the way from AliExpress which I hope will improve things…my other son has one and it works well.

                                                                                                  Photo of an ICE400SE 3 heat pipe cooler with RGB compatible with many CPU sockets

                                                                                                  Alt...Photo of an ICE400SE 3 heat pipe cooler with RGB compatible with many CPU sockets

                                                                                                  [?]Gary Parker :party_porg: »
                                                                                                  @WiteWulf@cyberplace.social

                                                                                                  Vauxhall “Grandland”?

                                                                                                  Did no one stop and say, “hang on lads, that sounds a bit like a posh Poundland”?
                                                                                                  #😆

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                                                                                                  1 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                                  [?]sam »
                                                                                                  @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                  @WiteWulf@cyberplace.social This has never crossed my mind but I can probably never unsee it now

                                                                                                    [?]Wes George »
                                                                                                    @wesgeorge@mstdn.social

                                                                                                    @WiteWulf No but the fact that there's a store actually named Poundland will never stop being funny to me in the same way that you lot think fanny pack is hilarious.
                                                                                                    Oh I'm taking the missus down to Poundland this afternoon for some cheap fun. She is very excited, been asking for it for days. Said she wanted some sausage.

                                                                                                      ...

                                                                                                      [?]Gary Parker :party_porg: »
                                                                                                      @WiteWulf@cyberplace.social

                                                                                                      @wesgeorge yes, that store’s name is the gift that keeps on giving 😆

                                                                                                        12 ★ 1 ↺
                                                                                                        Sam boosted

                                                                                                        [?]sam »
                                                                                                        @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                        It’s Father’s Day and I was kindly woken at 5am by my children, who seem more excited about it than I am. 🥱

                                                                                                        Happy Father’s Day to all the tired parents out there!

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                                                                                                        [?]Max »
                                                                                                        @max@toet.dnzm.nl

                                                                                                        @sam mine woke me at an entirely reasonable 6.50. #sleepingIn #breakfastInBed #blessed

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                                                                                                          [?]sam »
                                                                                                          @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                          @max@toet.dnzm.nl @sam Sounds luxurious 😆 I did get pancakes in all fairness…

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                                                                                                            [?]Max »
                                                                                                            @max@toet.dnzm.nl

                                                                                                            @sam oh, that makes it quite alright, then. Pancakes are a valid reason to be woken at 5.

                                                                                                            0 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                                            [?]sam »
                                                                                                            @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                            Starting to play with a bit more seriously on a 256MB Raspberry Pi 1 with a 40GB IDE laptop hard disk attached for reasons...

                                                                                                              ...
                                                                                                              0 ★ 0 ↺

                                                                                                              [?]sam »
                                                                                                              @sam@cablespaghetti.dev

                                                                                                              Honestly this is going kind of fine so far...that beast of an (overclocked) ARMv6 CPU is just chilling.

                                                                                                                History