#server v1

For The Plan™, I need a spare router. I had a Netgear R8000 that I thought would work, but it wouldn't boot or respond over serial TTL, so I have to assume it's hosed.

Great. Time to buy new parts. My requirements are:

It needs to be able to run openwrt. I don't feel like learning some proprietary bullshit and I especially don't feel like trying to bash whatever crapware dhcp server it has into accepting my existing network.

It needs at least two ethernet ports. One for external WAN and one for my network switch. It seems obvious, but this actually limits a lot of budget "travel" routers.

The cheapest router I found was about $50 on Amazon. No clue if it would even work.

It turns out that Goodwill hasn't enshittified routers yet--maybe the expense to train employees to look them up is too high or there's no market for them or something. Whatever it was, I got a Linksys EA8300 for $2. Based on amazon comparison searching, that's a deal of 98% off!

To recap, I need to completely reinstall proxmox on my router, without losing any of my VMs and without losing internet.

Step 1: Configure an alt router.

I have a junk router sitting around that at one point had openwrt on it. If it's not bricked (and I have serial access, so there's a good chance I can recover it) I can just hook into that and mirror the network config of my primary router. If I static assign the most important MAC addresses (IE the omada controller, proxmox, my dev computer, etc.) then they won't even have to remap when I do the swap. Wifi devices should even be ignorant of the change since it's a L2 change

Step 2: Setup PBS on a junk laptop.

Proxmox Backup Server is a linux distro that's related to PVE and is designed to backup VMs and containers in an efficient way. My best target for it is a junk gaming laptop from 2020 that I have laying around.

Step 3: Get the "Oh Shit" supplies ready

So that backup laptop? It was my primary PuTTY host. I have to use it because it's the only unallocated computer I have with an x86 cpu, and there's no ARM iso for PBS. I do have a raspi 3b though. I need to install raspbian on it and find enough periphs to make it an ethernet-ready dev computer.

Step 4: Fuck shit up

You may be wondering "Why now Tari? Didn't you make this server like back in March 2025?"

Basically, I fucked up in an interesting way.

See, the screen in my server was a requested feature, and I was willing to support in. I tried to create a VM to host the HomeAssistant dashboard, but it turns out that you can only forward video outputs to VMs by forwarding the whole underlying PCIe device (so, a video card). If the video output is directly CPU-controlled (as indeed my hdmi is) then no forwarding is possible.

Instead, I fucked everything over. I tried to install a minimal GUI, and when I couldn't figure out X11 on my own (let's be real, not a surprise) just ran

tasksel desktop gnome-desktop

Anyone who's used linux for a while can figure out my first issue: GNOME sucks. I should have used KDE-plasma or whatever.

That's not actually the real issue though--tasksel is. See, in autoconfiguring my desktop, I also autoinstalled a bunch of junkware that Debian thought I would want such as LibreOffice. Nice things, but ultimately useless on a hypervisor. I couldn't be sure what other issues I was having.

The solution is to reinstall proxmox. Unfortunately, I'm not alone. I need to reinstall it while preserving all interfaces that my non-technical partners touch. That means:

Keep the wifi up.

Keep the lights configured.

Make their computers "just work"

Hardware is worth nothing without software, so let's get into what's inside server v1.

Everything is running on Proxmox Virtual Environnment, a debian-based hypervisor. I separated out one of the network ports of the VP2420 into its own virtual bridge and fed both the internal and external networks into openwrt to handle. Alongside openwrt, I'm running HAOS (Home Assistant operating system) and a headless debian dubbed WWW because it runs an apache server. Inside OpenWRT, I'm running DNS. Originally I only wanted to run AdBlock (for obvious reasons), but as I continued building things out, I got annoyed by HTTPS certificate errors and setup LetsEncrypt certs via acme.sh.

When I started this project, I had three goals:

Make something future-proof

Keep as much as possible open source or libre

Take control of my extant home automation gear

I ended up with server v1, a small 10" 4U rack nestled into my TV console, made entirely from 3d-printed PLA in various colors.

Under the hood it looks like this:

Previously I had been using a Turris Omnia--a modified OpenWRT router made by cz.nic, the CZ tld administrator. It was a fantastic device, but openwrt doesn't (or, didn't anyways) have good support for wifi 6. Instead, I decided to use a Protecli VP2420. I don't remember why I landed on that as the device of choice, but it's got more power than I need. For wireless, I chose the EAP650 as a compromise between power and price, with the knowledge that I could administer it from the omada controller. All that is powered over ethernet, greatly simplifying my hardware architecture.

Upstream of those is a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) ensuring I can fail gracefully in the event of a long-term power failure, and fiber optic internet.