I don’t have one (because of that point), so I don’t know…

Presumably the app and doorbell are hardcoded to go to an AWS URL (so it’s “easier” for consumers), but in theory the data’s all on your wifi.

Yeah, was reading about it here too

https://www.techradar.com/news/live/amazon-web-services-alexa-ring-snapchat-fortnite-down-october-2025

Ring doorbells, Alexa, ahh… the joys of selfhosting.

And when you ping that IP address back, what happens?

Can you trace it?

Maybe setup wireshark and record what happens at that time of night…

Do tell more…

I run it baremetal, the photos / videos are all on a separate location (so are “Externsl Libraries” in Immich) and are backed up…

As far as the Immich application itself, I’m not currently backing up anything as I’ve been trialing it… but, I’ll aim to backup any configurations, but I’m thinking to maybe ignore any database - it can just relearn everything if I need to do a restore… depends how big that DB is…

My guess… you have some hardware that Linux and Windows communicate with differently.

Either the hardware or the Linux driver is potentially broken.

If you’re able to (hard with a laptop, I know), disconnect as many things as you can - even take out the Windows hardrive - and see if that helps.

For all the suggestions about the journal, you will see random things at the very end, but see if there’s anything common from earlier in the boot process.

sudo journalctl -xe may be helpful here.

• sudo to ensure you’re seeing the entire journal
• x adds additional explanations
• e jumps to the end (again, probably look further back)

Check out https://www.servethehome.com/

They (just him?) did a whole load of SFF / 1 Litre reviews a while ago - it’s probably better (easier) to watch his youtube channel as then you actually get to see what he’s talking about.

He also covers some of those “brandnames” and addresses some differences when they ordered identical devices and compared what was received.

Depending on what your future plans are, some of the newer boxes are multi-NIC multi-Gb devices so you might find something “better” there.

Nice breakdown

+1 for including the word “behoove” in your blog

+1 for XMPP

I’m also hoping to self-host Prosidy (when I get a spare evening / weekend), so if you could post your notes that would be good.

There are some good notes on the Arch Wiki if that helps

Well, it depends on the app & how it’s installed.

Most bare-metal installed apps are in /etc/ or ~/.config/… maybe under /opt/ or /usr/ - just copying those files out on a regular basis is usually good enough.

Might be a little more tricky if you’re trying to backup a database / live files, but those apps usually have some documentation about backups.

If it’s a container or flatpak, etc. then it’s probably somewhere obscure.

Not really.

I keep my data backups (docs, photos, etc) separate from the OS backups.

So, depending on what you’re using to do the backup, often they can just simulate a restore and just check the backup’s not corrupted. Not really a restore, but at least you know it’s not trash.

If you’ve backed up your data with a simple copy / sync (ie not a “backup” program), then you can restore your data somewhere else (maybe even jist a part of it) and do a compare.

But, yeah, if you’re restoring the OS, then it might be ok restoring it in a VM to check it…

I’m slowly moving towards no OS backups and using Ansible to be able to recreate the system(s) from scratch… of course I need to backup the ansible files too 😉

Write things down

You will break something - and that’s good, it’s the best way to learn - but you’ll want to make a note of what you did / went wrong / how you fixed it.

Future you will still break things and be grateful that you wrote that thing down

You’ll buy something and find next year it was the wrong thing (too small, too large, too old, too new), so just get second hand stuff until you know what you need.

Cabled networks are so much better than wireless, but then you’ll need switches and cables and shelves and stuff… so using today’s wifi is fine, but know where you’re heading.

You need to store you stuff - that’ll be in a NAS

You need something to run services on - that’ll be your server

These might be the same physical metal lump (your 2nd laptop?), they might be separate… play around, break something and work out what feels right for you… and then put your data on there

… and that’ll break too.

Just be aware… if sync files between devices. That’s not a backup. (Consider you’ve deleted / corrupted something - it’s now replicated everywhere)

Having a NAS with 10 drives in a RAID6 array, is not a backup. It’s just really robust against a drive failure, but a deleted file is still a deleted file.

Take a full copy of your data off your system - then restore it somewhere else.

Did it work? If so, that’s a backup.

Are you trying to solve one problem, but then find the next?

If you solve the problem of the media selection (which looks like some form of database replication), then what happens if both parents select media they don’t have at the same / similar time - you’ve stated elsewhere that this is the bottleneck.

I think it’s going to be much simpler to just replicate the media and let them work locally.

I don’t know what your script with rsync is doing, but syncthing can limit bandwidth and have exclusion patterns, so perhaps one set of parents don’t want anything from GenreA and you could exclude that.

Similarly if both parents lile GenreC and you don’t, then just sync that between their systems and save your storage.

Security is the output of removing vulnerabilities and insecure configs

So, the real answer is: what’s the minimal software you need and the most regularly updated.

So, my choice is Arch.

Yep, installation takes a little longer and needs more technical skills, but only install the bits you need (also learn a little more this way) and then updates are tiny and can be done as often as you’re comfortable with.

Whatever you choose, it will break / die / be deleted or corrupted one day, so always backup your data separately than the OS (separate drive partitions can help) and you’re done.

Thanks 👍🏻

Ok, asking for a friend, where’s a list of what all these arrs are now, as I’m they’re getting confused now.

To answer your question on where it’s used, have you seen https://providers.xmpp.net/ ?

(It might be worth testing your client against a few different servers…)

That’s where I found who to use, until I get to setting up prosody at home.

Purely to record / watch TV, films, etc.

I tried Windows Media Center (XP with some tweaks) and it was dire…

Found MythTV and decided I needed to “learn Linux” to get it done.

Now everything (except my work’s laptop) is Linux (Arch btw)

Ah, but maybe they were never using anything else…