The only way the “uncle” is correct and the only way a 12VDC battery is getting connected to a regular, 120VAC refrigerator, yes. And what most inverters run off of.

You’d need an inverter in-between, yes.

But for the record, inverters have been in gas cars with plain old 12V batteries for years. But you’ll need the engine running.

Commander Keen for me

(this is a bit of an oversimplification here to explain)

DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS.

UDP DNS (the original stuff) can be monitored and managed. DoT can be blocked and force UDP DNS.

DoH uses regular web traffic ports, so it can’t be blocked by admins easily to force an acceptable use policy. It poses risks to enterprise deployments.

Most use UDP DNS (some may use DoT plus another bit called DNSSEC for enhanced security, but it’s really uncommon IMHO).

So Firefox using DoH means it’s problematic for enterprise IT. Now if there are enterprise policies on the PC, it should be disabled in Firefox by default, and there are multiple ways to manage deployments…

But that also translates to extra work for IT vs other options.

Anker and TPLink tend to be well supported on Linux, I might have a look there first.

For the record, one 7th Gen is running two Jellyfin instances, a DNS server, a pihole, my mqtt server, a docker host with misc nginx containers, my proxies, Prometheus and grafana, and home assistant.

Currently under 5% CPU load, 14gb ram in use.

Is it enough? Probably. But I also don’t transcode 4k (a holdover from when that wasn’t reasonable, I maintain a separate library). But I do HDR to SDR constantly, and PGS subtitles often.

I actually moved everything over to those little boxes during the pandemic too. There were a few things running on them, and my piholes (3b’s) I wanted to repurpose, but it was hard to get a pi for a reasonable price…

And then I realized I could be doing this smarter and moved everything to those machines lol

Just now spinning up an additional Jellyfin LXC for family - this way I can simplify access, each LXC has read only access to my media, no ssh access, etc, etc.

Almost all of them are 6th, 7th, and 8th gen, with one 4th Gen i5 running just a bunch of lightweight LXCs. All in a 14ru rack next to Aruba 2960s, a DS1520+ and 1515+, etc, etc. Every bit of tech I run here in a small rack!

Personally, I’d say anything 6-8th gen will work well. 7th/8th gen get some improvements, but you won’t see a huge swing until 10th+ gen.

Which is where the value of something like an n100 comes in, though you won’t be getting all your services on there like you can with an i5/7 6th-8th gen for comparable price.

Which is why I’ve got a bunch of 6th-8th gen stuff running everything myself.

Solid choice, cheap, easy to cluster, fairly low power, and small.

Third for nginx here

I have a few static sites that are just nginx containers, one is just simple links to other things I run, to make it easy for my wife and some friends. Easy, lightweight, unprivileged - my favorite combo.

Definitely unfortunate…

What I’d recommend maybe looking at then is an off lease Lenovo/HP/Dell tiny/mini/micro - on eBay I’m seeing a Dell 3050 with 6th gen i3 for ~$60, a 7050 with an i5 6th gen and no HD for the same price (better purchase right there), or an i7 6th gen with a 256gb drive and 16gb ram for $120.

Anything like that, and swap in the SSD if it will take it, then you could put proxmox on one disk and dedicate the second SSD to your media server VM.

Good luck with whichever route you go!

Not the best approach btw.

Camera -> NVR -> User Device.

And most of them are h.264, at a bitrate that you could stream multiple versions of the same video (UHD, HD, SD) and never come remotely close to hitting max on 2.4Ghz. The ones supporting HEVC are even more efficient for the same quality.

I’d second Proxmox.

I run all my docker containers inside an LXC, but it’s mostly LXCs anyway. Web interface is great, combine with ansible and you’ve got easy management.

iptables is a solid choice for the regular Linux side (or an LXC), if you use a docker container though, you can just use the docker network to restrict access - you can see a solid example of that here:

https://tcpip.wtf/en/force-docker-containers-vpn-gluetun.htm

Regarding your questions:

• Good enough for direct play, and for SRT subtitles, but any image subtitles (pgs, vobsub) will transcode. If you can use GPU for transcoding, it won’t matter, it’ll come down to how much simultaneous use you’ve got more than anything. You can view how it’s running from the summary page of the VM/LXC, and adjust accordingly whenever. Just give it another core, shutdown, start back up, and you’ll have more cores applied - ready to test again. (One of the reasons I like proxmox).
• You can update any time, just need to shutdown and start up again to apply hardware changes! The only thing you can’t change easily is privileged/unprivileged LXCs. For now don’t worry about that.
• A privileged container can access the hardware on the host, but an unprivileged container can’t (without some extra shenanigans). I’d make it privileged for now, if you want to change later after you’ve gotten some experience you’ll be able to do so much more quickly. The HD4000 will do pretty well with h264 video, but won’t help with h265/hevc, so stick with h264 for anything with subtitles.
• Sure can! You can actually mount it to the LXC from proxmox with a simple command:

pct set XXX -mpX /host/dir,mp=/container/mount/point

Where XXX is the container number, and mpX is the mount number. Mount Point 0 is the first (mp0), the next directory you mount is mp1, etc.

• Check out tteck’s helper scripts for an idea on the things you can do. Personally I recommend making the LXCs yourself, but these scripts are good to use to get familiar with what you can do:

https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/

Do you know the name of the fanedit? I’d like to check it out

PoE++ is 60W, UPoE is 100W.

