hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4634.txt

Episode: 4634
Title: Upgrade Failsause
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4634/hpr4634.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:15:36 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4634, for 2026-05-07
Today's show is entitled, "Upgrade Failsause"
The host is operat0r and the duration is 00:20:46
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "operat0r goes over how he rebuit his Plex root FS"
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in August 2025 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in August 2025 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host operator.
So today I'm going to be telling you about my follies with basically rebuilding my 8-year-old
build.
And I didn't know that it was 8-year-old, but it was at 60 gigs and after the rebuild, it's
down to 30.
So I'm going to tell you what I ran into, the issues I had, the issues I couldn't fix.
It kind of started with a few nights ago, I decided to upgrade the release because I was
having issues with some packages installing because the branch that I was using was, I think,
still buster.
And now we're on bulls-eye of Debian.
So with that said, I'll just, with the foam, it was kind of lazy, half-witted, and I didn't
do really any backups and I said, you know what, I'll just run update through the phone
and I'll connect to it later and fix any problems.
Well, I was doing other things, something died in the middle of it and I tried to fix it
and I said, ah, just reboot and you know, pick up the install again.
Now, I'm going to install me something happened at the hardware layer with a specific service.
And it has to do with, see if I can find it.
So I've looked, and this all kind of started with system D hardware DB or hardware database
part of a user merge system D hardware DB and accompanying libraries and files.
So essentially, I think this is what detects hardware on your system and then what's that
in to be loaded up with drivers or whatever when you start the computer.
So something happened with some symbolic linking or whatever and I tried the AI to get the
AI to fix it and at one point in time I rebooted and it would not boot.
It would boot off the kernel and the boot image, but then when it booted into the main system,
it would say it couldn't find any disks to boot from, even though it booted from those
disks.
So I think the AI called it in Nija disk in Nija where it boots off of the right
board slash boot and it pulls the right image and it boots off the right thing.
But then when it boots up, it tries to look for drives that aren't there or they're
mapped wrong or they're missing or the UIDs have changed.
For me, I always bind drives via UID.
I think that's done by default now, at least maybe, because for me, specifically, with
this board drives 10 to move around for no reason at all whatsoever.
I have no external devices, everything is plugged in in the same way every time, but
depending on the boot order or whatever it works, the drives will move around.
So as DA, SDD, SDC, SDP will move around, which is not conducive to trying to boot to a system.
So I always use UID when I kind of have anything to do with Linux and disks.
That issue, I tried to troubleshoot, again, it was like symbolic linking issue.
I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to fix it.
So I said, you know what?
The only thing I haven't really restored is the Plex server with all the database stuff.
That's the only thing I'm worried about the rest of the stuff by backup scripts, basically
reproduce everything at the user level.
Now where possible, try to run everything as a user, not like install as route and running
as route.
Basically, your modern applications will sometimes create a new user, which I'm not the
biggest fan of, I guess it does help if you're segmenting out.
So you have a user for Plex and a user for this service and a user for that service and
a user for that service, it's something happens, you're not necessarily going to compromise
the other users, but if you've got somebody on your system that's rummaging around
and that's based, they're going to find something to pivot from or to anyways.
So that said, did a rebuild, I used Windows to create the image.
It's called Rufus, UFUS and I will put this in the show notes for our buddies.
Let me make some show notes for you guys.
And that builds the image you pull down the image, you can even tell it to download the
image, I don't really trust it.
So I pulled down the latest Devine 12 and I gave it.
Excuse me, that image to work from, I could find some liquids, I have a very giant
living here, metal container that often will hum when it's empty, but it's got stuff
in it.
So you want to have to suffer the excuse me, the ringing in your ears, so let's get
into it.
These kind of steps are to kind of put the system back at the way it was.
I installed screen, I installed PS miscellaneous, it was just like PS tools, screen,
net tools for like, I have config, which nobody uses anymore.
Snap D, that's for the plex client, it's based via SNAP and also I think something else
runs via SNAP radar or so on are one of them once they're on SNAP.
The plex, which I gave up on, I used virtual environment, X-bind keys for binding keys on
a remote to keys in Linux, so I'll add X-bind key examples.
I think I did an episode on that, but it allows you to bind a key to any, basically,
do anything, you could bind it to pressing the other keys, you can bind it to pressing
the other keys and executing a program.
So for example, if you had a client server, you could start at the client, start at the
server on the back end and then start at the client through the UI or something, all
with X-bind keys.
It's not quite something as, say, like, auto hockey, but it gets to jump to get in
MAP before, which is a network mapping tool, mono runtime, which I don't think I needed
either way, which is for waking up interfaces.
