Adding Proxmox to the equation

 I ended up going down the Proxmox rabbit hole. Reading about it, I could see that a homelab is part of a larger picture in the home automation experience. Running Home Assistant on a Pi felt fragile after awhile, as I added more and more functionality to it. I wanted more processing power than on my older Synology NAS. VMs and LXCs would add more solutions to solving perceived problems.

Actually Getting Started 

I picked up a Beelink EQ14 for $200 on Amazon, added a 2TB nvme as extra storage for another $100. The first couple of things were easy wins, after setting up Proxmox - retiring two RPis (Home Assistant & Pi-Hole). Back up home assistant, spin up a HA instance using a script, a minor edit to allow USB passthrough for the Zigbee/Z-wave dongle - it was really easy. I re-used the old IP address as well. A quick LXC for Pi-Hole, also easy.

Connecting Storage for Backups 

Attaching storage from the NAS was slightly more complex, but NFS was not too hard. SMB didn't work, but later in troubleshooting the next project, it turned out that Synology runs SMB 2.0 and Proxmox wants SMB 3.0 in order to connect. (On the Synology, File Services > SMB, Select "Advanced Settings" button, and set the maximum SMB settings to 3.0.)

Adding Bambu Studio 

The next challenge was adding a Bambu Studio through Docker on an LXC. I have an older Mac laptop that I occasionally use Blender on (but Bambu Studio wouldn't, sadly). Rather than dumping it into a shared directory, logging into a different computer that could use Bambu Studio.

Running Bambu Studio in a container, I used a couple of resources:

  1. https://www.saltyoldgeek.com/posts/bambu-studion-in-docker/
    • I used most of their docker-compose.yml file to get started.
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMPetY4mX-c
    • Jim's Garage was running Jellyfin in an unprivileged docker in an LXC. Honestly, you can use most of his video to mount a Synology Shared folder to the LXC. 

The Slowdowns

When editing the /etc/fstab file, the link for the Synology shared folder looks like "//192.1.1.4/[shared_folder_name]". Other places described it as //192.1.1.4/volume1/[shared_folder_name]. 

When editing the 104.conf file at /etc/pve/lxc, I didn't know where his /mnt/nas came from. (It was just an arbitrary name.)

And finally, when Jim's Garage added /mnt/nas:/mnt/nas to the docker-compose.yml - I missed that last part of the video. I could see /mnt/nas from the LXC, but not inside Bambu Studio. (It makes sense - you can see the share from the console, but the console is not the same as the Docker image). It should have been obvious that I needed to add the mount inside the volumes: part. The Salty Old Geek didn't need it, but also probably wasn't going crazy with an unprivileged container going to a Synology.

Overall, adding Bambu Studio was good experience. I learned a little about mounting storage, got to troubleshoot my first Docker experience, 

 

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