Weeknotes 152

CSS Isn’t Real

‘I need a twelve column grid layout. It should be four columns on small screens.’ — Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged

😆

When I moved, my UniFi controller came with me, but the USG and AP stayed where they are; there will be a future project to install new gear in the new place. So my old network is now controller-less, which means no monitoring, no remote debugging, and crucially, no captive portal capability.

So I’ve been looking at how I run the controller, but on the cheap.

There are a few options:

• Host on a Raspberry Pi – this seems like a no-brainer, but I’ve read some things that indicate they are not particularly reliable over the long-term

  SD cards don’t like being constantly written to, or losing power in the middle of an I/O operation, and I don’t really want to have to muck about with software workarounds.

  But, I do have one of these (let’s be honest, I have several). So that would be zero cost, but I don’t want to be having to fix it all the time.

• Remote hosting – the controller software runs on a web host somewhere outside of the local network. Once the software is running you point your UniFi devices at a FQDN rather than an internal IP.

  There are a few commercial providers (HostiFi, UniHosted, and Ubiquiti themselves) who offer this service, but you can always just install the controller software on a host such as Digital Ocean or Vultr instead.

  I was already running the controller in Docker before, so this seems like something I could setup quite easily by using the same Docker config, but there are downsides. I don’t want to pay an on-going cost for something that is little used, and I would prefer to not expose this sort of thing to the Internet.

• Buy a dedicated hardware device from UniFi. They make various “Cloud Key” products which are dedicated to just running the controller software. However, pickings are slim.

  The “Gen 1” Cloud Key is old and no longer supported. It won’t run the latest controller software. CloudKey+ (gen2) is a bit too capable, and as such out of budget.

  Cloud Gateway Ultra seems like a good option, and would takeover the USG’s WAN duties which mean reconfiguring that. However, it is continually out-of-stock it seems. It’s also a bit more money than I want to spend. Although it may be possible to recoup some of that cost by selling the existing USG, but I’m not sure how hard that would be (there are a lot of them on eBay).

• Dedicated Linux box – so that leaves us with our old friend the Linux box. The problem with this option is the amount of choice. What hardware are we going to buy for this? It needs to be low power ideally, cheap enough to buy, and small in size because it has to fit into an existing cabinet I have setup.

  This has the benefit that I could install other stuff on it as well such as Tailscale for subnet routing capabilities.

  I’ve bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny off eBay. Is this a terrible idea? Only time will tell, but I’m hopeful.

Phoenix LiveView 1.0-rc is here! 👏

We inherited a well looked after garden when we moved. This is a bit daunting because we know nothing about gardening but now we need to keep it in good shape. Perhaps that why our neighbour surreptitiously trespassed on our property and cut back our rose bush.

My hope was misplaced and the car is still not fixed. After several phone frustrating phone calls it became evident that the garage couldn’t fit me in until the 7th June, which would be nearly 5 weeks since it first went in, and nearly 7 since the original fault.

I’ve decided to take it into the garage I used to use to coincide with a visit to my old flat. Hopefully they can sort it. I’ll be attempting to seal the coolant system enough to get back down the motorway. Wish me luck.

I had emails from Amazon Shipping about a package due for delivery. Subjects include the following sentences:

• “Your package from Your Seller has shipped”

• “Your Your Seller package is out for delivery”

• “Your Your Seller package was delivered”

The question is, who the fuck are “Your Seller”? There was literally no way to know. So I have had a package delivered and not a clue what it is. Well done everyone.

Last week I mentioned about Ruby string literals now behaving as if they were frozen.

Xavier Noria wrote up a blog post to explain what this change means: Ruby: The future of frozen string literals. So, it is happening, but is going to require community effort.

Via @benoit@ruby.social.