Dual-boot Steam Deck with Ubuntu 24.04 and Windows

The hardware

I’ve always been a fan of handheld form factor. In the 2000s, Sony’s VAIO UX and Fujitsu Lifebook U were my dream gadget, but the hefty price tag were very out of reach for a college student.

Now, the Steam Deck is a gaming PC that fits in the palm of your hand, A 7″ 15W TDP AMD APU that goes for 3-12 hours battery life, depending on usage – it is just too good to be true for my younger self who is still stuck in 2000.

Continue reading Dual-boot Steam Deck with Ubuntu 24.04 and Windows

Setting up a PXE boot environment – Part 1: TFTP Server & DHCP Server

Disclaimer: Regardless part 0 is more or less around Raspberry Pi, in this post, I am only implementing a bare-minimum version of PXE, it will only handle single architecture (x64) and either UEFI or BIOS, not a general purpose PXE environment. some of the PXE boot environment mentioned should also work with Raspberry Pi 3B+ or above, here’s the official Raspberry Pi documentation.

Continue reading Setting up a PXE boot environment – Part 1: TFTP Server & DHCP Server

TrueNAS (FreeNAS) – 7 years later

7 years after the original FreeNAS, It has changed a lot. Guess it’s time to write some recap and experiences along the additions and modifications to my NAS. It’s gonna be a long one, for those impatient, here is the TL;DR:

  • Maxed RAM to 128G
  • Added a PCIe NVMe expansion card, and
    • Upgraded mirrored boot device to NVMe drives
    • Added another NVMe drive for L2ARC
  • Upgraded disks from 4TB to 8TB
    • Shucking and SATA power pin hack
    • Disk burn-in with smartctl and badblocks
    • Resilvering
  • Upgraded switch to MultiGig (10G/2.5G) – Not directly related to the NAS itself
  • Peak CIFS get a nice bump, from 3.5Gbps to 5.45Gbps

自從組 FreeNAS 已經過了七年,特別寫一篇 blog 詳述中間各種變化與升級,下面條列升級重點,給沒時間細讀的人參考。

  • 記憶體加滿 – 128G
  • 加了一張 PCIe NVMe 擴充卡
    • 把開機 USB 換成 NVMe
    • 再多加一張 NVMe 當成 L2ARC
  • 硬碟就地升級成 8TB
    • 拆外接硬碟,改 SATA 電源接頭
    • smartctlbadblocks 壓力測試硬碟
    • 陣列重組 (resilvering)
  • 升級區網,終於讓主機板上的 10G 網卡解除限制器
  • CIFS 效能從 3.5Gbps 提升到 5.45Gbps

If you are still interested, keep going…

對細節有興趣的請繼續往下看…

Continue reading TrueNAS (FreeNAS) – 7 years later