Oh, I backup religiously since Blue failed right after I moved and backup my backups on my laptop as well. (literally failed; I lost everything and had to run photorec and three other tools to pick out everything I’d done for the previous six months, since that I hadn’t copied to a backup on my server because I was prepping to move at the time).

So far, OTBR is the biggest stopping issue since HA runs it but nothing sticks. I admit, moving zwave is my actual biggest dread; zigbees I can do probably in a weekend, but zwave is such hell to unpair and re-pair (thought it makes up for it by sticking forever). That’s part of the reason I love Thread and Matter; they’re almost as sticky as zwave once they pair, and while pairing them is variable (sometimes fast, sometimes not so much) they repair themselves pretty consistently if the outage is under 24 hours and you can deliberately unpair them fairly easily.

I’ve been running Home Assistant for roughly five-six years (Pi, then Blue, now Amber and a second instance on my server for network integrations like nmap and netgear), but since my SmartThings hub was taking care of zigbee/zwave, until now I used HA as a coordinator for every smart device ecosystem I was using (Hue, Wyze, Ring, Blink, Alexa, August, Arlo, et al). Sorry that wasn’t clear.

While Ive started slowly adding zigbee devices directly, I haven’t started with zwave and thread isn’t working for me yet (OTBR is running but nothing sticks). And I really don’t want to have my hub fail and all my thread/matter devices useless when I don’t have anything that can access them.

So far, the OTBR on HA isn’t working, but…if it’s an age and device issue, it may be migrating the zigbee and zwave over to HA and leave my SmartThings for my OTBR devices will work for now. That may at least buy some time to work out how to make the HA’s OTBR work.

It’s not reliable on thread/matter.

I use zigbee, zwave, and thread. I’ve migrated half my contact sensors, a few motion and presence, and two rooms of light bulbs to thread, which HA is…questionable on, hence beginning my search.

The shell integration is why this happened.; I wanted to run the update script as a service so it could be triggered when the Supervisor or Core versions changed so it would automatically symlink my scripts in /usr/local/bin in the ssh_addon container. The shell integration runs in the homeassistant container, so that’s when it became complicated.

So it can be done, it just–required a lot of steps and me making a mapping spreadsheet of all the containers. But! Automations and scripts run in the homeassistant container, while when you ssh, you’re going into the ssh addon container which should have been obvious and really was once I finished mapping all the containers.

Goal: I need /usr/local/bin in the ssh container so I can run scripts over ssh and access my function library script easily without ./path/to/script.

Summary: ssh into HAOS from the homeassistant container with an HAOS root user (port 22222), run docker exec to get into the ssh addon container, then make your symlinks for /usr/local/bin.

(Note: this is ridiculously complicated and I know there has to be a better way. But this works so I win.)

1. Get access to HAOS itself as root: https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/operating-system/debugging. Verify you can login successfully.
2. In homeassistant container:

• a. create an .ssh folder (/config/.ssh)
• b. add the authorized_keys file you made for step one.
• c. add the public and private keys you made for step one (should be in the ssh addon container).
• d. set permissions;

chmod 600 /config/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 /config/.ssh/PRIVATE_KEY
chmod 644 /config/.ssh/PUBLIC_KEY
chmod 700 /config/.ssh

• e. In /config/shell_scripts.yaml or wherever you put your shell scripts, add the script you want to use to update /usr/local/bin: UPDATE_BIN_SCRIPT: /config/shell_scripts/UPDATE_BIN_SCRIPT
• f. Restart HA.
• g. Check it in Developer Tools->Services

I have no idea how consistent the ssh addon container name is usually but it’s different on all three of my installs, so insert your container name for SSH_ADDON_CONTAINER_NAME

Steps: login to HAOS, go into the SSH Container, and do the update. This is horribly messy but hey, it works.

