• Worky work

    From Avon@21:1/101 to All on Wed Jan 17 20:38:42 2024
    Well first day back in the office done and dusted and I am still sane and smiling and came back here to tell you all about how I survived :)

    650+ emails to sort out, one meeting today, had a burger for lunch, didn't get out of the office at all for a walk (not good) but it was cold outside and others in my office didn't exactly sell it as a fun thing to do :)

    Came home, helped with dinner, my wife not feeling to well, negative covid test from her, phew... and now some BBS admin, more of that to do tomorrow night.

    Been working on setting up a Rpi 4 (8 gig ram) with a 256gig SSD. Mostly sorted now, plan to do some fun BBS related stuff with it over the coming months.

    Hot drink time now. :)

    Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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  • From deon@21:2/116 to Avon on Wed Jan 17 20:21:41 2024
    Re: Worky work
    By: Avon to All on Wed Jan 17 2024 08:38 pm

    Howdy,

    Been working on setting up a Rpi 4 (8 gig ram) with a 256gig SSD. Mostly sorted now, plan to do some fun BBS related stuff with it over the coming months.

    In the past we talked about ESXi, and if that Pi doesnt have anything on it yet, one thing you can play with is ESXi on it. (If you wanted to that is.)

    It works well, mine is around here somewhere.

    The plus is you get a web console, and can spin up VMs on it. The downside, is those VMs can only be 64 bit VMs - ESXi on the Pi cannot run 32 bit guests (but 64bit guests can run 32 bit apps). Its probably not a big downside these days - it was only an issue for me running synchronet which doesnt compile on 64bit ARM (but the 32 bit version ran fine from memory).



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  • From Avon@21:1/101 to deon on Thu Jan 18 13:11:14 2024
    On 17 Jan 2024 at 08:21p, deon pondered and said...

    In the past we talked about ESXi, and if that Pi doesnt have anything on it yet, one thing you can play with is ESXi on it. (If you wanted to
    that is.)

    My people will talk to your people very soon :)

    Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Avon on Thu Jan 18 06:46:00 2024
    Avon wrote to All <=-

    Been working on setting up a Rpi 4 (8 gig ram) with a 256gig SSD.
    Mostly sorted now, plan to do some fun BBS related stuff with it over
    the coming months.

    I replaced my Rpi 4 media server with an old desktop running Windows 10
    - the pi couldn't deal well with streaming video to a 4k screen.

    Now I have a Pi 4 and a Pi 3 sitting idle, looking for a project and a
    rack case for them. :)




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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to deon on Thu Jan 18 06:50:00 2024
    deon wrote to Avon <=-

    In the past we talked about ESXi, and if that Pi doesnt have anything
    on it yet, one thing you can play with is ESXi on it. (If you wanted to that is.)

    I'd just heard that broadcom is getting rid of the "hobbyist" perpetual
    ESXi license - which is a huge mistake IMO.

    Although having a path for people to learn ESXi at home and to have a
    sandbox to play with doesn't fit into Broadcom's master plan of large
    enterprise customers and enterprise training/certification.

    I use ESXi at work, but wanted something with a more liberal hardware
    compatibility list than what VMWare offered - I had 4 year old servers
    fall off the compatibility list with vSphere!

    Proxmox does run well on Pis, and you can get a couple of small VMs
    running on a Pi 4 with 8 GB nicely.



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  • From niter3@21:1/199 to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Jan 18 14:23:18 2024
    I'd just heard that broadcom is getting rid of the "hobbyist" perpetual
    ESXi license - which is a huge mistake IMO.

    This is exactly why I moved over to Proxmox for home use... Plus this gives me a direction in the future to down size my servers to small units like the Intel NUC's or whatever the replacement will be at that time. Less power...

    Although having a path for people to learn ESXi at home and to have a
    sandbox to play with doesn't fit into Broadcom's master plan of large
    enterprise customers and enterprise training/certification.

    All about the money.

    Proxmox does run well on Pis, and you can get a couple of small VMs
    running on a Pi 4 with 8 GB nicely.

    Does it really? I wouldn't think it could... Are we talking about linux VM's?

    ... Some people have no idea what they're doing, and are really good at it!

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  • From esc@21:4/173 to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Jan 18 11:34:52 2024
    Now I have a Pi 4 and a Pi 3 sitting idle, looking for a project and a
    rack case for them. :)

    Do you like handheld gaming? I have an older pi 3 in a PiBoy DMG and it's a lot of fun.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/02/26 (Linux/64)
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  • From deon@21:2/116 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jan 19 10:08:30 2024
    Re: Re: Worky work
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to deon on Thu Jan 18 2024 06:50 am

    Howdy,

    I'd just heard that broadcom is getting rid of the "hobbyist" perpetual
    ESXi license - which is a huge mistake IMO.

