I’ve thought more on this yesterday, and I think my issue is-

I don’t want something that ‘just works’, I want to BUILD something that ‘just works’

The distinction is that I don’t want to buy premade solutions. I want to make them. Not because of the customizability, but because the fun is in the building. Think Lego- hundreds of people build the exact same product in the end, but why are they sold in pieces? Just assemble the damn things and sell them complete (with markup). You think more people wanna buy that?? I’d bet against it.

Hard agree. In fact, I think there’s a market for JUST the guides. It’s true that there’s a TON of guides out there already, from old blogs to YouTube, but the issue is: all of them start or end with: “your use case might differ, so perhaps this solution isn’t for you.” Or “make sure this setup is compatible with your specific hardware”

For example: I want to set up some sort of backup/cloud storage type system. Well there’s about 1400 ways to accomplish that. I can easily just grab one and go, but I’ll always wonder- should I have done this a different way? Would my life be easier/more secure if I chose a different set up?

So offering hardware that is compatible with whatever “stack” of services included would be a huge plus. Sorta like getting a raspberry pi and following a specific raspberry pi tutorial- you know the issues you get aren’t gonna be due to incompatibility.

I think it really boils down to the scale of one’s home lab- are you just tinkering to get some skills and make something cool? Or are you hoping to do something much much bigger? Different software solutions fit those extremes differently.

Sorry, got off rambling there. I guess I’ve been down the home lab hardware/software wormhole for too long these last few weeks.

Damn. This doesn’t match my experience in Hawaii at all. My in-laws live there, and everytime I visit I sustain my life with fruit and Avacados. I’d kill for some plant based SPAM.

It’s why I never say “eat the rich”, instead say: “compost the rich”. That way everyone knows I am serious about both parts of the ‘joke’.

Yeah, two separate drives. Do you set up bios legacy from the bios menu?

Damn, that would be perfect. I’ll give that a go. Thanks

Interesting… but that just replaces an existing step with another step. I’d like to reduce the overall steps to get to each system. And if I can’t do that, I’d at least like to switch the order to win>EOS>Deb

Yeah, we’re talking past each other.

I understand how to do it, I just don’t think it makes sense that it’s necessary to do it that way.

Zero should equal “max taxes withheld” and the fact that it’s more complicated than that makes it feel intentionally complex (which I’m aware it is)

But isn’t that the whole point?? If I put zeros on my w4, why the fuck do I have to use another tool to calculate what I’ll be taxed, then add an additional withholding to make sure I don’t end up with a tax bill in April?

It’s insane.

but there isn’t a “Big Vegan” industry with deep pockets to financially support astroturfing.

Well then who keeps sending me all this free tofu with envelopes of cash taped to it whenever I upvote a pro-vegan meme?

Oh wow. That is a good tip. Because that could drive someone like me insane. (Un)fortunately— I know there’s an issue. Any traffic I pass through my wg vpn ends up nowhere. So I know the tragic is being redirected, but I can’t tell where or why it doesn’t make it inside my home network.

Either way, I got Tailscale to work right out the rip, so I’m just rocking that until I have more time to tinker with WG.

This is the first time I have attempted to port forward. So there is only one rule: this one. Port 5xxxx:5xxxx to the internal IP with the wg-easy docker container.

Thanks for the reply, but I’ve bailed on this project for now. I fly to Europe tomorrow, so I don’t have any extra time to tinker. I gave Tailscale a try, and it works flawlessly, so I’m not likely to try WireGuard any time soon. I’ll wait for them to try an monetize their “free plan” users.

This comment has been haunting me a bit. I have been struggling with my port forwarding in the rest of this thread, so I decided I need to investigate alternatives. I’ve heard good things about Tailscale, so I started googling. The following quote is directly from the Tailscale web-page: (emphasis mine):

“WireGuard is typically configured using the wg-quick tool. To connect two devices, you install WireGuard on each device, generate keys for each device, and then write a text configuration for each device. The configuration includes information about the device (port to listen on, private IP address, private key) and information about the peer device (public key, endpoint where the peer device can be reached, private IPs associated with the peer device). It’s straightforward, particularly for a VPN. Every pair of devices requires a configuration entry, so the total number of configuration entries grows quadratically in the number of devices if they are fully connected to each other.”

I find it odd that they would say this, if the Wireguard VPN works as you stated. Any tutorial or article regarding wireguard fails to make this discussion obvious, so I am now even a bit more confused. (still won’t solve my port forwarding issue. So I guess I’m stuck with Tailscale anyway…

EDIT: Tried from an external wifi network, same issue. I think it’s my port forwarding is broken/wrong. I can’t see the port being open from outside. Need to do some troubleshooting on that end. Any advice would be welcome.

I will try that today.

For your first question: I went to https://www.portchecktool.com/ and found that the connection is being refused. So I think this is the issue. I will have to dig in a bit more, but I do believe the answer to your 2nd and 3rd question are - yes.

Damn. That sounds perfect. That’s exactly how I was hoping it would work. But for some reason my phone won’t connect… I wonder how to troubleshoot it.

Thanks for the reply. As I said below: when I flip on the wireguard toggle in my phone’s app, it appears as if I am connected, but it seems something is off. I am not seeing the “last handshake on” line, and when I try to navigate to the internet (for example ‘whatismyip’, my browser app times out. So it seems my requests are trying to go through the VPN, but they are getting stuck.

Okay, I thought something seemed a bit odd about what I was doing. So for my use case, I only need to access my home network with my phone, or my laptop. So all I need is a wireguard server on my home network (currently the case, running wg-easy), and the wireguard client on my phone and laptop.

I have that happening right now. And strangely when I am connected to my home wifi I am seeing the “last handshake” information in the wireguard app. But as soon as I turn off wifi and attempt to use my cell network, that line disappears from the app.

Although the frontend webpage for wg-easy still shows my phone connected.

Lets pretend it is connected. You’re saying I could simply type “192.168.3.69/login” into my phone’s browser, and I would see the mineos login page as if I was on my home’s wifi?? Because that would literally be perfect.

That is incredibly true. I try to automate everything I can. That’s where laziness is a superpower.

That sounds pretty slick. I envy your scripting prowess. You really have to know your system top to bottom to be able to boil it all down like that.

I’m just beginning my journey into this whole space, and it’s really interesting how many different ways people have to deal with the same basic things.

I’m also incredibly lazy, so maybe more scripting is in my future! Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply!