Building my own HPE SAS cable from Amazon because HPE won't sell me one

 Posted on August 7, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  368 words  |  Neel Chauhan

Remember when Reddit /r/sysadmin said HPE support blows? Well it does. I got an open box HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 as a NAS. This is my second whereas my first is a compute server. To my surprise, there was no SAS cables in the open box server. When sourcing the official sources, I was in back and forth conversations with HPE and their “part suppliers” to no avail. And no, I did not get the right SAS cable. [Read More]

Running ArchiveTeam Warrior in Podman on Rocky Linux 9

 Posted on July 31, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  244 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I don’t remember where I heard about ArchiveTeam from, but when I did learn about it I knew I wanted to join in. I have run Tor relays for over a decade now but always wanted to participate in other volunteer-run services as well. I always felt good when my home servers serve more people than just me. I run an I2P node too, but CPU-and-GPU-heavy tasks like Folding@Home are out usually due to excessive power consumption and noise. [Read More]

My High School banned Phones... in 2011!

 Posted on July 8, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  186 words  |  Neel Chauhan

Today I read that many schools from NYC to LA want to ban smartphones in school. Well, let me tell you that my high school, Somers High School of Somers, NY (an rural-ish but rich NYC exurb) did actually ban phones back in 2011, and when I graduated in 2015 they still did. When it comes to mobile tech, the early-to-mid-2010s were almost like the stone age. Whereas most of my peers had an iPhone on Verizon, my family chose to go with Samsung phones on Sprint. [Read More]

Taming Noise on HPE ProLiant ML-series Tower Servers

 Posted on June 13, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  156 words  |  Neel Chauhan

As mentioned earlier, my homelab server is a HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 which is a single-socket Intel Sapphire Rapids-based server. One problem with this server is how much noise it generates. I swear, the ML110 Gen10 was much quieter. It’s a big trouble especially since right now I’m “houseless” meaning I’m living with my brother and have my ML110 in a bedroom closet. However, with the default power settings it’s still very noisy especially when running a cluster of Tor relays. [Read More]

Bypassing Frontier Connecticut GPON 802.1X with MikroTik

 Posted on June 6, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  261 words  |  Neel Chauhan

I’ve made it back eastwards! Yay! While my family looks for NYC hosing, I’m living in Stamford, CT in my brother’s townhouse/condo. The condo has Frontier FiberOptic. But as Connecticut is a former AT&T market, unless you’re on XGS-PON which I’m not, GPON is based off AT&T Fiber with the infamous 802.1X requirement. Initially, I used a Wi-Fi to Ethernet bridge but after having performance issues, I moved the Cat6 drops to near my equipment and “bypassed” the Frontier gateway. [Read More]

Enabling Path MTU Discovery in MikroTik, or why my PPPoE/6rd was slow

 Posted on February 29, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  233 words  |  Neel Chauhan

For many years, I’ve stuck with OPNsense, first initially since until a couple of years ago I was a die-hard FreeBSD user. But more importantly, by default Linux-based firealls play poorly with CenturyLink’s 6rd. I’ve been wanting to use a MikroTik as my core router instead of OPNsense for many years, but whenever I tried, 6rd browsing was just so slow for some reason. A few days ago, I got myself a MikroTik CCR2004-16G-2S+ and intially went IPv4-only. [Read More]

A MikroTik RouterOS v7 IPv6 BGP Config

 Posted on February 25, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  373 words  |  Neel Chauhan

As my long-awaited sequel to my MikroTik RouterOS v7 BGP configuration, I will do a RouterOS v7 configuration, but this time with IPv6. The setup will have: R1 with AS1 and R2 with AS2 1::/64 that R1 will advertise 2::/64 that R2 will advertise 3::/64 for the point-to-point link between R1 and R2 3::1 for R1 and 3::2 for R2 The ether1 interface for the R1 and R2 point-to-point links The ether2 interface for the internal, to-be-advertised subnet To setup BGP, first set your IP addresses, on R1: [Read More]

An underrated ESXi/Proxmox alternative: Rocky Linux, KVM and Cockpit

 Posted on February 8, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  953 words  |  Neel Chauhan

In my homelab, I have a Rocky Linux 9 server/hypervisor. For quite a while, I’ve just used the command line to manage virtual machines. It was tricky to know which TCP port was used for VNC, and forward it to my Fedora laptop. I’ve always been dreaming about a Web UI for virtual machines, but didn’t want ESXi or Proxmox, and was pretty dissapointed when I tried SmartOS and OmniOS. One day, I was on Mastodon (or Reddit) and learned that there is a KVM virtual machine module for Cockpit. [Read More]

A Simple MikroTik RouterOS v7 BGP Config

 Posted on February 4, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  333 words  |  Neel Chauhan

While I’m not a professional network engineer at the time of writing, lately I’ve been playing with MikroTik’s CHR in EVE-NG. One thing I wanted to set up is a basic BGP configuration between two ASes. In this setup, I will assume there are two neighboring routers with eBGP. The setup will have: R1 with AS1 and R2 with AS2 1.0.0.0/24 that R1 will advertise 2.0.0.0/24 that R2 will advertise 3. [Read More]

Install Folding@home on Fedora 39 with FAHControl

 Posted on December 22, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  236 words  |  Neel Chauhan

At the present moment, my desktop is technically a “gaming PC” but really a workstation for various non-gaming tasks. It’s a Mini-ITX homebuilt PC with an Intel i9-13900F CPU and a RTX 4070. It runs Fedora 39. I’ve been wanting to run Folding@home on my main PC for a while now. I run Folding@home at my work systems, both Windows 365 and physical workstation (although I mostly WFH, yay!). One problem with using the default binaries from the Folding@home website is FAHControl is designed for Python 2. [Read More]