UPDATE_BIN_SCRIPT

#!/bin/bash

# OPTIONAL: Update some of the very outdated alpine packages in both homeassistant and the ssh addon (figlet makes cool ascii art of my server
# name).   You'll need to run it twice; once for the homeassistant container, then again in the ssh container.  Assuming you want to update packages,
# anyway
# update homeassistant container packages
apk add coreutils figlet iproute2 iw jq ncurses procps-ng sed util-linux wireless-tools

# ssh into HAOS and access docker container
ssh -i /config/.ssh/PRIVATE_KEY -p 22222 root@HA_IP_ADDRESS << EOF
	docker exec SSH_ADDON_CONTAINER_NAME \
	bash -c \
       'apk add coreutils figlet iproute2 iw jq ncurses procps-ng sed util-linux wireless-tools; \
	if [ ! -h /usr/local/bin/SCRIPT1 ]; then echo "SCRIPT1 does not exist"; \
	ln -s /homeassistant/shell_scripts/SCRIPT1 /usr/local/bin/SCRIPT1; echo "Link created"; \
	else echo "Link exists";fi; \
	if [ ! -h /usr/local/bin/SCRIPT2 ]; then echo "SCRIPT2 does not exist"; \
	ln -s /homeassistant/shell_scripts/SCRIPT2 /usr/local/bin/SCRIPT2; echo "Link created"; \
	else echo "Link exists";fi'
EOF

echo "Done"

I am going to feel really stupid when I find out there’s a much easier way.

Docker containers are designed to be immutable. The moment they’re stopped and recreated, any changes to them ads thrown out. You’re supposed to add a layer to your Docker image if you want to add command lines and such. That’s why it’ll keep deleting your stuff every time you update.

It took me until I put Home Assistant on my server in a docker container to realize what was going on there. I use docker more now, but it’s really, really nothing like this.

Running the script inside Docker should put it in the right place, but I wouldn’t advice doing it that way.

That’s what I’ve been doing manually over regular ssh (not the 22222 port one).

To work around the path issue, maybe consider using hard links rather than soft links?

That’s what I think I need to do, but the only ‘hard’ links–at least according to multiple find -name/find -iname searches on the ssh 22222 port–are all in /mnt/data/docker/overlay2 and /var/lib/docker/overlay2. I get there’s a working pattern with the overlays but dear God why.

Alternatively, you could figure out where HAOS stores the Docker config and add a volume definition of your own. You’ll probably be able to put all of your files in /usr/local/bin by adding a line like “- /path/home/host:/usr/local/bin” in the right place. I don’t know where this config is stored, though.

Okay that makes sense. I guess the first step is to get the container structure and volume.

Thanks so much! I’ll update if I find the solution or die trying.

Logically, I want to say no, not really, but I also would have thought the blackout and ongoing protests wouldn’t really affect Reddit and they’d ignore it. Reddit itself, however, seems incredibly determined to pursue a course of action which requires performing This Does Not Affect Us At All as dramatically and publicly as possible given the slightest opportunity whether anyone cares or not. This doesn’t even include the admins playing subreddit roulette that encompasses actively rebelling subs, subs deep in malicious compliance, and subs that have no idea wtf is going on they just want to talk about their weird NSFW fetish in peace.

So no, I don’t think so, but I’m beginning to wonder if Reddit thinks there is and what they’re seeing on their side that I’m not.

I semi-regularly distro-hop, but Xubuntu is the distro I keep coming back to between hops to take a break or when one goes (temporarily) dormant. It’s currently running on my primary server/linux machine.

Reasons: 1.) It’s light on resources 2.) It’s very simple and clean. 3.) It works with all the programs I use regularly; only one needs to be hand-compiled (but that one has to be compiled for literally any Linux machine). 4.) I know it. Scrub/partition/install/configure in under an hour. I can pick up any of my projects again immediately where I left off.

The only reason I have social media accounts under my wallet name is to avoid anyone wondering why I’m not on social media (also: grandparents). Everyone IRL who I care enough about to actually explain know I login once a year in a separate browser (under incognito) and check every privacy setting from my checklist and update if it’s important (like job change). LinkedIn I check regularly, but that’s because a.) I only connect with people from work and a lot of them do think it’s important to have strong networks (and they could be right, no idea) and b.) LinkedIn has an education section that my job really likes because it has free classes and when I get bored at work, I can do a quick class in something (nothing they actually want us to do; I have to work in the nightmare that is Agile, do not make me take yet another class about the benefits of this software development hellscape, thanks).

