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    <title>Chameth.com - posts like debugging-beyond-the-debugger, docker-automatic-nginx-proxy, g15-ram-upgrade, thinking-more-about-backups, travel-toolkit, why-you-should-be-using-https</title>
    <subtitle>Personal homepage of Chris Smith</subtitle>
    <link href="https://chameth.com/feeds/posts/like/debugging-beyond-the-debugger,docker-automatic-nginx-proxy,g15-ram-upgrade,thinking-more-about-backups,travel-toolkit,why-you-should-be-using-https/" rel="self"/>
    <link href="https://chameth.com/"/>
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    <updated>2026-01-29T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <id>https://chameth.com/</id>
    <author>
        <name>Chris Smith</name>
    </author>
    <entry>
        <title>An interesting Tailscale + Docker gotcha</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/tailscale-docker-gotcha/"/>
        <updated>2026-01-29T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/tailscale-docker-gotcha/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;p&gt;As I’ve &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/how-i-use-tailscale/&#34;&gt;written&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/avoiding-the-consequences-of-dumb-laws-with-tailscale/&#34;&gt;about&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/exposing-game-servers-over-tailscale/&#34;&gt;before&lt;/a&gt;, I use &lt;a href=&#34;https://tailscale.com/&#34;&gt;Tailscale&lt;/a&gt; for a lot of things. I thought I had it set up in a reasonably secure manner, but I recently noticed a problem.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I use Tailscale’s ACLs to limit what each node can access, based on the tags I apply to it. So an &lt;code&gt;app&lt;/code&gt; node can’t access anything via Tailscale, while an &lt;code&gt;integration&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;server&lt;/code&gt; node can access things tagged with either &lt;code&gt;app&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;integration&lt;/code&gt;. This is expressed pretty simply in the Tailscale ACL JSON:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;pre class=&#34;chroma-chroma&#34;&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;{&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tagOwners&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;{&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;// Servers that can be SSH&amp;#39;d into
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:server&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;// Applications that are exposed on tailscale but never connect out
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:app&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;// Things which talk to other services over tailscale (connecting to apps etc)
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:integration&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;},&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;grants&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;{&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;// Users can access everything
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;src&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;autogroup:member&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;dst&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;*&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;ip&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;*&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;},&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;{&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;// Servers and integrations can access integrations and apps
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;src&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:server&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:integration&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;dst&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:integration&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:app&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;ip&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;  &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;*&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;},&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the past week I’ve been setting up a private &lt;a href=&#34;https://forgejo.org/&#34;&gt;Forgejo&lt;/a&gt; instance behind Tailscale, complete with an actions runner that runs things using a docker-in-docker container. I didn’t want the runner knowing anything about Tailscale, so I had it configured to speak to Forgejo direct over HTTP (&lt;code&gt;forgejo:3000&lt;/code&gt;) instead of using full Tailscale HTTPS URL that I use when accessing it (&lt;code&gt;http://git.example-net.ts.net/&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:1&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Everything was going fine, until I forgot to do that translation… and it worked. My Forgejo action runners could access anything on my tailnet. I run several things on Tailscale that just have authentication turned off, on the basis that only authorised devices can access them. Things like the admin interface for this website. I definitely didn’t intend for any workflow I run on my git server to have access to edit my website!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This wasn’t just limited to Forgejo, either. Any docker container I was running could access the tailnet. In hindsight it’s fairly obvious why: the host is running Tailscale, connected as a node tagged with my &lt;code&gt;server&lt;/code&gt; tag. That creates a &lt;code&gt;tailscale0&lt;/code&gt; interface, and automagically sets up iptables rules to route Tailscale traffic over the interface. Docker also automagically sets up iptables rules to bridge traffic, and apparently these two sets of rules interact in such a way that traffic from Docker containers is allowed to route via the &lt;code&gt;tailscale0&lt;/code&gt; interface.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I say it’s fairly obvious in hindsight — there’s no reason why Docker would special case any particular host interface after all — but it still feels pretty surprising. Because both bits of software inject their own iptables rules, I never really had a good mental model for how they interact. The host Tailscale node was a completely separate building block to Docker. It would be a pain to use either of them if they didn’t do these rules, but it’s also one of the reasons I don’t really like “magical” things&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:2&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are lots of ways to fix this, but none of them feel particularly great. You can configure both Tailscale and Docker to not automatically fiddle with iptables and handle the rules yourself, but I really hate dealing with iptables&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:3&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. As a stopgap I did hold my nose and add some iptables rules to drop traffic to the &lt;code&gt;tailscale0&lt;/code&gt; interface if it originated from the IP ranges that Docker was configured to use:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;pre class=&#34;chroma-chroma&#34;&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;iptables -I DOCKER-USER -s 192.168.0.0/16 -o tailscale0 -j DROP
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;iptables -I DOCKER-USER -s 172.17.0.0/12 -o tailscale0 -j DROP
