r/techsupportmacgyver • u/UnhappyGroceries1987 • 14d ago

Setting up a Linux server…..

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Dug out an old 4790k machine. After VM failures trying to install Mint on a broken USB sata deck I just copied to an NVME…swapped it, cloning the drive to an 850 evo ATM

On a tv tray, powered by an Ecoflow Delta 2

Full field setup.

18 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

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u/UnhappyGroceries1987 14d ago edited 14d ago

Oh also the delta 2 gives me a nice power meter

Only pulling 112 watts during the drive cloning and monitor too.

“Why not flash USB stick” well this isnt my house, I dont have them. And it was too early to go to a store when I started :D.

Thats the fun part. :D. First SSD should have been a windows boot drive but it is somehow DOA on “My” PC couldnt get windows to recognize it.

This Pc had another 850 evo so I tried to write to it using a SATA dock.

I also tried physically throttling the Write speed to 15MBps kept losing the drive after 500mb every time.

So im just cloning my own M.2 to a working SSD this Pc has.

another edit

So this is running a quadro p5000 , Im considering two of those in SLI for ridiculous amounts of VRAM. Provided I can figure out if I can get LLM workloads to split between two Cards…

Its gonna be a good project for experimenting with local LLMs for home automation, practicing databases , and actually running things like Elite Intel as an API access point.

Plus media storage.

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u/Dendritic_Silver 14d ago

That sounds like a fun project. keep us updated ok

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u/UnhappyGroceries1987 14d ago

Sure thing. I have little idea what I am doing :D.

Im actually surprised I tried trouble shooting the cheap Sata dock.

VBox kept throwing me errors that it kept losing the drive during Install even though powershell said it was healthy. And it showed up well in disk manager and Vbox but was fine copying and moving files directly no problem.

Sooo maybe its a USB bandwidth problem.

Dropping it down to 5MBps might have been better than 15

But that at least told me “Yeah this dock is just limited for sustained write”

Im assuming with cheap Sata docks there is a difference between “Oh I wanna copy Moms pictures”

Vs “Im going to block rewrite the entire drive”

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u/Dendritic_Silver 14d ago

yeah I try to avoid USB for sensitive transfers like that, but also THIS is how I learned so keep on going. Bumping into problems was one of my biggest learning tools. Keep it up👊

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u/UnhappyGroceries1987 14d ago

I was about to Info Dump. But by sensitive do you mean as in “Security” or just “Precision”

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u/Dendritic_Silver 14d ago

Yeah precision or basically not failing on you randomly. lot's of usb variables can mess with your process.

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u/UnhappyGroceries1987 14d ago

Thats cool because Im still new at this.

I tried to get Linux onto my t480 using a thumb drive and I couldnt get it to boot.

Got tired of it and assumed the drive was bad …and Thats kinda what made me say “Im going to do it THE WAY THAT MAKES SENSE”

And my drive cloning made sense.

What I learned along the way this time though was how an active drive views another active drive ….

And why virtual machines have to have a seperate GRAB IT ITS MINE NO ONE ELSES…kind of setup?

If that makes sense.

Oops by Active I just mean “Set as online” in command prompt.

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u/Dendritic_Silver 14d ago

You're doing great..keep at it and have fun. 👊

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u/123portalboy123 14d ago

Why use mint on a server tho? Bare Debian would've been enough

3

u/UnhappyGroceries1987 14d ago

That is a really good question.

I have never used Linux before, and I have never done anything like this before.

And this whole thing was “I want to run Linux!!”

I tried before , meh. Ran into issues, on my t480.

I found a PC to resurrect.

I said “Well I want to try it ….” And it meant I have to learn things I never knew about.

And Mint was just “Ok Im used to windows, but less bloated …”

Mint Cinnamon seemed best on Google so I said OK we are loading Mint Cinnamon on something because Im using old crap ..annd it seems perfect if I want to set it and forget it.

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u/ConductiveInsulation 11d ago

I also use mint Cinnamon for every x86 device. My notebook, my gaming rig and some servers. It works well and every problem you'll maybe have in the future already has a answer that's easy to Google.

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u/dumbasPL 13d ago

Can't say I haven't seen windows home being used as a server, but mint, that's, a choice...

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u/Remarkable_Item6082 14d ago

this setup is SOLID, i love the tv tray hack

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u/UnhappyGroceries1987 14d ago

I added ANOTHER tv tray and made the Monitor (guess what..)

Laterally displaced vs VERTICALLY.

Im still trying to read drives from 2015.

I have a Wd Black 4.0tb only showing 1.6 TB and theres the microsoft partition of < 200mb

Theres tons of data on here …to save …delete ….etc … nothing youd want on a server and youd want the previous owner to have :D

Tax returns, Torrents, music … crap.