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[1973.46 --> 1981.38] He's a new listener, and he says, I'd love to hear more about what Alex uses for building his blog, and if you've experimented with any other options and what you thought.
[1981.56 --> 1982.24] Thanks for the great show.
[1982.24 --> 1995.84] Well, several years ago, when I was launching LinuxServer.io, I actually had a personal blog, blog.katz.me, that got turned into LinuxServer's blog and eventually the LinuxServer website, and that kind of took over and became its own thing.
[1996.26 --> 2004.84] So we used to use WordPress, and then we moved to Ghost on LinuxServer, and this would be, I dread to think how long ago, like five years ago?
[2004.84 --> 2013.84] We moved to Ghost, and it's been so solid, I then ended up spinning up Ghost for my own personal blog to do, like, travel writing and all that kind of stuff as well.
[2014.58 --> 2022.22] So I use Ghost almost exclusively for blogging, and then the Perfect Media Server website is written in mkdocs.
[2022.70 --> 2024.66] I live vicariously through you on Ghost.
[2024.90 --> 2032.26] That was the route I thought I might go if I were going to set up a blog again, and I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes because I think that's worth checking out.
[2032.26 --> 2035.50] Although they've changed their model a lot since I first originally found them.
[2035.54 --> 2041.38] Now they seem like they're really focused on them hosting the blog, but you can still self-host and all that?
[2041.78 --> 2050.02] Self-host out of a container, yeah, and I've actually got a custom theme, so I spent quite a bit of time before the Perfect Media Server 2020 edition came out,
[2050.02 --> 2058.02] making sure that my blog had search and a few other different, you know, like fav icons and social media icons, all that kind of crap.
[2058.02 --> 2064.52] So you can customize the theme relatively easily, and all of that stuff is open source in GitHub.
[2064.80 --> 2067.60] So, you know, I have no complaints about Ghost at all.
[2067.66 --> 2069.02] It just does exactly what I need.
[2069.20 --> 2073.60] It looks pretty good, and you see it all over the place on the internet, really.
[2073.80 --> 2077.14] So I think that's kind of, you know, proof is in the pudding.
[2077.40 --> 2080.38] How many blogs do you see that are in Ghost?
[2080.72 --> 2081.46] Quite a few.
[2081.56 --> 2082.72] So yeah, it must be okay.
[2082.72 --> 2088.10] All right, so I think our final question for today, Tamo writes in about user account management.
[2088.90 --> 2091.92] Hi guys, I'm a new listener, and this show is perfect for me.
[2091.98 --> 2093.18] I started at episode one.
[2093.36 --> 2093.88] Well, thank you.
[2094.58 --> 2099.44] I was wondering if you have done a podcast about how you manage different servers and user accounts.
[2099.62 --> 2102.74] Do you have LDAP or some kind of centralized authentication?
[2103.70 --> 2110.68] I'm finding creating unique user accounts for every server and saving their credentials every time to be a bit of a pain in the bum.
[2110.68 --> 2113.14] I was wondering if you have any thoughts.
[2113.66 --> 2116.42] Looking through the episode descriptions, I didn't find anything about this.
[2116.64 --> 2117.92] Thanks, Tamo.
[2118.24 --> 2120.92] Good question, because it's been on my mind a lot.
[2121.58 --> 2128.86] Recently, Linux distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu added checkbox Active Directory support to their installers.
[2129.66 --> 2137.60] And that got me thinking, yeah, almost wouldn't mind having like an Active Directory setup here on the LAN,
[2137.60 --> 2142.56] either actual Active Directory or some Samba Frankenstein version of it.
[2142.78 --> 2148.06] But truthfully, what I have landed on is standardized accounts.
[2148.16 --> 2152.38] So we have a standardized Studio account, and I have an account on all the systems.
[2153.06 --> 2156.76] And the people who work here at the Studio, we know those logins.
[2156.76 --> 2159.68] And then for our server logins, we use SSH keys.
[2160.36 --> 2169.94] But I do long term have my eye on Systemd HomeD as a potential way to solve this, at least here on the LAN at the studio.
[2170.68 --> 2172.42] And I'll have a link to that in the show notes.
[2172.50 --> 2179.16] But essentially, it takes your home directory and all of your user information and puts it into JSON.
[2179.16 --> 2185.72] And then you can drop this home directory bundle into a Systemd HomeD enabled system.
[2186.06 --> 2191.94] And not only does your home directory show up there, but you also then become a user on the system.
[2192.56 --> 2195.82] That's obviously me giving you the short version.
[2196.06 --> 2197.28] But it has some potential.