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;DOCKER-USER&lt;/code&gt; chain is a nice little escape hatch; it comes before the main auto-generated &lt;code&gt;DOCKER&lt;/code&gt; chain, and Docker leaves the rules in it alone.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So I added these rules, and felt pretty good about myself, and then… everything started breaking in weird ways. After some debugging I realised the problem was DNS&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:4&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:4&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. The server’s DNS resolver is &lt;code&gt;100.100.100.100&lt;/code&gt;, a special Tailscale address. This is so that it can resolve tailnet hostnames via &lt;a href=&#34;https://tailscale.com/kb/1081/magicdns&#34;&gt;MagicDNS&lt;/a&gt; (and so I don’t have to configure my custom DNS servers manually on each device; Tailscale does it for me). My new iptables rules inadvertently dropped all the DNS packets coming from docker containers. D’oh.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Obviously the solution here is to double down and add MORE iptables rules:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;pre class=&#34;chroma-chroma&#34;&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;iptables -I DOCKER-USER -s 192.168.0.0/16 -d 100.100.100.100 -o tailscale0 -j ACCEPT
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;iptables -I DOCKER-USER -s 172.17.0.0/12 -d 100.100.100.100 -o tailscale0 -j ACCEPT
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;This got DNS working again, but it all feels a bit gross. Not least because to actually make these persist you need to use &lt;code&gt;iptables-save&lt;/code&gt;, and then you also get all the rules that both Docker and Tailscale have inserted. I came across &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/giangi/iptables-docker-filter&#34;&gt;a script&lt;/a&gt; to filter out the Docker ones, but… yuck&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:5&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:5&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I realised a cleaner idea might just be to lock down what &lt;code&gt;server&lt;/code&gt; tagged nodes could access within Tailscale itself. That way I can avoid touching iptables at all. It’s handy to be able to &lt;code&gt;curl&lt;/code&gt; services from the host when debugging, but it’s not really necessary. So I removed that access, and… stuff broke again. I’m using my Forgejo instance as a registry for some of the docker images I run, so the docker daemon needs to be able to reach it. I ended up making a new tag for &lt;code&gt;infrastructure&lt;/code&gt;, which can be accessed from &lt;code&gt;server&lt;/code&gt; devices. This does still allow all the docker containers to reach Forgejo, but I already have it set up with appropriate access controls and public/private repository splits. Forgejo is a service designed to run publicly, so this seems a reasonable trade-off for convenience. I used the &lt;code&gt;tests&lt;/code&gt; feature of Tailscale’s ACL config to make sure I’d got the rules right:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;pre class=&#34;chroma-chroma&#34;&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;{&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tests&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;{&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;// Servers can only access infrastructure
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;src&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt;   &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:server&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;proto&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tcp&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;allow&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;				&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:infrastructure:8080&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nt&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;deny&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;				&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;100.84.16.43:8080&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;				&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;me@example.com:8080&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;				&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:server:8080&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;				&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:app:8080&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;				&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;tag:integration:8080&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;			&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;		&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;},&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;],&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;The whole situation still feels a bit messy. If I ever get around to switching to nftables I might loop back and manually craft some rules for routing traffic, instead of leaving Tailscale and Docker to do their own thing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class=&#34;footnotes&#34; role=&#34;doc-endnotes&#34;&gt;
&lt;hr/&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:1&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I discovered later on that logging into the container registry at &lt;code&gt;forgejo:3000&lt;/code&gt; actually issued a redirect to &lt;code&gt;https://git.example-net.ts.net/&lt;/code&gt; so this was all basically for naught… &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:2&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I didn’t use Tailscale’s MagicDNS for a long time just because the word “magic” put me off. Only when I eventually got around to learning how it worked, and seeing that it wasn’t really that magical under the hood, did I change my mind. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:3&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;nftables seems far better in lots of ways, but I can’t really be bothered migrating. Maybe next time I reimage the server for whatever reason… &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:4&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It’s always DNS… &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:4&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:5&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Again, nftables would almost certainly help here. It actually has (gasp) configuration files. But again, I really didn’t want to spend the time migrating. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:5&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>Thinking more about backups</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/thinking-more-about-backups/"/>
        <updated>2025-11-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/thinking-more-about-backups/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;figure class=&#34;image right&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/thinking-more-about-backups/backblaze.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/thinking-more-about-backups/backblaze.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/thinking-more-about-backups/backblaze.png&#34; alt=&#34;The Backblaze logo: a stylised flame above the word Backblaze&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;320&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Backblaze logo&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Almost a year ago I wrote about &lt;a href=&#34;https://chameth.com/simple-backups-restic-hetzner/&#34;&gt;how I do backups with Restic and Hetzner&lt;/a&gt;.
