Uncategorized – tonysan’s blog

Blog migration, alternatives, and other thoughts

There’s tons of ideas and drafts scattered around my six note keeping apps, yet my blog averages about one post per year, not to mention the proliferation of Generative AIs. what’s going on here? It’s not like there’s nothing to write and whine about.

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.

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
- 用 smartctl 跟 badblocks 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…

Building stuff

When I was 12, a relative lend me a set of PC, I vaguely remember it was a Pentium 133, has a turbo button in its case, and a fairly large, 400MB hard drive. He lend it to me so I can take it apart and put it back, see if everything is still working.

Configure a http/2 Nginx using Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificate

Once upon a time (circa. 2015), it would cost you for a few dozen bucks, to a few hundred dollars, per year, to get that shiny green little locky thingy appear on your URL bar in the browser. The cost would be justifiable for someone that runs a large business on the web, not so much for small companies or someone who occasionally runs a random httpd somewhere, like me. That was the dark time of the internet.