I am setting up a Linux server (probably will be NixOS) where my VM disk files will be stored on top of an NTFS partition. (Yes I know NTFS sucks but it has to be this way.)

I am asking which guest filesystem will have the best performance for a very mixed workload. If I had access to the extra features of BTRFS or ZFS I would use them but I have no idea how CoW interacts with NTFS; that is why I am asking here.

Also I would like some NTFS performance tuning pointers.

This is more of a system config question than a programming one, but I think this community is the best one to ask about anything Git-related.

Anyway, I am setting up a new project with hardware that has 2 physical drives. The "main" drive will usually be mounted and have 10-20 config files on it, maybe 50-100 LOC each. The "secondary" drive will be mounted only occasionally, and will have 1 small config file on it, literally 2 or 3 LOC. When mounted, this file will be located in a specific directory close to the other config files.

I would like to manage all of these files using git, ideally with a single repo, as they are all part of the same project. However, as the second drive (and thus the config file on it) will sporadically appear and disappear, Git will be confused and constantly log me adding and deleting the file.

Right now I think the most realistic solution is to make a repo for each drive and make the secondary drive a submodule of the main. But I feel like it is awkward to make a whole repo for such a simple file.

What would you do in this situation, and what is best practice? Is there a way to make this one repo?

I am looking for a fast USB drive which has a physical write-protect enable switch on it. I would also want a BadUSB-resistant USB controller. I want this for 2 reasons:

• So I can diagnose issues on machines where the problem may or may not be malware. This way, I can plug it into several machines without risking spreading malware.

• So I can carry around a TailsOS drive wherever I go, and use it on public computers and friend's computers without risk of infection.

So far, I have only found one company making these things, Kanguru. There are almost no reviews of their products by reputable sources, at least not for their write-protecting drives.

Their BadUSB firmware detection module is NIST certified, which is great (given that you trust proprietary cryptography modules at all), but no certs for the main storage write protection. Also Kanguru products are very overpriced.

And no I am not using SD cards, their write protect implementation is software-based and they are too slow for me.

I am specifically looking at the Kanguru FlashTrust . My questions are:

• Has anyone used Kanguru products and how was your experience?

• Are there other companies that make decent quality drives with hardware write-protect switches? (Ideally ones that have FOSS firmware and are third-party tested, but I will take anything).

• Are there any companies that make USB writeblockers which are small enough to fit in a wallet and <$50? (Example of one that is too big). That way I can use a standard, cheaper USB drive.

Oh how I wish Nitrokey made these!

My question is whether it is good practice to include a unique wrapper phrase for custom commands and aliases.

For example, lets say I use the following command frequently:

apt update && apt upgrade -y && flatpak update

I want to save time by shortening this command. I want to alias it to the following command:

update

And lets say I also make up a command that calls a bash script to scrub all of of my zfs and btrfs pools:

scrub

Lets say I add 100 other aliases. Maybe I am overthinking it, but I feel there should be some easy way to distinguish these from native Unix commands. I feel there should be some abstraction layer.

My question is whether converting these commands into arguments behind a wrapper command is worth it.

For example, lets say my initials are "RK". The above commands would become:

rk update rk scrub

Then I could even create the following to list all of my subcommands and their uses:

rk --help

I would have no custom commands that exist outside of rk, so I add to total of one executable to my system.

I feel like this is the "cleaner" approach, but what do you think? Is this an antipattern? Is is just extra work?

I am new to 3D printing, but have always wanted to get into it. Unfortunately, I have very limited space and no dedicated area that I could call my workshop. I also travel frequently, and I would like something where I could take it with me for the day.

Therefore, I would like a portable, or at least very small printer. AFAIK, the new Positron V3.2 is purpose-built to solve this kind of problem.

I am asking whether that model is a good idea for a beginner. My main concern is the price, which I am willing to put up with if there really is no other portable printer.

My other concern is just the fact that it is new and I may be too inexperienced with printers to deal with problems that are natural in first-gen products. I have a decent amount of experience soldering and other electronics work, but nothing with small moving parts. Also IDK if sourcing parts would be an issue.

If, in your experiences, these make it not worth it as a first printer, what would you recommend as a portable printer?