That system has been ticking along well ever since, but recently I had some… thoughts. These backups are
all well and good if I accidentally delete a file, or a database gets corrupted, or something, but there are
two glaring issues:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I’m backing up my Hetzner server to Hetzner cloud storage. If something happens to Hetzner — or
my Hetzner account — then all my eggs go down with that basket. Obviously Hetzner are a big organisation
and aren’t likely to just vanish overnight, but I’m less confident about my account. Could a false abuse
report get it suspended? What if the UK passes
&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/contents&#34;&gt;even more dumb laws&lt;/a&gt; and Hetzner decide it’s easier
just to not do business with people here? This is the same sort of concern I have about Google accounts:
if you have half of your life in Google Drive and Google Mail, what happens if you comment on a YouTube
video, get flagged by an AI moderation process, and your account gets suspended? It’s probably not very
likely, but these are things my brain likes to dwell on.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the credentials to access the backups sit on each machine that is backed up. If someone malicious
gained access to the machine, they’d also have access to delete or tamper with all the backups. It feels
a little silly that the same attack could take down both the originals and the backups. There’s no way to
avoid that with Hetzner’s S3 implementation, as far as I can tell.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;exploring-options&#34;&gt;Exploring options&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I toyed with the idea of making local copies of the backups, but the only way to avoid the same problems
would be to keep them offline and do a manual copy every now and then. I didn’t really want to do that,
and was concerned that if I did a monthly offline backup then I stood to lose up to a month of data in
the worst case.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I then looked around at other S3 providers. &lt;a href=&#34;https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/glacier/&#34;&gt;Amazon’s glacier offering&lt;/a&gt;
is tempting due to its very low storage costs, but you pay for that if you ever want to restore anything.
There are also lots of weird pricing edge cases around moving data between storage classes, minimum file
sizes, and so on. A much better option is &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage&#34;&gt;Backblaze’s B2&lt;/a&gt; product.
Their pricing is much more straight-forward, and they have an interesting feature that’s particularly useful
in this case: &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-b2-lifecycle-rules/&#34;&gt;lifecycle rules&lt;/a&gt;. Coupled with
the ability to create API keys that don’t have access to delete files (just “hide” them), this allows for
what’s effectively an append-only store.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This works more-or-less out of the box with Restic. &lt;a href=&#34;https://pricey.uk/blog/restic-backups-without-delete/&#34;&gt;Joseph Price has a guide&lt;/a&gt;
that goes into the setup in a bit more depth. Basically, whenever Restic would delete a file (e.g. during
a “forget” or “prune” operation), it instead gets hidden and is only deleted when the B2 lifecycle rules
decide it should be. I’ve kept the existing Hetzner S3 backups for now, and just added an extra step to
the end of my script: a simple &lt;code&gt;restic copy&lt;/code&gt; and a &lt;code&gt;restic forget&lt;/code&gt;. B2 actually works out cheaper than the
Hetzner storage, as they don’t bill you for a minimum of 1TB storage; my current usage is around $3/month.
Not a bad price for some extra peace of mind!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>Building a travel toolkit</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/"/>
        <updated>2025-01-02T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;figure class=&#34;image left&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/bag.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/bag.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/bag.png&#34; alt=&#34;UGREEN Travel Accessories Bag&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;365&#34; height=&#34;578&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;The container for my toolkit, a UGREEN “travel accessories” bag&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For a while now, whenever I’ve traveled anywhere I’ve dumped a selection of tools
into my backpack just in case I need them. Originally this was mostly focused
around being able to open and fix my laptop if anything went wrong, but
over time has slowly expanded to include other useful tools.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Repeatedly packing these tools and then returning them to where they belonged
was tedious, though. I couldn’t just leave them in the backpack as I often
needed them for non-travelling purposes, and I didn’t want to just buy duplicate
tools that spent most of their life a few meters away from each other, so I
ignored the problem and just dealt with the tedium.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Eventually I acquired enough tools that — while not quite duplicates — I
wouldn’t miss often if they were kept in the backpack. Building on these I’ve
created a little travel toolkit that contains everything I might want (and
more) while away.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;the-base&#34;&gt;The base&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The biggest challenge I had before was finding a screwdriver set. I have an
&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.ifixit.com/products/mako-driver-kit-64-precision-bits&#34;&gt;iFixit Mako&lt;/a&gt;
set that did the in-and-out-of-the-bag routine for several years. Nothing else
covered the range of drivers I wanted for generic electronic tinkering and
more chunky work. I finally found one in the form of a
&lt;a href=&#34;https://toolrebels.de/en/products/wera-tool-rebel-tool-check-plus-tr-edition&#34;&gt;Wera Tool-Check PLUS TR-Edition&lt;/a&gt;.
