Ha, I wish I could.

I’m not 100% satisfied, so I’m still searching for the “perfect distro for me”, if it even exists.

I have been using Arch Linux on my personal PC and company laptop for 4 years, but I couldn’t get some things to work. Things that, after installing Fedora, worked out of the box.

My current setup is:

• EndeavourOS (e.g. arch linux with a GUI-installer) for my PC at home
• Fedora Workstation 43 for my company laptop
• Servers are all running Debian, I’ll probably never change that
• Hypervisor for VMs is Proxmox VE, which is Debian too

Currently using nginx-proxy-manager for exactly this purpose. Nice and easy-to-use UI, including automatic LetsEncrypt ssl certificates :)

I’m using CheckMK to monitor my hypervisor, physical hardware like disks, CPU etc. and SNMP-capable hardware like my pfSense firewall via a CheckMK instance in docker. It either works in docker or on a few different linux based OS like ubuntu and debian (see CheckMK download page).

There’s a free and open source version (called raw edition, GitHub Link) which I am using. It comes with a lot of checks / plugins for monitoring stuff out of the box and if there’s something it doesn’t ship, you can easily create your own check in whatever language your server is capable of executing a binary of. Or you could look up if there’s a user-contributed plugin on the official CheckMK Exchange Platform.

The whole configuration of this is based on rules with a lot of predefined rules and sane defaults already set.

To have an example for your use-case: You can monitor docker-logfiles and let CheckMK warn you, if specific keywords are or are not in a logfile. You will then be able to view the offending lines in the monitoring UI.

Why do I use this?

• We use it at work
• FOSS
• docker makes updating this easy
• can send mails, teams notifications, …
• very customizable and expandable

my docker compose file

# docker-compose.yml

services:
  monitoring:
    image: checkmk/check-mk-raw:2.4.0-latest
    container_name: monitoring
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - CMK_PASSWORD=changeme
    ports:
      # WEB UI port
      - "5000:5000"
      # agent communication port
      - "8000:8000"
      # used for SNMP
      - "162:162/udp"
      - "514:514/tcp"
      - "514:514/udp"
    volumes:
      - "./monitoring:/omd/sites"
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    env_file:
      - .env

I was just visiting a friend of mine last sunday with my SteamDeck and we played Unrailed! the whole day :D

The SteamDeck is THE perfect, portable fun-games-machine to just take with you. And every sale there’s another few local-splitscreen-multiplayer games on sale, my library is scared already.

If you did not live through the time of “going to your friends to play games”, this is your ticket to a past you sadly never got to experience.

Haha, same here.

Though for me it wasn’t about the Zerg, I just liked the logo. That’s how I got to Arch and that’s (partly) why my servers use debian :D

Oh, that looks really good. I guess I’ll add that to my Phone-Wallpaper-Collection, thank you very much :)

If you’re selfhosting, the cloud is your someone else’s computer ;)

I didn’t mean to get caught up in exceptions or exaggerations. I’m no developer either, so I have zero background-knowledge about game-development or game-engines.

Though as I work in IT (again, no developer) and live within a zero-IT-knowledge friend circle, I tend to try and shine a little light on some things that, to the outside, might seem simple but maybe aren’t. I guess sometimes I’m trying to err on the side of caution a little too much.

I definitely think there are a few of those one-line, true/false settings that could just be toggled, especially things that are handled by the engine instead of the game-logic itself, though I cannot speak of experience here.

I’m talking about ones that are like one line of code being set to true instead of false etc

I don’t know how many, if any, settings matching the true/false + 1 line of code restraints even exist.

If you can change a setting, even if it’s a binary choice, someone had to think about, implement and test everything pertaining to these choices.

Depending on what kind of mechanic we’re talking about and how deeply integrated into the rest of the game this mechanic is, that could be a big task.

I did not run OPNSense, but I have a direct comparison for pfSense as VM on Proxmox VE vs pfSense on a ~400€ official pfSense physical appliance.

I do not feel any internet-speed or LAN-speed differences in the 2 setups, I did not measure it though. The change VM -> physical appliance was not planned.

Running a VM-firewall just got tiring fast, as I realized that Proxmox VE needs a lot more reboot-updates than pfsense does. And every time you reboot your pfSense-VM-Hypervisor, your internet’s gone for a short time. Yes, you’re not forced to reboot. I like to do it anyway, if it’s been advised by the people creating the software I use.

Though I gotta say, the pfSense webinterface is actually really snappy and fast when running on an x86 VM. Now that I have a Netgate 2100 physical pfSense appliance, the webinterface takes a looooong time to respond in comparison.