    I hadnt seen that yet - yeah agree, big mistake. I'm thinking that the concerpt of OS virtualisation is declining as well, so be interesting to see what they do to keep it alive. (Keeping it alive via home admins would have been a smart move - for little cost I would have thought.)

    I use ESXi at work, but wanted something with a more liberal hardware
    compatibility list than what VMWare offered - I had 4 year old servers
    fall off the compatibility list with vSphere!

    I'm running some old stuff at home. I'm a fan of ESXi, since everything I play with is headless - and ESXi gives me that web interface. Its pretty reliable - I've been running stuff this year for 20+ years...

    Proxmox does run well on Pis, and you can get a couple of small VMs
    running on a Pi 4 with 8 GB nicely.

    I've never played with Proxmox (never needed to as I always found a way to get ESXi installed) - but maybe I should...


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  • From niter3@21:1/199 to deon on Thu Jan 18 18:53:05 2024
    I've never played with Proxmox (never needed to as I always found a way
    to get ESXi installed) - but maybe I should...

    I'm a former ESXi user of 10-15 years. Moving to Proxmox, I was worried about reliability. I can tell you this, it appears to be as reliable as esxi was for home use.

    ... Everyone is entitled to my opinion!

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  • From Tiny@21:1/700 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jan 19 06:32:00 2024
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Avon <=-

    I replaced my Rpi 4 media server with an old desktop running Windows
    - the pi couldn't deal well with streaming video to a 4k screen.

    I did that a while back myself. Same reason.

    Now I have a Pi 4 and a Pi 3 sitting idle, looking for a project and a
    rack case for them. :)

    I have 3 pi 3's sitting in a box doing nothing. I can't think of a project
    for them at all.

    Shawn

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  • From Nigel Reed@21:2/101 to Avon on Fri Jan 19 18:36:16 2024
    On Wed, 17 Jan 2024 20:38:42 +1300
    "Avon" (21:1/101) <Avon@f101.n1.z21.fidonet> wrote:


    Been working on setting up a Rpi 4 (8 gig ram) with a 256gig SSD.
    Mostly sorted now, plan to do some fun BBS related stuff with it over
    the coming months.

    I have a howto for getting Synchronet working on a Rpi including DOSEMU
    for running DOS games.You should give it a try. It's somewhere on the Synchronet wiki.
    --
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  • From Avon@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jan 21 11:05:02 2024
    On 18 Jan 2024 at 06:46a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    I replaced my Rpi 4 media server with an old desktop running Windows 10
    - the pi couldn't deal well with streaming video to a 4k screen.

    Now I have a Pi 4 and a Pi 3 sitting idle, looking for a project and a
    rack case for them. :)

    I'm thinking can I shift my NET 1 HUB across to it (in some fashion or form) to cut down on power. I'm also curious to know if I could run my NNTP server from it too which is running on yet another chunk of metal. The answer I suspect is yes (not sure yet) but in time I hope to find out.

    Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jan 21 11:05:39 2024
    On 18 Jan 2024 at 06:50a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    I use ESXi at work, but wanted something with a more liberal hardware
    compatibility list than what VMWare offered - I had 4 year old servers
    fall off the compatibility list with vSphere!

    Proxmox does run well on Pis, and you can get a couple of small VMs
    running on a Pi 4 with 8 GB nicely.

    None of this I know but all of it I should..

    Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Nigel Reed on Sun Jan 21 11:06:52 2024
    On 19 Jan 2024 at 06:36p, Nigel Reed pondered and said...

    I have a howto for getting Synchronet working on a Rpi including DOSEMU for running DOS games.You should give it a try. It's somewhere on the Synchronet wiki.

    thanks Nigel :) I'll try and make some time to have a look at this.

    Kerr Avon [Blake's 7] 'I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid and I'm not going' avon[at]bbs.nz | bbs.nz | fsxnet.nz

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Blue White@21:4/134 to Poindexter Fortran on Sun Jan 21 09:39:09 2024
    Proxmox does run well on Pis, and you can get a couple of small
    VMs
    running on a Pi 4 with 8 GB nicely.