“TR” stands for “Tool Rebel” and is Wera’s “fan club” brand. Its signature
features over the normal Tool-Check PLUS are a fancy fabric case and a 152mm
bit extender; but it also comes with a much different set of bits, which is
why I picked it up.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--more--&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Here’s a comparison&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Standard version&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Tool Rebel edition&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Phillips&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;2x PH1&lt;br/&gt;3x PH2&lt;br/&gt;1x PH3&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x PH00&lt;br/&gt;1x PH0&lt;br/&gt;1x PH1&lt;br/&gt;1x PH2&lt;br/&gt;1x PH3&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Pozidrive&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;None&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x PZ1&lt;br/&gt;3x PZ2&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Slotted&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x 5.5mm&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x 4mm&lt;br/&gt;1x 4.5mm&lt;br/&gt;2x 5.5mm&lt;br/&gt;1x 6.5mm&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Torx&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x T10&lt;br/&gt;1x T15&lt;br/&gt;1x T20&lt;br/&gt;1x T25&lt;br/&gt;1x T30&lt;br/&gt;1x T40&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x T10&lt;br/&gt;1x T15&lt;br/&gt;1x T20&lt;br/&gt;1x T25&lt;br/&gt;1x T30&lt;br/&gt;1x T40&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Security Torx&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x T10&lt;br/&gt;1x T15&lt;br/&gt;1x T20&lt;br/&gt;1x T25&lt;br/&gt;1x T30&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x T25&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Hex&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x H3&lt;br/&gt;1x H4&lt;br/&gt;1x H5&lt;br/&gt;1x H6&lt;br/&gt;1x H8&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;1x H1.5&lt;br/&gt;1x H2&lt;br/&gt;1x H2.5&lt;br/&gt;1x H3&lt;br/&gt;1x H4&lt;br/&gt;1x H6&lt;br/&gt;1x H8&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are only five bits present in the standard version that are missing in
the TR edition: 5mm hex (pretty uncommon) and four sizes of security torx (rare).
In exchange for those and the removal of a bunch of duplicates, you get two extra
phillips sizes (0 and 00, both very useful for electronics and spectacles),
some pozidrive bits (extremely common on random hardware/furniture/etc),
smaller hex bits (for electronics, 3D printers, and so on), and a few other
bits and pieces.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Overall it’s a vastly superior selection for my needs. And while it doesn’t have
the full range of bits provided by the iFixit kit, it does cover almost
everything I’m ever actually likely to need while travelling, and it’s probably
around a third of the size.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The other core part of the toolkit is the bag. I had a UGREEN “travel accessory”
bag hanging around unused, and noticed it was almost the exact right size for
the Tool-Check. Now, how many other tools could I stuff in there?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;all-the-tools&#34;&gt;All the tools&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;figure class=&#34;image full&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/contents.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/contents.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/contents.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;The contents of my toolkit, spread out on a mat&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;1024&#34; height=&#34;912&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;The array of tools that make up the travel toolkit&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The kit can be broken down into a few sections:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;screwdriving&#34;&gt;Screwdriving&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The aforementioned Wera Tool-Check&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Its 152mm bit extender&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’ve talked enough about this already, I think, so I’ll spare you any additional
commentary on screwdrivers and bits.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;splitting-gripping-and-cutting&#34;&gt;Splitting, gripping and cutting&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Engineer tweezers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Engineer mini snips&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Engineer mini screw removal pliers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Knipex mini waterpump pliers&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Two iFixit spudgers (one metal, one plastic)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;iFixit jimmy&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have bigger or slightly different versions of these that stay in my normal
toolkit. The tweezers and snips are useful in a variety of situations,
and the spudgers are handy for getting inside laptops and other devices. The
pliers are less useful, but they’re one of those things where when you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt;
need them there aren’t any good alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;sewing&#34;&gt;Sewing&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Two needles&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Some black thread&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Set of mini clips&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You never know when you’re going to rip a seam in something. I find the clips a
lot less fiddly than using pins for keeping material in place when I’m trying to
sew.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;computering&#34;&gt;Computering&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Retractable ethernet cable&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;RJ45 coupler&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;USB-C to RJ45 adapter&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Dual USB-A and USB-C thumb drive, with an Arch ISO on it&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Sometimes Wi-Fi just doesn’t cut it, or you need to fiddle with a router that
doesn’t expose its admin UI over Wi-Fi. The USB-C adapter is for use with my
phone, as it’s often easier to move that get the laptop where it needs to be.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I can boot from the thumb drive into an Arch environment, and from there
reinstall my laptop from scratch if needed. There’s enough space left over so
it can be used to transfer files as well.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h4 id=&#34;miscellaneousing&#34;&gt;Miscellaneousing&lt;/h4&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Fabric tape measure&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Spirit level&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Sharpie&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Superglue&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Spare batteries: 2 CR2032s, 2 AA, 2 AAA&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’m almost certain I won’t use the spirit level, but it’s tiny and I had a spare
so it went in. Everything else is just in the “generally handy to have”
category.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;putting-it-all-together&#34;&gt;Putting it all together&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;figure class=&#34;image right&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/complete.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/complete.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/travel-toolkit/complete.png&#34; alt=&#34;The complete toolkit&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;500&#34; height=&#34;506&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;The nicely-organised side of the toolkit&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Tool-Check PLUS fits almost perfectly into one side of the UGREEN bag,
leaving a little wiggle room along the side for the longer parts like spudgers.