I am planning to build a multipurpose home server. It will be a NAS, virtualization host, and have the typical selfhosted services. I want all of these services to have high uptime and be protected from power surges/balckouts, so I will put my server on a UPS.

I also want to run an LLM server on this machine, so I plan to add one or more GPUs and pass them through to a VM. I do not care about high uptime on the LLM server. However, this of course means that I will need a more powerful UPS, which I do not have the space for.

My plan is to get a second power supply to power only the GPUs. I do not want to put this PSU on the UPS. I will turn on the second PSU via an Add2PSU.

In the event of a blackout, this means that the base system will get full power and the GPUs will get power via the PCIe slot, but they will lose the power from the dedicated power plug.

Obviously this will slow down or kill the LLM server, but will this have an effect on the rest of the system?

I have an 11th gen Framework mainboard which I would like to repurpose as a server. Unfortunately, (unless I do some super janky stuff) I can only connect 1 drive to it over M.2 and any additional ones must be over USB.

I am thinking of just using some portable hard drives and plugging them in over USB. I plan to RAID1 them and use them as boot drives and data storage, and use the M.2 slot for something unrelated.

In your experiences, is USB reliable enough nowadays to run a RAID array for a server like this? If it is, does it depend on the specific drive used?

I am currently learning to be a sysadmin and I have no software development skills. I love FOSS very much and want to contribute to several projects, including non-networked ones.

How can I do this with my skillset? I have a very small (16GB RAM) server that I could offer to these projects as a build server or web host. IDK what else I could do.

I am wondering what the standard tool is for sending and receiving SMS and MMS on a device that does not have a SIM card in it.

Is there some tool that can do it natively? Is there a specific carrier that is commonly used for this? Is there some sort of selfhosted service that bridges it to email, and if so do I need to put a SIM card in my server?

Bonus points if I can do it within Emacs.

I am looking to buy a new mini PC home server and I want to be able to pass through my iGPU and NIC to different VMs. Where can I find a well-maintained database of IOMMU groups so that I can pick a good match for my needs?

There exists iommu.info but that barely has any entries.

I am currently setting up a Proxmox box that has the usual selfhosted stuff (Nextcloud, Jellyfin, etc) and I want all of these services in different containers/VMs. I am planning to start sharing this with family/friends who are not tech savvy, so I want excellent security.

I was thinking of restricting certain services to certain VLANs, and only plugging those VLANs into the CT/VMs that need them.

Currently, each CT/VM has a network interface (for example eth0) which gives them internet access (for updates and whatnot) and an interface that I use for SSH and management (for example eth1). These interfaces are both on different VLANs and I must use Wireguard to get onto the management network.

I am thinking of adding another interface just for “consumption” which my users would get onto via a separate Wireguard server, and they would use this to actually use the services.

I could also add another network just to connect to an internal NFS server to share files between CT/VMs, and this would have its own VLAN and require an additional interface per host that connects to it.

I have lots of other ideas for networks which would require additional interfaces per CT/VM that uses them.

From my experience, using a “VLAN-Aware” bridge and assigning VLANs per interface via the GUI is best practice. However, Proxmox does not support multiple VLANs per interface using this method.

I have an IPv6-only network, so I could theoretically assign multiple IPs per interface. Then I would use Linux VLANs from within the guest OS. However, this is a huge pain and I do not want to do this. And it is less secure because a compromised VM/CT could change its VLAN tag itself.

I am asking if adding many virtual interfaces per CT/VM is good practice, or if there is a better way to separate internal networks. Or maybe I should rethink the whole thing and not use one network per use-case.

I am especially curious about performance impacts of multiple interfaces.

I have recently obtained a friend's old Formlabs Form 2 SLA printer. I I am an absolute beginner to printing, but I am pretty excited to get into it.

However, the only place that I would realistically be able to put it is on my desk in my bedroom. From everything I've read, I need a better ventilated space with more tolerance for a mess than I could possibly provide.

I think that the right call is to just sell it and save up for some FDM printer, but at the end of the day, I have the SLA printer in hand.

I am asking whether these concerns about resin printers are really that bad and if I am actually fine to start learning printing with what I have in my bedroom.