I guess the most important thing is to test it for yourself and to always keep an easy migration-path open, like exporting firewall-settings to a file so you can migrate easily, if the need arises.

[EDIT] - Like others, I also would advice heavily against using the the same hypervisor for your firewall and other VMs. Bare-Metal is the most “uncomplicated” in terms of extra workload just to have your firewall up and running, but if you want to virtualize your firewall, put that VM on its own hypervisor.

Sadly, it seems I cannot replace the disks one-by-one. At least not if I don’t upgrade the SSD size to greater than 4TB at the same time.

The consumer 4TB SSDs yield 3,64 TiB, whereas the datacenter 4TB SSDs seem to yield 3,49 TiB. As far as I know, one cannot replace a zfs raid z1 drive with a smaller one. I’ll have to watch the current consumer SSDs closely and be prepared for when I’ll have to switch them.

I’m not all too sure about buying used IT / stuff in general from ebay, but I’ll have a look, thanks!

Thank you very much for your input, I’ll definitely have to go with business drives whenever the current ones die.

Thankfully, I do have monitoring for SMART data and drive health, so I’ll be warned before something bad happens.

Thank you very much for your input. I’ll definitely have to go for the business models whenever the current ones die.

I knew I would make some mistake and learn something new, with this being my first real server-PC (instead of mini-pc or raspberry pi) and RAID. I just wished it wasn’t that pricey of a mistake :(

Yeah, I guess I should’ve put like +50% more money into it and gotten some Enterprise SSDs instead. Well, what’s done is done now.

I’ll try replacing the disks with enterprise SSDs when they die, which will probably happen fast, seeing as the wearout is already at 1% after 1 month of low usage.

What do you think about Samsung OEM Datacenter SSD PM893 3,84 TB?

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

So I just looked it up: According to Proxmox VE “disks” interface, my SATA SSD drives have 1% wearout after ~1 month of low usage. That seems pretty horrible.

I guess I’m going to wait until they die and buy enterprise SSDs as a replacement.

I’m definitely not going to use HDDs, as the server is in my living room and I’m not going to tolerate constant HDD sounds.

[EDIT] I don’t even have a cluster, it’s just a single Proxmox VE on a single server using ZFS and it’s still writing itself to death.

[EDIT2] What do you think about Samsung OEM Datacenter SSD PM893 3,84 TB?

Thanks for your input!

If you don’t want to have any freedom until you have it all, you’ll be slave forever.

You’re letting perfect get in the way of good enough.

I don’t know about tailscale, but it seems pihole has got you covered with local DNS, if you’re willing to set the local DNS records manually.

I use pihole as selfhosted DNS server for all my servers and clients. I don’t have many local DNS records (only 2), so if you handle a great amount of ever-changing DNS records, this might not be for you.

Es hört sich schon irgendwie sehr viel an. Aber man kann sich alles ziemlich hoch und teuer konfigurieren, auch wenn es halbwegs günstig startet.

Bei Hetzner kann ich mir auch einen echten Server mieten für 960 € im Monat mit Standort Deutschland

• physische Hardware in einem Rechenzentrum
• AMD EPYC 9454P 48 Core / 96 Threads
• 640 GB DDR5 ECC RAM
• 2x ~4 TB NVME Disks
• 6x ~8 TB NVME Disks

Da zahlst halt auch den Hardware-Support von wegen Teile austauschen wenn notwendig etc.

To me it seems like:

• you want to do a lot of stuff yourself on arch
• but there’s quite some complicated stuff to learn and try

I’d try Proxmox VE and, if you’re also searching for a Backup Server, Proxmox Backup Server.

I recommend these because:

• Proxmox VE is a Hypervisor, you can just spin up Arch Linux VMs for every task you need
• Proxmox VE, as well as Proxmox BS are open source
• you can buy a license for “stable updates” (you get the same updates, but delayed, to fix problems before they get to you)
• includes snapshots, re-rolls, full-backups, a firewall (which you can turn on or off for every VM), …

I personally run a Proxmox VE + Proxmox BS setup in 3 companies + my own homelab.

It’s not magic, Proxmox VE is literally Debian 13 + qemu + kvm with a nice webui. So you know the tech is proven, it’s just now you also get an easy to use interface instead of virsh console commands or virt-manager.

I personally like a stable infrastructure to test and run my important and experimental tuff upon. That’s why I’m going with this instead of managing even the hypervisor myself with Arch.

Thank you very much. I sent this to my coworker who expressed interest in switching to vim :)