The middle pockets can’t fit much in, but keep the batteries and sewing bits
out of the way. Everything else is in a big zip-up compartment in the other
side, which is slightly messy but still easy enough to dig through to find
whatever I need.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The complete kit weighs in at around 1.2KG, so it’s not exactly lightweight,
but it goes in a bag with a heavy laptop and all of its peripherals so it’s
not as noticeable as it might otherwise be.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It remains to be seen how much use I’ll actually get out of any of this. Maybe
I’ll put a bit of paper in so that I can track how often I use each tool…&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>Simple backups with Restic and Hetzner Cloud</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/simple-backups-restic-hetzner/"/>
        <updated>2024-12-06T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/simple-backups-restic-hetzner/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;figure class=&#34;image right&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/simple-backups-restic-hetzner/restic.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/simple-backups-restic-hetzner/restic.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/simple-backups-restic-hetzner/restic.png&#34; alt=&#34;The Restic logo — a gopher with two umbrellas.&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;400&#34; height=&#34;400&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;Restic’s mascot, who’s dual-wielding umbrellas to save you from a rainy day.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I have a confession: for the past few years I’ve not been backing up any of my
computers. Everyone knows that you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do backups, but actually getting
around to doing it is another story.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don’t get me wrong: most of my important things are “backed up” by virtue of
being committed to remote git repositories, or attached to e-mails, or
re-obtainable from the original source, and so on. I don’t think any machine
failing completely would be a disaster for me, but it would certainly be a pain.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This week I finally got around to doing something, and it ended up being a lot
more straight forward than my previous forays into backup-land.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;restic&#34;&gt;Restic&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After soliciting a few opinions, the choice of backup software came down to
either &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.borgbackup.org/&#34;&gt;Borg&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&#34;https://restic.net/&#34;&gt;Restic&lt;/a&gt;.
I’m pretty sure either would have done what I want, but I leaned towards Restic
for a few reasons: it has a more informative website, it’s written in Go
rather than Python&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:1&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, and Borg seems to be transitioning between major
releases at the moment&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:2&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--more--&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The way Restic works is pretty simple: you initialise a ‘repository’, and can
then call &lt;code&gt;restic backup /some/path&lt;/code&gt; and it’ll get backed up to the repository.
Restic handles keeping different backups separate, and only sending data that’s
changed, and deduplicating, and so on. You basically point it at a thing you
don’t want to lose, and it sorts it out for you. Perfect.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There are equally straight-forward commands for removing old snapshots
(&lt;code&gt;restic forget&lt;/code&gt;) and verifying backups (&lt;code&gt;restic check&lt;/code&gt;). One of the nice things
about modern backup solutions is they support a whole range of backends. I was
originally going to spin up a small VPS to host my backups, but noticed that
Restic supported S3-compatible stores…&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;hetzner-cloud-object-storage&#34;&gt;Hetzner Cloud Object Storage&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I host my servers with Hetzner, and was going to use them to spin up a VPS as
well. Despite the “Cloud” branding on a bunch of products, they offer reasonable
prices and good service. A couple of months ago, they started offering
&lt;a href=&#34;https://docs.hetzner.com/storage/object-storage/overview&#34;&gt;S3-compatible object storage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The pricing isn’t totally straight forward, but for continuous use the “free
quota” amounts to 1TB of storage and 1TB of egress a month. Ingress is free,
as is traffic within the &lt;code&gt;eu-central&lt;/code&gt; region (where all my servers are). That
quota is only awarded when you pay the “base price”, though, which is €4.99 a
month. So basically it’s €5 a month for 1TB of storage and enough egress to
fully restore every single byte. That’s better value than any VPS I can find,
much cheaper than Amazon S3, and about the same as
&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage&#34;&gt;Backblaze B2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;getting-them-to-work-together&#34;&gt;Getting them to work together&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now you’d think making the tool that supports S3-compatible object storage
work with your S3-compatible object storage would be easy, right? Well not
quite. The library Restic uses to deal with S3 backends has some
strange logic for figuring out the bucket name given a URL. It doesn’t quite
seem to work right, though…&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Hetzner buckets have URLs like &lt;code&gt;s3://bucketname.hel1.your-objectstorage.com&lt;/code&gt;&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:3&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;,
but just passing that to Restic gives an error that the bucket is not specified.