Honestly, I try to give the impression I’m not into social media IRL; there are like, three people in my daily life who are allowed into my online life and one because we more or less both got the internet at the same time and started a mailing list together. Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of nice people IRL, but not the type I want to introduce to the friends I made online.

I started vaping seven years ago as a way to quit smoking; I smoked my last cigarette literally outside the vape store before walking in and asking what to I buy to pull this off as nothing worked. The transition was seamless; not only did I never even crave a cigarette again, I very quickly learned to loathe the smell of cigarettes once my full range of smell came back. There’s not even a temptation to start up again.

It also helps that I choose vapes that smell amazing.

I am still vaping, yes, but I’m stepping down my nicotine pretty much every two years. I started at 24 and am now at 15 (I was stuck at 18 for a while). Those transitions I can definitely feel, but I can start with adjusting my mod’s wattage, air flow, use different coils for a bit, and ease into it so once I step down, there’s no chance I step back up, and then reward myself sometimes with a new fancy mod with a touchscreen with more leds or a cooler tank or something. All that and I am spending an order of magnitude less than I ever did on cigarettes and I have the math to prove it.

It’s certainly not ideal and yeah, it’s slow and basically only progressively reducing harm, but it’s a process that for me is guaranteed to work with no backtracking and progress is assured.

Oh thank God. Normally I know how to read (since kindergarten) but in the time between posting and your reply, I hit a very unwilling thirty-six hours awake so I low-grade panicked that actually, it only read normal to me and I was lecturing people on becoming a vegan fascists or something.

I am still thinking on the article but it’s going to need a couple of times to put it in context. I’m still trying not to form really firm opinions on much yet on Fediverse since I seriously do not know enough and yes, even I find it hilarious when I have to backtrack from a really stupid position, but I can save public embarrassment for later. Lemmy’s still young, I have plenty of time for that.

Sweet Roko’s Basilisk, so I wasn’t missing some mysterious reddit setting where I ‘new’ was translated as ‘wtf’ and ‘crap’?

It’s a whole new world.

Okay, I apologize for missing something; I don’t disagree with any of that. Did I give the impression I did?

Oh God no, that’s not where I want this to go; that pretty much defeats the entire point. This is to expand our options so we can use the plural form of ‘options’ and not the singular and I’m optimistic there will be more.

I’m a QC analyst and we are fully Agile, so I’m required to attend ever. team. meeting. Discovery, story point estimation, design spikes, any day can be poorly handled emotional regulation day and whoever’s feeling it is making it everyone’s problem when all we want is to finish a few maintenance items and maybe add a comma to some text. Though the testers have nothing to do with this after story point until there actual code migrated to one of the testing environments, we are forced to bear witness to entire dev teams made up of people from three to eight countries, whose only common language is English and as often the only native speaker, I am the only one who can’t mutter not very goddamn quietly in my native tongue that no one else understands; this may have been my motivation at one point to learn Welsh on Duolingo. A Project Manager making three times more than anyone else in the room sometimes swoops in during SCRUM two weeks into our sprint cycle to be perky at us and–on far too many occasions for this to be random–informs us the acceptance criteria had a couple of updates before swooping back out to PM something else’s life. We all hate her quietly until someone who went to check JIRA notes there are double the number of criteria and the user story is not the same in any way;. then everyone but me gets to hate her verbally with no one the wiser. I maintain bitterly grudging silence because everyone in the room speaks English, sometimes better than I do, and they have been in Texas long enough to pickup conversationally hostile Spanish. Our scrum master will either grimly pretend it’s always been this way or very blatantly not care.

At final demo as the tester, I will perform a dramatic rendition of ‘page with comma’ and ‘title:justfication left’ or run batch scripts in terminal while they watch absolutely nothing happening and nod wisely. Half the people in attendance wears suits for a living and have never used a computer; they have secretaries for that. Two worked with my mom and are quietly judging my performance and find me lacking. One stakeholder will ask a thousand questions, five of which have any relation to what we’re doing and I am expected to answer with no discernible change in my performance. Someone is watching TV and can’t be fucked to turn down the volume. Everyone else sits in eerie silence and I might hear a snore. Every one of these people are considered qualified enough to decide if we’re did a good job and sign off on it so we can finally end the sprint and the code can be added to the next release to production. No one feels a sense of relief or satisfaction; at least one dev hasn’t slept since the PM destroyed our lives and may be clinically insane.