Cloud Flared DNS, which I did not configure, my IP doesn't change that much, I'm about
to get fiber, so that's going to be good.
M-locate, which is for low KDB, I don't know if anybody uses it, but low K, is for easily
creating indexes of your drives.
Now that does include, when you run it as root, it does include all the drives in your
tire system and there is some metadata in there, I think it's actually just a 5-5.
But that's runs, and you can include other drives within Locate, other than your group
drive.
So I've got some stuff in here for install Python, KSA, KASA, Python dashed KASA, and that's
what I use to control a couple of things, actually, the light switch in the living room
is a KSA compatible framework, and I can turn the dimming switch and bind that to X keys.
So I can essentially press 5, and that will make it as bright as possible.
Is dim as possible?
4 is brighter, 3 is even brighter, 2, I think 3 is the brightest, and 2 is bound to sunshine
and moonlight, which is a remote access, or remote streaming tool, similar to streams,
or steams, the steaming, streaming, I don't think I've done an episode that, but I owe
you one on that whole setup, because it is beautiful, sunshine, moonlight, and night, night
light, or night time, or in night, X night, play night, play night is what it's called.
It's a single launcher for all of your launchers, essentially, which is great.
So anyways, let's get on.
Let's see, we've got our content with the ether wake, so I can wake up my desktop from
the server that's always on.
The desktop is not always on.
I have some voice counts and scouts, scouts, scripts that run on my run tab, nothing
fancy there.
Now I do use UIDs on my mounting, so that's one thing that did change on the rebuild, a couple
of UIDs change for whatever reason, but don't know how those are created, I don't understand
why they would change on an update, so that was a little confusing to me as to how those
were mounted.
Some of the options I passed him out are defaults no fail no a time.
Now I think a time and no fail kind of makes things faster and or more liquid in an
environment where you're not super worried about disc issues or issues with, you know,
sinking disc or whatever, where where speed is a priority.
And I also run tune FS to change the count mount and the days to basically every five
days or seven months or seven days and five months, all of the drives will rescan their
selves.
Let's see what else, auto log in for XFCE fairly simple, I don't use for UPS battery
we have a USB cable plugged into the computer and that's how I handle the setting down
and starting up of the connection to the backup battery.
And I used to use PWR, stat D, don't do that anymore, I used U power which is a compatible
with these cyber power things I've got, you can have three cyber powers, I don't have
any more IPC anymore, I'm not an APC guy because their deals are better and they're more
residential based battery backups.
But anyways, I've got notes in there that says what the configuration file looks like,
standard percent low, critical three percent low and then I think there's like a time
out to dot to falsely, let's see, when I did restore the server, I had some issues because
I had home Plex library and that was where a lot of the art or cover art or metadata
was for the build for Plex and then I had where Plex was running out of which was media
more data underscore Plex user, lid Plex media server and those by itself I just copied
the Plex media server folder and then I restarted everything and I couldn't get connected
back into the database, into Plex, it just kept saying there was a new server there
that needed to be picked up and that's not what I wanted.
So luckily I didn't mangle any of the data or the database or the sync tables because
it's essentially all encrypted sort of, so there's like a key that gets created so if
you don't back up that key, it's like an XML file or i9 file, if you don't back up that
i9 file, even if you nuke everything and you nuke your database and whatever, you can
still kind of restore that connection back and pick up some of the information in there
so anyways, so I'm looking at actually properly backing up the Plex stuff because I had
to restore it in a different way.
Let's see auto starting Plex, basically your basic dot desktop files that you put inside
of the auto start folder for XFCE so you can get stuff to start on boot or when it
basically logs in.
Now I did manage to get SAP and ZBD plugged in which that is what download stuff from
username at 40, that is the main, the download of four username and I had to do a bit
of it, I just have a dump of my notes but I had to use a wrapper and use virtual, virtual
Python environment to get it all happy.
So I just had AI rewrite me a SAP and ZBD-rever.sh file to automate the kind of start-up
of SAP and ZBD and activating that environment so that it will just work.
It was probably a better way to do it but I like it running out of its own thing.
Same thing with Sonar and Radar, similar setups, similar backups, they're both monobased,
I think and one or the other I had a little bit more problems with, I don't remember which
one I had, more problems with, I had some scripts and stuff for the lights, again the other
piece of that is a watchdog and basically the command is Kaseya, dash host and then the
host name of whatever you want to control and then off and it's this little tiny little
box, I don't know if you can make it, it's a TP link actually, yeah, a TP link makes
it, it's a little tiny little boxy plug in line with your, I actually have it on a power
strip and there's not a ton of power coming through here and I don't know, it actually
is a lot but I did check the voltage, the Max Amperage on this and it's actually very high.