The docs mention there’s an advanced option to make it use the virtual host for
the bucket name: &lt;code&gt;-o s3.bucket-lookup=dns&lt;/code&gt;. But that… also doesn’t work.
What I ended up doing was specifying the URL as
&lt;code&gt;s3://hel1.your-objectstorage.com/bucketname&lt;/code&gt;, and also passing in the &lt;code&gt;dns&lt;/code&gt;
option. The library then seems to muddle its way back to a real, working URL.
I’m not sure why it works like this: maybe it’s just a weird aspect of S3 that
I’m oblivious to?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The next fun part is that you can configure Restic entirely by using environment
variables, except for that &lt;code&gt;-o s3.bucket-lookup=dns&lt;/code&gt; argument. That has to go
on the command line. I ended up making a little wrapper script to invoke Restic
correctly:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;pre class=&#34;chroma-chroma&#34;&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cp&#34;&gt;#!/bin/sh
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# The password restic will use to encrypt your data. You should generate&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# something nice and secure.&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;export&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;RESTIC_PASSWORD&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;repo-password
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# The path to the repository where restic will save the backup. In our case&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# this takes the form `s3:&amp;lt;endpoint&amp;gt;/&amp;lt;bucket&amp;gt;`. Your endpoint might be different&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# to mine depending on the region your bucket is in.&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;export&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;RESTIC_REPOSITORY&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;s3:hel1.your-objectstorage.com/bucket-name
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# The access and secret key generated in the &amp;#39;S3 credentials&amp;#39; section of the&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# Hetzner Cloud Console&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;export&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;hetzner-access-key-id
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;export&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;hetzner-access-key
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# Pass any arguments on to the restic command, along with the magic&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# `s3.bucket-lookup` option we need to resolve the S3 URL properly.&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;exec&lt;/span&gt; restic -o s3.bucket-lookup&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;dns &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;$@&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then in the backup script I just alias &lt;code&gt;restic&lt;/code&gt; to use the script:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;pre class=&#34;chroma-chroma&#34;&gt;&lt;code&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cp&#34;&gt;#!/bin/bash
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;set&lt;/span&gt; -eu
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# This means any time we use `restic` below, we&amp;#39;ll actually execute our special&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# script which supplies all the env vars and arguments needed to find the&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# repository. Make sure the path matches where you saved the script!&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;alias&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;restic&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s1&#34;&gt;&amp;#39;~/.bin/restic&amp;#39;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# Actually do the backup. Each directory in the list below will be backed up&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# separately.&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;dirs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;=(&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;/some/path/to/backup/&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;/some/other/path/&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-k&#34;&gt;for&lt;/span&gt; i in &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-si&#34;&gt;${&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;dirs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-p&#34;&gt;[@]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-si&#34;&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-s2&#34;&gt;&amp;#34;&lt;/span&gt; 
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-k&#34;&gt;do&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;echo&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;$i&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;	&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nb&#34;&gt;cd&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-nv&#34;&gt;$i&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;&amp;amp;&amp;amp;&lt;/span&gt; restic --verbose backup .&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-o&#34;&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-k&#34;&gt;done&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# Prune our snapshots. You can tweak the numbers here. Run with `--dry-run` to&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-c1&#34;&gt;# see what effect any changes would have before actually committing to them. &lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-line&#34;&gt;&lt;span class=&#34;chroma-cl&#34;&gt;restic forget --keep-daily &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-m&#34;&gt;7&lt;/span&gt; --keep-weekly &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-m&#34;&gt;10&lt;/span&gt; --keep-monthly &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-m&#34;&gt;24&lt;/span&gt; --keep-yearly &lt;span class=&#34;chroma-m&#34;&gt;10&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only other notable thing here is that the script changes into the directory
to be backed up. If you give Restic an absolute path, it will create a new
snapshot if the metadata of any folder in the path changes, which is not what
I want.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If it wasn’t for the S3 URL issues, the whole thing would’ve probably taken
me about half an hour. That’s including setting up the object storage,
installing Restic, and so on. It’s painfully easy. Why didn’t I do this three
years ago?!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;addendum-a-step-by-step-guide&#34;&gt;Addendum: a step-by-step guide&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;aside class=&#34;update raised-box&#34;&gt;
  &lt;h5 class=&#34;plain-header&#34;&gt;Update 2025-03-01:&lt;/h5&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;This section was added after the original article was published, following some
helpful feedback. Let me know if you have any problem with these instructions!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/aside&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you want to do this yourself, here’s a quick step-by-step guide:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Log in to the &lt;a href=&#34;https://console.hetzner.cloud&#34;&gt;Hetzner Cloud Console&lt;/a&gt;, and
create a project.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;On the “Object Storage” tab, create a new bucket. Note the name and the
endpoint.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;On the “Security” tab, go to “S3 Credentials” and generate new credentials.
