When using DHCP, most routers allow individual IPv4 addresses to be assigned to specific devices. In my case, I do so for my Raspberry Pis, making Home Assistant accessible at a domain name rather than trying to remember an IP address.
Continue reading Why routers don’t support IPv6 reservationsAuthor: Erick
Goodbye PHP builds
Earlier today, I switched from custom PHP builds to sury.org's PHP 7.2 builds. I've been using his builds on my Photon server for some time now, and I've lost interest in maintaining my own builds, so this seemed like a natural progression.
A Better dyndnsd Client
Previously, I used curl to trigger dyndnsd updates via my Raspberry Pis. This worked well for many months, but lacked IPv6 support as dyndnsd was interpreting my IP from the request. Fortunately, the daemon accepts parameters for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, so I wrote a Go program to handle regular updates. It still relies on cron, but passes explicit IP values and moves all options to a configuration file.
The client is available from https://git.ethitter.com/open-source/dyndnsd-client. I don't provide built binaries yet, but I'd like to soon.
If your ISP doesn't support IPv6, or if you run multiple daemons on the same network, options are available for your situation. Take a look at the readme for more.
Hopefully someone else finds this useful!
Another Home Assistant Update
Yesterday, after moving my GitLab instance, I noticed that the public clone of my Home Assistant configurations was a bit stale, so I decided that it was time to refresh.
In so doing, I also discovered that I was a few releases behind (three, to be exact), and that those intervening releases included several breaking changes. Fortunately, updating my configurations to support Home Assistant 0.57.3 also resolved several longstanding bugs. 
GitLab on the move again
After a few successful months of testing Packet.net, I've once again moved git.ethitter.com. The decision was purely financial–my GitLab instance doesn't receive enough traffic to warrant Packet.net's pricing. As far as reliability and value were concerned, Packet.net was excellent. I would've appreciated built-in backups, but otherwise, I have no complaints about the service.
It will likely come as little surprise that git.ethitter.com is back on Linode. Compared to Digital Ocean, Linode is slightly more-generous with its resources, and GitLab wants all the resources it can get.
The migration itself was quite easy, with most of the time was spent preparing the server; GitLab's backup/restore process did most of the hard work. Now I just have to finish the ancillary setup, like monitoring.
Moving on from Automattic
Friday was my last day at Automattic. Leaving was one of the more-difficult decisions I’ve ever made, but I was ready for a new challenge; regardless, I never thought this day would come. I will dearly miss my former colleagues, and it will take some time to adjust to not being an Automattician.
Since I made my announcement, the question has been, “What’s next?”
Well, I’m beyond excited to announce that I joined Alley Interactive as a Principal Software Developer. Being a VIP Featured Partner, I’ve reviewed and appreciated Alley’s work from Automattic’s side for some time; I’ve also known several of their staff for a few years, and working with them seemed a natural fit.
Not being one to rest, I started at Alley yesterday. 🎉
Upgrading my GitLab experience
Almost exactly four years after I first installed GitLab, I’ve migrated my instance to a new host, and in the process, finally switched to their “omnibus” install.
Impatiently updating my Nexus 6
My well-documented impatience extends to my mobile device, an unlocked Nexus 6 on Verizon. While I generally received Google’s updates in short order, this was not always the case. To my relief, Google releases the same updates carriers deliver to their subscribers, allowing me to update my device at my convenience.
Continue reading Impatiently updating my Nexus 6
Managing domain and certificate expiration with DomainMOD
With 40 domains–plus a half dozen certificates–to track, I added the DomainMOD tool to my repertoire. Its API integrations, in particular, made it an appealing choice, as I had little desire to manually enter so many details. After three months, I’m quite pleased with my decision.
Installation was as straightforward as a git checkout, creation of a MySQL table, and the addition of a server block to my nginx configuration. With DomainMOD successfully running, I configured it to use my mailserver, then got to importing my domains.
Continue reading Managing domain and certificate expiration with DomainMOD
So many speedtests
Home Assistant runs frequent speedtests, perhaps too-frequent. One of the components I’ve configured is Fast.com, provided by Netflix. Over the last month, we’ve consumed 385 GB just for Netflix:
Nearly 56% of our Netflix traffic comes from speedtests! 😳