Inventory Time

 Why is taking inventory at times in your homelab frought with difficulty? I periodically take inventory to remind myself of all the things I have bought over time and have not used yet.  I was amazed at the number of Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and ESP32s I have in my tubs.  It does however give me a chance to figure out what new and different projects that I want to get into.  It also forces to the front all of the projects that got waylaid because I found something newer and shinnier out there.  Case in point: I discovered an UNO R3 board that was based on an ESP32 chip and I discovered an ESP32-P4 board which was size wise identical to a Raspberry Pi.  Who knew? 

I discovered a bankers box at the top of my double shelf system that had all kinds of electronic breadboards in the process of being activated into a project and had been stored away for later use.  I am in the process of re-arranging my rack to add an additional panel of RPis, mostly 3s and 2s.  Once I have that accomplished, I will be choosing what things I want the older RPis to do. I would like to concentrate on internal rack and HomeLab monitoring functions.  Not easy but possible to do in a short sequence of actions.  My other hobbies have gotten out of hand.

I have been contemplating what changes need to be made to the rack and other components

 Right now I need to get the RPi Cluster Box onto the shelf.  I need to remove the WAP that I have hooked to my patch panel on my shelf.  By doing this I will free up some space on the shelf so that the equipment can fit.  

I also need to determine whether I should add the Edgerouter 12p to the mix.  I found out that I should be able to setup some of the ports on the 12p to act like a generic unmanaged switch with no router functions.  I will believe it when I see it however.  I am also not sure of how hot the 12p will get sitting on the shelf. It would make things a lot easier though.

So my immediate concern is to keep the SW116 on the shelf, preferably under the RPi Cluster and work on configuring the 12p later.  This should be a workable solution.  I have already started to determine which RPis will fit into the rack unit that I moved EXP0 through EXP3 from and become my new xPod elements.

Doing Some Cleanup and Adding and External RPi Cluster box

 I have needed to cleanup the rack and all of the cabling around the rack for some time.  I recently purchased a RPi Cluster Box which I will integrate with the HomeLab equipment in some form.  

I discovered that Uctronics changed their placement of the captive screws so that I cannot use the removable trays from the RPi racks in the new cluster box.  Since this is the second change that I have discovered in the equipment that I have bought from them, I can no longer recommend purchasing from them if you expect any kind of consistency in product.  If your purchase is to guarantee that you will have to remove the RPi from the removable tray in order to use them, so be it.

A general cleanup of the area around my desk is definately in order. This will also give me a chance to put things away that I have out from the equipment tubs that I am no longer using, and will give me a chance to figure out how I want to proceed from here on out.

RPi OVS Split #01 - still coming to grips with what I want from the change

So even though I generated an output from chatGPT, I am still contemplating if this is all that I want the AI prompt to provide. The output that was produced was some 22 pages in length.  I had added a third namespace to the item.

My thoughts were to have one namespace be connected to an external Ethernet adapter, eth1, which could then provide a router function to my WISP environment.  I was going to do this even though I really didn't need it.  I have plenty of routers in my stock without resorting to having a RPi be my router, providing DNS and DHCP services to whatever was connected to the adapter.  I had originally thought about using it to provide DNS/DHCP to my laptop if I decided to turn off the rack equipment.  So far so good. 

Project #39 - Using AI to Develop a Configuration to Connect a Raspberry Pi into Two Different Networks

 I was attempting to determine how to connect a Raspberry Pi into 2 different networks using the power of OpenVSwitch.  What I came up with used the following prompt:

"You are an expert user of bash on Linux and of virtual networking including Docker and LXC.  Develop a set of CLI commands to use on a Raspberry Pi 4B using RaspiOS to use Open V Switch to:

1. Use OVS to split the networking into 2 or 3 separate name spaces so that the Raspberry Pi has an internal NAT separating a network using the Raspberry Pi’s wifi and a network using the Raspberry Pi’s ethernet. 

2. Show the network setups in a Docker Compose yaml file to connect to the name spaces that have been defined. 

3. The Docker Compose yaml file will separate the Docker containers to those on the wifi facing network and those on the ethernet facing network. 

4. Both of the name spaces should have their own IP addresses defined from external DHCP sources. 

5. Explain each step in the process, including installation and configuration of changes to the Raspberry Pi networking system and introduction of openvswitch software. 

6. Document this setup in a Microsoft Word document that can be downloaded."

I now have a Microsoft Word document that I can execute items from to test out if this is going to work.

Back Together Although I am Looking Through Some New Projects

Well I did manage to get the rack back together once the window washers left.  In the process, I figured out which cables to disconnect from the equipment in the back.  I now have 5 cables coming in to a desktop patch panel and then connected into SW116, a managed GS108Tv2 switch.  From SW116, it goes to the rack.  This means that I have only two connections to the rack; one ethernet and one power.  I have also setup a connection that I can use to occupy the placement of a cable to my FLINT2 router.  I haven't removed the connection to the rack yet, but this should enable me to move the FLINT2 router to the area behind my rack.  What I want to be able to do is power down the rack but still allow my laptop to work and the table electronics to be worked on with connection to the apartment network.  I could still do this with the FLINT1 that I have in the living room if I wish instead.

So now that I have just admitted this, I don't know what I was thinking of moving the FLINT2 for.  Just shows that my mind is still stumbling over various configurations until I get to the right one. Other than bringing down equipment because it is not being used, I am mistified.

Everything is apart - what have I done?

 So they are coming tomorrow to clean our windows. This is an event that happens at least every three years.  So I have to have all of my things away from the windows for them to get to the windows.  That includes my HomeLab. Some changes that I have been doing have been leading up to this point.  While I have the rack off, I also need to have my ethernet cables and desk moved back from the window so they can get behind.  I don't know if you have ever thought through how to rearrange things but I have.  So I drew everything Ethernet wise into a table patch panel.  In turn I am using 0.5 ft patch cables to go from the patch panel to one of the GS108Tv2s.  That allows me to have all of my vlans active when everything is connected, allows one Ethernet cable to the rack (which I can unplug tonight), and makes for an easy way to move the equipment off of the window ledge.

So I have unplugged the rack and moved it out of the way. I have also unplugged the living room cable and the one to the AP.  Now after moving them out of the way I can get everything off of the window ledge.  So I am ready for the cleaning and will put everything back together later on.