Note down the access key and the secret key.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Copy the first shell script above, fill in the password (you can pick!),
endpoint, bucket name, access key and secret key.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Run the script with the &lt;code&gt;init&lt;/code&gt; argument (e.g. &lt;code&gt;~/.bin/restic init&lt;/code&gt;). This
will create a new repository, and only needs to be done once even if you
backup multiple machines.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Copy the second shell script above, making sure the &lt;code&gt;restic&lt;/code&gt; alias points
at the script you saved in step 4. Change the list of directories to
whatever you want to backup.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Schedule the script to be run automatically, using crontab or systemd timers
or however you prefer.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To check everything is working, you can use the &lt;code&gt;snapshots&lt;/code&gt; subcommand to see
a list of saved snapshots. You might also want to try to restore a snapshot
using the &lt;code&gt;restore&lt;/code&gt; subcommand.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class=&#34;footnotes&#34; role=&#34;doc-endnotes&#34;&gt;
&lt;hr/&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:1&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I’m not trying to be a language snob, but given the choice between two
otherwise equal projects one in Go and one in Python, I’ll take the Go one.
I know I’m not going to have weird library issues down the line, and I’m much
more comfortable rummaging around the source. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:2&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With a “Don’t use this in production!” notice on the shiny new version. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:3&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Aside: I really hate URLs like that. What is with the trend for completely
generic domains divorced from the service they’re a part of? &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <title>Upgrading the RAM in a Dell G15 laptop</title>
        <link href="https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/"/>
        <updated>2023-07-29T00:00:00Z</updated>
        <id>https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/</id>
        <content xml:lang="en" type="html">&lt;figure class=&#34;image left&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/g15.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/g15.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/g15.png&#34; alt=&#34;An open Dell G15 laptop&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;580&#34; height=&#34;402&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Dell G15&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I currently use a Dell G15 laptop for work. It has served me well for a little
over a year, but recently it has been struggling a little with my day-to-day
workload. It came with 32GB of RAM — the highest possible specification at the
time&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:1&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; — but that is apparently no longer enough for me.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For a recent project, I was working on a Rust library used in an Android app.
That meant running the usual glut of Android tools (Android Studio, an emulator
and at least one Gradle daemon) alongside a normal IDE (IntelliJ IDEA). Throw
in a web browser and a couple of electron apps, and I often managed to
use all 32GB.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When you start swapping memory out to an encrypted disk — even an SSD — it
doesn’t make for great performance. At first, I tried to work around this
by enabling the Linux out-of-memory (OOM) killer, but it turns out that it’s not
too good with Electron apps: it will kill the large browser process, but then
the small Electron wrapper will just respawn it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;!--more--&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;can-it-be-upgraded-or-not&#34;&gt;Can it be upgraded or not?&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The obvious solution to not having enough RAM is to add more RAM. A quick look
in the manual showed this might not be possible, though. The manual includes
the following “Memory specifications” table:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table&gt;
&lt;thead&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Description&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Values&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/thead&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Memory slots&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Two SODIMM slots&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Memory type&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;DDR5&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Memory speed&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;4800&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Maximum memory configuration&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;32GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Minimum memory configuration&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;8GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Memory size per slot&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;8GB or 16GB&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;Memory configurations supported&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;8 GB, 1 x 8 GB, DDR5, 4800 MHz&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;16 GB, 1 x 16 GB, DDR5, 4800 MHz&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;16 GB, 2 x 8 GB, DDR5, 4800 MHz, dual-channel&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;32 GB, 2 x 16 GB, DDR5, 4800 MHz, dual-channel&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That unambiguously says that an upgrade from 32GB is not possible. I gave up.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Later though, I was complaining about memory issues to a friend, and he pointed