Our sprints last four weeks with a prep week in between; we will experience some version of this cycle of dev hell roughly eight times a year and sometimes involving the legislature making their lack of time management all of our problem. Only one sprint will go as planned. One.

The worst part is; despite this, knowing full well what hell is before me, I went back to college for software development of my own free will.

I don’t mean that things are badly made, just that the resources to enter lemmy are targeting a specific audience still.

You don’t say. What a weirdly easy to fix problem that only requires the ability to add links and text to a webpage: that’s a rare combination of skills indeed.

You first need to learn what lemmy is, how it works (because nerds can’t simply tell how you can do it, they need you to understand how it works first), and then where and how to register.

Bold choice: I can honestly say it never occurred to me to insist someone attend a mandatory lecture (is there a quiz afterward) to have the opportunity to join a server so they can post memes and find people who are into baking bread and Smurfs meta.

Yes, I am being sarcastic–because everything you observed is alarmingly accurate to the point one might be forgiven for saying it’s a pattern-- but I’m also beginning to wonder if I’m having a some kind of break with reality on how the joining a Federated server works.

The process is as follows (I think):

• 1.) Go to Join Lemmy. Click “Find a Server”
• 2.) Make sure language is set to [your language]. Click on a cute animal icon; it genuinely does not matter which one. This is not a lifetime commitment; it’s a first date.
• 3.) Click on Sign Up on [Server Name].
• 4.) Enter a username, email (maybe optional) your password twice, and do the Turing puzzle. [Optional: three to four short answer questions on your name, your interests, why you’re here, and possible some recreational math] Check NSFW for porn as desired. Click the clearly marked button Sign Up.
• 5.) You’re a Lemmite now; go with God and experience the wonders of the Federation’s shitposts and feelings about cats.

I am genuinely wondering what it is I’m missing about the shortest, easiest social media sign up process I’ve done and my body count is greater than twenty at minimum and some places, I had multiple accounts [excluding: usenet, mailing lists, messageboards et al]; tumblr was like three pages of cross-examination and required me to expend effort to think up easy to remember lies to get through too many mandatory questions; Facebook wanted me to write a detailed autobiography with exact dates covering birth to present day in their multi-page questionnaire of my life and times and I did this while scanning for surprise privacy settings and feeling exposed.

Non-sarcastically: reading this, it makes me wonder what would have happened if I’d asked someone what mastodon is and how it works instead of googling and excitedly jumping into something new to see what happened.

If i had been told before I even googled the website that picking a server/federation is way too complicated for most people, that to sign up I needed to do my homework on the origins and history of the Federation so I’d be able to understand it, as the process to create an account is complicated and confusing. For most people, that is.

I’m pretty sure I would have done it anyway, but I don’t think I would have seen it as a brand new adventure, something new to learn about and explore and be part of and helped grow. I wonder if i would have posted an intro and started following people who were doing the things I went back to school to learn do and finally get my degree so I could learn from them. Or would I have read my feed wondering what to do; everyone here knew all about the Federation and I couldn’t ask them because then they’d know I didn’t belong; I was just a college dropout who learned to script and linux and design websites because it was fun and went back to school with some serious overconfidence in my skills. I wonder if I would ever have posted a single word before I finally realized this is not an after school special, I am not a tragic victim of mean people, so cheer the fuck up and do your homework already

Or: if I’d just take my ritalin, because if I remember correctly, I was compiling my very first kernel, on my own, outside school lab conditions (Raspberry Pi 4 8GB, 64 bit: Eurydice) so yeah, I would have like an hour earlier, I would have immediately realized this person was telling me that this place is not for me and I did not belong. And I would have agreed; buddy, I’ve been condescended to by literal geniuses with PhDs in fields I can’t spell. Whole servers of them exist? Christ. Thank God for the warning, I’m gonna dip. Not that I would have said that: depending on how the compile went, i would have either devoted a twitter thread to performing a melodramatic interpretation of it or forgot about it with a vague hostility toward Mastodon and that weird Federation thing.

Talk about the road not taken.

So after twenty-something years on social media, along with mailing lists, messageboards, usenet, this is a topic I think about literally every time I have to add, change, migrate, delete my account as I migrated from platform to platform like some virtual vagabond between text-driven city-states. A virtual vagabond with no worldly goods, no name, no history, and completely invisible to all. To exist, I must apply to the City Leader, and if accepted, I get a name, a nice studio apartment, and visibility as well as contact with other humans after watching a short commercial every five or so humans. If I leave, am thrown out, or the city is burned down, I can’t take anything the city gave me with me. By ‘gave’, I mean ‘loaned’ btw; none of those things were actually mine.

All the discussion of whether or not to federate with Threads were interesting in that in general, it’s kind of pointless. A server instance isn’t a democracy; the owner’s opinion is the only one that matters. If you don’t like it, leave. And I don’t argue their right to do so; they’re paying the bills, doing the upgrades, eating grapes with robot butlers, I don’t know their lives. Federated means anyone can run their own not-twitter or not-reddit; go for it. All you need is money, free time, and the knowledge of how to register a domain name, get, run, secure, and maintain servers, and install and configure the program, lure people in, and avoid breaking any national or international laws. Like I said: I really seriously do not argue the owner’s right to decide anything for their server. i know how to do all those things and I ran several websites and archives: I wanted a nap before installation step.

Fediverse is a massive step in loosening the stranglehold megacorporations had on our ability to shitpost in peace and talk about our cats without feeling stalked by people wanting to sell us shit or sell our browsing habits, blood pressure, and underwear size to those who will the try to sell us deeply individualized shit; it’s the circle of life, man.

Wow this got long but feelings.

So at this point–two decades and change of social media, the rise and fall of social empires, so much virtual vagabonding across the virtual desert to find a new city-state…I don’t think it’s too early to consider getting around to a productive discussion of how we go about separating the individual identity from the community and define what is theirs to keep no matter where they are. If there was ever a place and time to start building a model, it’s where all the city states are allies and the individuals can interact with each other no matter what city they’re in. The account transferability in Mastodon is a really good start, but it’s not a solution, much less the solution. It’s a beginning.

I don’t expect to have a working, finished, flawless product in six to eight weeks or six to eight months; I expect it to slide in three weeks and two days after the announcement that it’s ready for alpha testing and immediately break the first time a tester opens it; it’ll be another month before it goes into testing again. I expect it will be a weird buggy mess of wtf after months of virtual warfare and everyone will hate it before the rough draft of the design documents are even released. I expect there will be one weird guy who really thinks everything should be written in Rust because he’s insane and never sleeps. Five to eight devs will dramatically quit; one will quietly move to Utah and farm emus. None of them will be the Rust guy; you’re stuck with him. I expect the working version after testing is done will be hated by everyone and probably kind of crappy. But it will also be amazing, because as of it’s release–no matter how shitty, buggy, or how many inexplicable design choices are made–the individual exists outside of being community property and that no matter where we go or how much we pissed off that admin or if our city-state was nuked from orbit, there are things that are ours and we get to keep them.

I’ve been thinking on that and assuming fosstodon and lemmy.world both agree to defederate with Threads, I’m going to go ahead and set up regular donations. I only use DW a few times a year, but I renew my premium membership every six months and it’s not cheap. I want to keep supporting it because its model does not include ads at all (premium gives you lots of icons, too, and I used to be a huge icon person, so I can’t say that’s not a consideration). Unless I lose my job or something, I’ll keep paying until death or dw closes whether I ever use it again; it’s worth supporting.

I was already considering it–when i joined mastodon I bought their stickers to show my appreciation–but this is been a wake-up call. If lemmy.world decides to federate, I mean, I’m not going to leave, but I am going to email lemmy.ml about why my application is still pending and use that for my primary.