You reached my personal web page and blog. I post on technologies, projects
and ideas currently on my mind.
Technical Technicalities
Using a static HTML generator now called Hugo.
Before I used HTML and server-side-includes.
Synchronization is done with rsync over ssh.
If you ask yourselves, why no CMS, well,
the two wikis/CMS I had before (I don’t mention names) were hacked in
no time. And don’t want to spend any time doing security updates all
the time.
Hosting is done on a Raspberry Pi 1 B+ (as of 20th of July 2019 it has
been upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B) with ArchARM.
I was simply fed up with the speed and the cumbersome user interface of
nowadays virtualized web hosting solutions (I don’t mention names here again).
The Alix 2D.13 board in the black box
underneath is running OpenBSD and is the newest and shiniest self-built
router (with stealth master-DNS, DHCP, etc.) for my local network and
my personal domain.
Intro I wanted to add a search function to my web page. As the website is built with Hugo as a set of static HTML pages onto a read-only web server, standard approaches didn’t work like a LIKE-query in Mysql as many CMS are implementing search.
The big logo gives it away, it’s done with the strusWebService from the Strus project.
The basic idea is that the author of the web pages can build a search index locally with the markdown version of his content and then push it to a web service dedicated to search only.
Intro Into the category of “What can I possibly do useful with a Raspberry PI?” falls the idea of origanizing a backup server using the Bacula backup software.
Details I use an old USB disk and a USB hub as external storage for the Bacula volume data and for the catalog (stored in PostgreSQL).
For full-filling the off-site requirement the jobs are copied with a ‘Migration Job’ to an external FTP server.
Some years ago I decided to write my personal web page as a bunch of static HTML pages using only server-side includes to cope with the repetitive elements like footer, header, menus. When I installed a Wordpress just for the blog I intended to start, I thought: why can’t this be done statically too?
In fact, it can be done: the following web pages show an explosion of tools for static HTML site generation:
In August 2009 I decided it was time to replace my old Pentium II serving 5 old SUN storage disks (the white boxes, enormously noisy, for those who remember) with a modern NAS system. I bought a QNAP TS-439 Pro. The integrated firmware (aka customized Linux) gave me the creeps from a software design point of view, but it did the job.
Almost exactly a year later there was a fatal event and my software RAID (RAID 5) decided not to assemble anymore.
Found a really nice new router appliance based on OpenBSD 6.0, http://securityrouter.org. I’m still missing some features like a split-horizon DNS, so I will not abandon the script-based project http://git.andreasbaumann.cc/cgit/OpenBSD-firewall just for now.