out a Dell forum thread where a couple of people claim to have successfully
installed dual-channel 32GB modules. Since the alternative was getting an
entire new PC after only a year, I decided to give it a go.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;the-upgrade-attempt&#34;&gt;The upgrade attempt&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I ordered a pair of Crucial 32GB DDR5-4800 SODIMMs, and after they turned up
dismantled the laptop. The G15 comes apart pretty normally: there are uncovered
screws on the bottom holding the lower part of the case on. With those
removed and some gentle prying, it pops off, and you get access to the battery,
GPU and motherboard.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The first thing I saw was this:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;figure class=&#34;image full&#34;&gt;
  &lt;picture&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/motherboard.avif&#34; type=&#34;image/avif&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;source srcset=&#34;https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/motherboard.webp&#34; type=&#34;image/webp&#34;/&gt;
      &lt;img src=&#34;https://chameth.com/g15-ram-upgrade/motherboard.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;The G15 motherboard, with a large &amp;#34;DDR5 8G/16G Only&amp;#34; label, and a smaller &amp;#34;DIMM B DDR5 8G/16G&amp;#34; label next to a SODIMM slot&#34; loading=&#34;lazy&#34; width=&#34;1536&#34; height=&#34;1300&#34;/&gt;
  &lt;/picture&gt;
  &lt;figcaption&gt;&lt;p&gt;The G15 motherboard adamantly proclaiming that it doesn’t want 32GB SODIMMs&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/figcaption&gt;
&lt;/figure&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Not one but two labels that indicate it will only accept 8GB or 16GB modules.
Oh well, what’s the worst that can happen?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;oops&#34;&gt;Oops?&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I dutifully installed the new modules, reconnected the battery and put the
case back together. I pressed the power button, and… nothing. None of the
usual garish lights that immediately come on, no screen output, just a dead
laptop. After reading some more of the user manual, I found that there is a tiny
status LED on the side next to the ethernet port. Forcing the laptop to power
off and back on again, the status LED blinked a distress code at me: 2 amber
blinks, 4 white blinks. The manual says that is — unsurprisingly — a memory
fault.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I figured at this point that the manual and labels on the motherboard were
probably right. I took the laptop apart again, reinstalled the original 2x16GB
modules, reassembled it, and pressed the power button. It didn’t boot. I don’t
spend a lot of time fiddling inside computers, but I’ve done it enough that
I’m reasonably confident I can’t entirely break a computer while swapping some
RAM modules. I took to Googling&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:2&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, and found an interesting article that said
Dell laptops don’t like to boot after RAM changes unless you clear the CMOS by
popping out the battery for 15 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I opened the laptop up, and looked around for the CMOS battery. There wasn’t
one. Turns out they don’t exist any more. I left the main battery disconnected
for a while to see if it would help, and it didn’t.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 id=&#34;unexpected-success&#34;&gt;Unexpected success&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I started to get worried: if I couldn’t fix this, I wouldn’t be able to
work until I got a new PC, and that wasn’t really in my budget at the minute.
I sat reading old forum threads and help guides&lt;sup id=&#34;fnref:3&#34;&gt;&lt;a class=&#34;footnote-ref&#34; href=&#34;#fn:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-noteref&#34;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, none of which were actually
useful. Out of nowhere, though, the laptop booted up.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Naturally, I immediately shut the laptop down again, opened it up, and switched
back to the new RAM modules. Then I turned it on again and sat waiting. After
about 15 minutes of it looking totally dead, it turned on and showed a BIOS
warning about the hardware configuration being changed. It then booted perfectly
normally, and all 64GB of RAM was visible and usable.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;My theory is that the forum threads were right: Dell laptops are funny about
RAM upgrades. But somehow in removing the physical CMOS battery, they’ve kept
the same “you have to wait 15 minutes” behaviour just without any indication
that’s what’s happening. Regardless, I now have enough RAM even for the
greediest of IDEs and Electron apps.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div class=&#34;footnotes&#34; role=&#34;doc-endnotes&#34;&gt;
&lt;hr/&gt;
&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:1&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Bizarrely, the maximum spec has &lt;em&gt;decreased&lt;/em&gt; to 16GB since then. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:1&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:2&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In the generic sense. I use &lt;a href=&#34;https://kagi.com/&#34;&gt;Kagi&lt;/a&gt; these days. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:2&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li id=&#34;fn:3&#34;&gt;
&lt;p&gt;On my phone because, y’know, the laptop was busted. &lt;a class=&#34;footnote-backref&#34; href=&#34;#fnref:3&#34; role=&#34;doc-backlink&#34;&gt;↩︎&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</content>
    </entry>
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