    With Proxmox on a Pi, can you run non-ARM OSes in those VMs? I read that
    you really can't if you are using something like Virtualbox to host it --
    i.e. you cannot run an OS that expects intel hardware too well -- but am curious about Proxmox.



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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to niter3 on Fri Jan 19 06:36:00 2024
    niter3 wrote to deon <=-

    I'm a former ESXi user of 10-15 years. Moving to Proxmox, I was worried about reliability. I can tell you this, it appears to be as reliable as esxi was for home use.

    I like the fact that under the hood, it's just Debian Linux, kvm and
    qemu - all pretty stable. I'm not doing zfs, ceph or HA, but it seems
    like that would make it even more reliable than my 2-node cluster with
    separate storage and shared NFS for backups, images, &tc.

    I feel like Nutanix and VMWare make their CLIs different just to be
    different. Being able to drop into a plain ol' bash shell with the same utilities I'm familiar with is refreshing.

    ... Is the style right?
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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Blue White on Mon Jan 22 07:01:00 2024
    Blue White wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

    With Proxmox on a Pi, can you run non-ARM OSes in those VMs? I read
    that you really can't if you are using something like Virtualbox to
    host it -- i.e. you cannot run an OS that expects intel hardware too
    well -- but am curious about Proxmox.

    I think you are limited to ARM OSes. There's an ARM port of Windows
    10/11, not sure about software support for it - and a bunch of Linux
    distros that run as a guest under Proxmox.


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  • From tenser@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jan 23 06:17:07 2024
    On 22 Jan 2024 at 07:01a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    Blue White wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

    With Proxmox on a Pi, can you run non-ARM OSes in those VMs? I read that you really can't if you are using something like Virtualbox to host it -- i.e. you cannot run an OS that expects intel hardware too well -- but am curious about Proxmox.

    I think you are limited to ARM OSes. There's an ARM port of Windows
    10/11, not sure about software support for it - and a bunch of Linux distros that run as a guest under Proxmox.

    Correct. Proxmox is not an emulator, it's not even exactly
    a hypervisor (though it says that it is...). The hypervisor
    is actually QEMU+KVM; proxmox just wraps it all up in a nice
    package.

    So what is a hypervisor? It's a thing that lets you run
    _virtual machines_. What, then is a "virtual machine"? It
    is a mode of execution that allows one to run system software
    on a computer in a way that the software thinks that it is
    running directly on hardware, but is in fact, being mediated
    by other software. What is systems software? Think an
    operating system or firmware. So in a sense, virtual machines
    are to machines what virtual memory is to memory.

    Hypervisors these days are usually divided into two components:
    the VMM, which runs on the bare metal (or can be nested under
    another VM!) and drives the hardware, and the "hypervisor" (yes,
    it's ambiguous) that runs in userspace and does things like
    emulate hardware devices, etc, and talks to the VMM. In many
    Linux setups, the VMM is KVM and the userspace hypervisor is
    QEMU or something similar.

    Virtual machines are actually quite old; they were built on
    a lot of early mainframe systems. IBM has been providing
    virtual machines on the mainframe since the late 1960s; Multics
    had an execution environments that could run programs for
    the DTSS system; TOPS-20 had an adapter that could run TOPS-10
    programs.

    VMs were studied formally in the 1970s, and computer scientists
    Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg put forth definitions that
    distinguish virtual machines from emulations/simulations. The
    central distinction is that the _bulk_ of instructions executed
    by the virtual machine are executed directly by hardware; P&G
    specified that an architecture is virtualizable if the _privileged_ instructions in the architecture could be trapped and emulated (but
    of course, things like `add` just ... run).

    Emulators and simulators, on the other hand, tend to have software
    that interprets all instructions, with nothing running on the bare
    metal.

    So for something running on an ARM processor to execute an operating
    system compiled for x86, it would necessarily not be a virtual
    machine, but rather an emulator.

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  • From deon@21:2/116 to Joacim Melin on Mon Apr 1 18:35:02 2024
    Re: Worky work
    By: Joacim Melin to deon on Sat Jan 20 2024 11:52 am

    Howdy,

    Proxmox actually runs fine on the RPi 4. I hade four RPi 4 with 8GB RAM each in a Proxmox cluster for almost a year. It worked really well actually since I ran all VM:s over the network from a NAS and NFS.

    I should bite the bullet and try out proxmox. I havent only because I havent put together the time to learn something new - too many other things keep me busy, and I havent had the "IT" energy of late.

    I did upgrade all my VMs to Rocky Linux 9 though (one could only go to 8), so at least now I'm only configuring 1 linux distro...


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