The cool thing about this, I didn't know this watchdog that I made to force reboot
Omendous computer, if you want to get so's up, it tells you the amount of energy that
it's using which is kind of cool.
So if you type in host and then I think it's called dash-host and then the name of the host
in like a numerate or something explore, I don't know what it is, but it'll give you back
information about the usage and the average usage and the usage of the day.
So that's kind of interesting to understand, boy, sometimes I do training and eat up the
whole GPU for, you know, hours on in and it'll be nice to have some of that information
and I can bind that to see how much it actually cost.
I also use the server as a Moonlight client or Sunshine for the Sunshine Server, so a Moon
Sunshine client that is called Moonlight and that's the streaming thing that I use for playing
games from upstairs here or on the phone or whatever.
So my desktop gaming desktop is in this spare bedroom and from there I can remote in through
my phone, if I tunnel in through the VPN, I can remote stream through that and it's work
works great.
I have some issues with connectivity and I actually get in fiber again and so hopefully
I'll be better.
I can do like four case streaming from my games and stuff.
Install SNAPD, refresh SNAPD and then install PLEX-HTPC, I don't do much of anything
for the PLEX-HTP-HTPC client.
I'm not super impressed with it and it seems to just work.
I don't know who maintains it but thank God there's somebody that maintains a Linux client
for PLEX because if not I'd have to use one of these crummy, you know, Roku's or a fire stick
or got for a Google Chromecast.
So a Samba of course for network shares makes it easy for my wife to upload stuff, to
pull down stuff, pull down things that she's downloaded and then I have some Bluetooth
notes, very crypt I use for someone crypted back up since stuff, Bluetooth I use for
X-Box controllers and I had to install Bluetooth Blue Z, no space as Blue Z-Tools, RF
KILL and Bluetooth control all one word CTL and it's a little little janky, the script
that I have will actually restart the Bluetooth service because it seems to kind of hang
and get squirrely out after a while.
It's a really cheap dongle that I use.
I also have to be careful about the dongles that you get.
The one, I think the first one I bought was some new Fangle, new Fangle Bluetooth protocol
that's not supported by Linux and it says it on the box, I think I still got it to work
or I might have swapped it out and got another one I can't remember but essentially what
the script does is it restart the Bluetooth server, the Bluetooth Damage so then you can connect
back into it and re-sing the controllers and then it starts about 10 seconds and then starts
up the Moonlight client so that both controllers are connected when the Moonlight client starts
and then it can decide which one is going to be player 1 and player 2.
So they seem to swap around but it doesn't bother me that much when I'm playing, trying
to get my white to play stuff.
That's pretty much it.
There's been a few here and there's for whatever I need to set up automated backup
to reach service so that each service's data, especially Plex gets backed up.
Plex is actually, I don't have a ton of media, I just got like 220 terabyte or two terabyte
drives or something like that, they're not that big so it's not entirely difficult to
back that up but I actually backed up the whole entire root folder minus the mounted discs
so of course so that gets backed up manually, never so often so if I do have an issue
I'm only a month or two behind on whatever I'm trying to restore whatever so if you keep
your boot partition minimized and your media separate the actual files separate from your
boot then restoring becomes very easy because your boot is only going to be a maximum
of 60 gigs and minus 30 right now and that's with a lot of it 20 gigs of it is just
20 gigs of it is just like Plex stuff and I think the rest is the other half is like
you know Linux and then lightweight except CE and that's pretty much it I really wish I could
have fixed my problem with the hardware and done another upgrade but at this point I don't really
miss it and it actually highlighted some issues I had with my backup procedure, my restore
procedure for Plex needs to be fairly clearly backed up because you do not want to lose all
your data around what you've watched and what you haven't, what playlist you've created for
a program called Plex AMP which is the kind of music player for Android and there's also one
for Windows so you know you don't want to lose those databases and pretty much on this server that's
like the most important thing so the whole exercise had me learn one take your upgrade seriously
and does it make time to understand them and make sure they complete and if you have any issues
at all you knit them into but and we'll try to fix them over the internet while you're walking
towards an event on your phone and just be like whatever I'll reboot because you'll have a bad time
that's pretty much it. I'll say if you're you know hearing this is probably going to go in the
reserve queue it's not super informative for general people but if you had issues around it in
these things or you have any questions on each service I can go over one of the services but I'm
pretty sure I've done a deep dive into the Plex box and the Plex setup maybe not so the the
white stuff where they could say a stuff so that might be something I could do but I've got thousands
of them other podcasts to do where you guys they're more interesting. Anyways take it easy
record an episode teach somebody something and have a good one.
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