Homelab

I bought a 8-port Netgear GS308E switch. I plugged it in, and it worked, but I noticed the LEDs on the RJ-11 ethernet socket flickered regularly.

I use Arch Linux, a simple, lightweight Linux distribution. You should, too. It’s not hard.

One of the things Arch users do is update, regularly. I find that weekly updates are adequate. Running sudo pacman -Syu every 7 to 10 days keeps problems away.

What happens when pacman updates fail, or updated package downloads get really slow?

I looked in the systemd journals on my Qotom fanless server. I saw something reporting a Postgres database problem.

I set up two Raspberry Pi SBCs with GPS boards as NTP servers earlier this year. I used an oscilloscope to see how far apart the “pulse per second” (PPS) pulses that the GPS boards output.

What happens when pacman fails when you’re trying to recover from uninstalling a package that pacman needs?

1023 % sudo pacman -Syu
[sudo] password for bediger: 
pacman: error while loading shared libraries: libicuuc.so.78: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I ran pacman -Syu on my Bosgame brand “Ecolite Series” E2 mini-PC, as one does on the weekend. I got a very strange message upon rebooting:

symbol grub_is_using_legacy_shim_lock_protocol not found

348 posts in 3 years.

I recently got a Bosgame brand “Ecolite Series” E2 mini-PC. I try to avoid buying from Amazon, but it was steeply discounted. I put Debian 12 on it initially, but something about the Debian screensaver or inactivity detector caused the mini-PC to be unable to wake up. So I put Arch Linux on it. That solved the unable-to-wake-up problem, but during boot, the E2 stopped at the grub> prompt.

My house has 2 CenturyLink fiber optic connections to The Internet. On July 5, 2025, the connections didn’t work for 3 periods of time.

I made two NTP servers using Raspberry Pi single-board computers and GPS receivers.

The resulting NTP servers seem to work well.