Synology SAT5200 solid static disks

The Synology Cache Effect

At the (home) office I have a Synology RS2416+ with a few drives running in Synology’s Hybrid RAID mode. I have a mix of Windows, Linux and Mac clients running Time Machine backups in addition to standard SMB and NFS file access. The NAS itself has plenty of disk space and plenty of RAM but lately its performance has been abysmal and its gotten worse with every client I’ve added to the network....

May 16, 2021 · 7 min · 1373 words · leonroy

Keeping Debian and Ubuntu Machines up to date, Automatically

Debian and Ubuntu are excellent operating systems with (very) long term support and product updates - making them popular both at work and in my homelab. As someone famous probably said: If you have to do something more than once - script it. To that end I am an avid user of Debian and Ubuntu’s automatic update feature. To get going first install unattended-upgrades: sudo apt install unattended-upgrades Then reconfigure it for installing unattended upgrades:...

July 17, 2020 · 4 min · 678 words · leonroy

Teeny, Tiny Workstation

As an engineer, and a red blooded male I’m commonly guilty of engineering overkill. Some of my past workstations were incredibly over the top comprising dual water cooled CPUs, PC Power and Cooling power supplies (remember them?), ECC memory and hot swap drive bays (in case of an urgent failure requiring action on my gaming RAID 5 drive of course!). Age and time commitments to a small family however have forced me to be a little more practical and so it was that I approached replacing my Mac Pro 2013 workstation with an entirely fresh perspective whilst retaining some of the overkill aspects....

October 22, 2018 · 11 min · 2255 words · leonroy
Stack of internet routers

A Final Statement – Network Routers

In technology I do so very much hate wastage. Wastage of the resources that go into manufacturing a product and wastage of time in dealing with low quality and unreliable products. Disruption to functioning networks and setups is also a real pain point in organizations and at home. Every device we upgrade whilst it (usually) has its pros the con is certainly the investment of time that goes into migrating your data and settings to it....

December 7, 2015 · 6 min · 1209 words · leonroy
IBM Model M Keyboard

Unboxed: A brand spanking new IBM Model M Keyboard

The IBM Model M keyboard is widely considered a bit of a classic. Manufactured from 1984 until the late 90s it is today much sought after by keyboard aficionados owing to its robust build quality, retro looks and of course superlative typing haptics. I was fortunate enough to purchase one in 2003 at a corporate clearout for the princely sum of £3. I decided not to use it owing to my existing keyboard which was serving me perfectly well....

December 5, 2015 · 3 min · 484 words · leonroy