[2197.52 --> 2202.68] So you could see here in the studio where perhaps we'd keep our master HomeD directories on the server
[2202.68 --> 2208.72] and then R-sync them down to the studio machines in my workstation, I don't know, every hour, every 24 hours.
[2208.80 --> 2209.16] I don't know.
[2209.48 --> 2210.48] I haven't really looked into it yet.
[2210.94 --> 2213.84] But if we did that, it would also sync down our user credentials.
[2214.50 --> 2219.26] Early days, just something that's on my horizon, kind of keeping on my radar as a possibility
[2219.26 --> 2221.42] because I don't need something too advanced.
[2221.72 --> 2226.10] I've managed large LDAP single sign-on installations in the past as part of my job.
[2226.10 --> 2228.90] And it worked surprisingly well for a long time.
[2228.94 --> 2230.88] And I just don't really have an interest in doing that anymore.
[2230.88 --> 2233.18] I mean, you could spin up LDAP.
[2233.26 --> 2234.40] You could do free IPA.
[2234.48 --> 2235.54] You could do a lot of things.
[2235.90 --> 2236.90] You could do Active Directory.
[2237.08 --> 2238.28] It sounds kind of fun.
[2238.32 --> 2238.66] I don't know.
[2239.36 --> 2239.76] Yeah.
[2239.94 --> 2245.72] But I don't know about you, but I've got to the point over the last decade where I'm managing so many different systems.
[2246.02 --> 2249.54] Some of them are in different houses or different cloud providers or stuff like that,
[2249.62 --> 2256.72] that having them sync back to a central authentication would just be so complicated.
[2256.72 --> 2263.14] I've kind of got, I feel like, half-decent context switching between the different servers and knowing,
[2263.28 --> 2266.32] oh, right, I don't have that particular setup on this one.
[2266.42 --> 2271.92] And any files I do need to sync between various things, I have my NAS, and I just mount that via Samba.
[2272.82 --> 2275.44] And I don't really worry too much about the home directory.
[2275.54 --> 2278.72] Anything that's in there, in my opinion at least, is ephemeral.
[2279.36 --> 2282.30] It goes in Git or it goes in Samba or it gets lost.
[2282.42 --> 2283.52] That's kind of how I treat it.
[2283.52 --> 2284.00] Yeah.
[2284.40 --> 2294.16] I think in part it's because I have, in full disclosure, I've accepted a security practice on the LAN of the studio that probably you shouldn't do,
[2294.24 --> 2299.00] and that is we don't rotate passwords very often, maybe once every couple of years.
[2299.18 --> 2300.00] But then again…
[2300.00 --> 2300.46] It's convenient.
[2300.74 --> 2301.34] I'll give you that.
[2301.62 --> 2301.82] Yeah.
[2301.86 --> 2305.24] And as far as physical access goes, it's a real small handful of people.
[2305.70 --> 2308.92] It's not like an organization with an office of 20 here.
[2308.92 --> 2318.34] And then for the servers, it's pretty much all down to SSH keys, and all remote login is usually done with that.
[2318.46 --> 2322.80] Any access to the LAN is done with WireGuard, and that has its own set of keys.
[2323.20 --> 2324.74] So there's some layers there.
[2325.24 --> 2327.66] Every now and then, I still think it's a fair question.
[2327.74 --> 2331.16] I still think to myself, I could do this a little better.
[2331.16 --> 2339.02] And I do fantasize about a future where I deploy everything pragmatically, and then everything has central sign-on and central storage.
[2339.72 --> 2343.04] But I think I'd have to clone myself to get there.
[2344.08 --> 2345.94] But this goes back to the point at the beginning, right?
[2346.02 --> 2348.56] You use Arch because you just want to get stuff done.
[2348.78 --> 2354.20] And I think we don't use a central authentication system because we just want to get stuff done.
[2354.20 --> 2364.50] We don't want to spend the week or two figuring it out and setting it up, and then every time we reinstall a box, attaching it to a domain controller or whatever it is.
[2364.82 --> 2364.94] Right.
[2365.34 --> 2368.84] I think it's just pragmatism, isn't it, that means we're lazy and don't do it.
[2370.32 --> 2371.40] Maybe that's a bit of it.
[2371.66 --> 2372.54] We've gotten old.
[2372.74 --> 2378.12] What we need is a young SSH intern to come into the studio and whip us together and get a single sign-on going.
[2378.52 --> 2379.72] Yeah, maybe, maybe.
[2379.72 --> 2385.10] Thank you to our members over at selfhosted.show.sre.
[2385.22 --> 2386.40] Thank you for supporting the show.