Only your container with VPN connection and transmission would be using the VPN’s DNS

With regards to the pihole, yeah I’d run that as a container on proxmox (there are some handy scripts by [tteck](https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/, though I’m not generally a fan of running shell scripts off the net like this it is easy). But I wouldn’t get rid of the pi, I’d keep it as your secondary. Single point of failure means it will drive you nuts if you have to reboot the server, everything will be down.

Outside of the beelink, it’s just the tiny/mini/micro options from Lenovo/HP/Dell, and then by generation of CPU. The beelink is a popular choice, but personally I like the power that an i5/i7 will give me, and I’ve got a couple of machines with 32GB and 64GB of ram - throwing 16GB at a VM I can access remotely for Windows apps is super useful, and I can otherwise live in my Linux desktop.

I’d also say you don’t have to toss the 2012 Mac mini, you can grab some bits you want (SSD), but you can drop in a replacement and make it another proxmox host. Even run your second pihole there.

In terms of guides, sorry don’t really have any on specifically my setup no. But there are ones out there to learn how to set up an LXC as a docker host, docker networking, guides to the *arrs being set up, etc.

Such as this one for a VPN container, and docker-compose samples for having other containers use that network: https://www.naturalborncoder.com/linux/2021/02/19/making-a-docker-container-use-a-vpn/

For a good start on how to set up (after the containers are running) sonarr/Radarr/etc, check out: https://trash-guides.info/

And you can always ask questions in the various home server communities here (and elsewhere on the fediverse obviously).

Good luck!

Use your VPNs DNS, and make sure to test that the IP seen publicly is your VPNs. There are a bunch of simple torrent tests out there for that.

No need to set up cron/rsync if you use the *arrs. They will handle fetching, renaming, upgrading, moving, etc.

Related to those two above, and the Proxmox recommendation, here is what I do:

• Set up an LXC (another type of container, lightweight but with a closer to VM in use - really useful) and make it run all your docker containers.
• Instead of a container that combines the torrent client and VPN, have a distinct VPN container that other containers can connect to. You can also have it set up where if the VPN connection goes down, it stops working - this is safer.
• Your torrent client will connect to that VPN container for network access.
• Prowlarr (connects to all of your indexers) can then be set to use that network to search for torrents as well.
• Sonarr, Radarr, etc don’t need to connect to that VPN container, since Prowlarr is what they would be querying.

Your Mac Studio would definitely be better for Plex unless you’re going to avoid transcoding entirely. If you are going to do direct stream only (and that means some subtitle types will be a problem btw), you can put Plex in a VM.

Now a synology that can handle Plex and transcodes is an option, but in my opinion you’re better off with a 6th gen or higher Intel machine that’s cheap (preferably 10th for the latest capabilities, 8th for more transcoding options than 6, but 6th is good enough for most people). I have two synology NASs that could be used for Plex and an xpenology VM, and I don’t go that route because a $100-$200 business desktop (tiny/mini/micro) is more capable.

With 4K content, id lean toward using a 10th gen chip, there are some options with quick sync iGPUs though in cheaper lineups from modern gens that do a great job though (beelink, s12pro specifically with the alder lake n100, though any with the n100 would be the same).

This can seem like a TON of setup, but honestly once you get the handle on managing a few containers it is just so much easier than other options.

I’d be very comfortable taking home $19.3 million and not doing that.

Which is probably why I’m not a CEO.

You reminded me of my physics teacher in high school.

I was very into my graphing calculator (TI-86), down to coding in assembly to make silly little games. My previous teacher made me show that the memory was cleared before any test.

But his take? If I wrote a working application with all the formulas necessary to take the tests, then I put in the work to learn the material, and he didn’t care. I hadn’t done that, because I expected to wipe it, but after that I did and showed it to him (and gave him the code).

Found out he would show off what I made for a few years before retiring, specifically to point out how I did something I found fun to learn.

More teachers/school systems should be like that.

• If you want a dead stable OS to install things on, then Debian. I’d recommend checking out proxmox though. Separating services into VMs can really help make managing them easier, and you easily avoid conflicts that can cause fun issues.
• The 2012 Mac mini didn’t have a discrete GPU iirc, just the built in HD 4000. What GPU is in there?
• Docker can use multiple networks, but the issue is - you shouldn’t be using Google DNS. You should be using your VPN providers DNS.
• In terms of troubleshooting, watchtower should be easily ruled out. Have it check for updates once a day at a specific time (overnight when it won’t be used). Not happening during watching anymore. For checking the processes running, top/htop is the easiest way to see what’s using up resources.

Edit: Just to mention, you can get your hands on a cheap tiny/mini/micro with a more powerful iGPU for cheap (like $100-$200) which may save you quite a few headaches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

Take a look at the hardware encoding/decoding sections for details on what can be handled, and some examples and testing at https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-hardware-transcoding-the-jdm-way-quicksync-and-nvenc/1408/3

For what it’s worth, my media servers (Plex side by side with multiple Jellyfin instances, long story, and Plex may fully disappear soon) run on an 8th gen i5 I got for about $150.

Linux Mint Debian Edition is my standard recommendation for desktop for those newer folks.

Straight up Debian for everything else. Debian is my desktop. And all of my servers (aside from some things I’m testing for work or something where I need to test against RHEL or something).

And Proxmox for VMs.