HPR4329: Maintaining The Remote System

Hacker Public Radio

Maintaining The Remote System I have renamed the project Libre Indie Archive because the name theindiearchive is already someone else's domain. I never would have renamed The Indie Archive but I do think that Libre Indie Archive is more descriptive, hence, better. I am getting close to a pre beta push up to codeberg. Anyone following along who wants to help test, you can do this with two or three old systems. Let me know. Email [e-mail] or on Mastodon I am @[e-mail]. I have decided to develop and document for Xubuntu first and here's the reasons why. I bought an older HP small form factor office system with 4 Gigabytes of ram. HP Compaq 4000 Pro Pentium Dual-Core E6600 3.06GHz 4GB RAM Thirty dollars on ebay with shipping and taxes. I was testing Libre Indie Archive on it. Because of the age of the system Ubuntu wouldn't install. I tested it with some BSD systems and installed Indie Archive without a GUI. Ghost BSD didn't install but Midnight BSD did install so I used the Midnight BSD GUI and installed Indie Archive. None of this was easy for me because I'm a BSD newb and unless you already use BSD I can't recommend it for Libre Indie Archive. Remember, not all indie producers are computer programmers, and I want Indie Archive to work for those producers as well as for the computer savvy. Then on a whim I thought I would try the Xubuntu 24.04 distro and it installed no problems. Thanks XFCE for keeping it light. The other reason I am developing and documenting for Xubuntu is that I can use the Xubuntu install document and install on Ubuntu or Debian with only minor differences. I know because I tried it. This is probably also true for other Debian and Ubuntu derived distributions. So, if you want to help, you could take the Xubuntu install document and see if it works on other distributions. Write down what you had to change and let me know. I plan on making an install checklist out of the install document and it would be great to have a checklist with the actual commands for several distributions. So, that was the intro. Now on to the topic. I am planning on installing remotenear and remotefar systems, remotenear being a short drive away (or maybe in your home if your studio is not in your home, like mine) and the remotefar further away to avoid losing data in the case of a regional catastrophe like flood, fire, tornado, or hurricane. Still even a short drive is not what I want to do any time there might be something I need to check on a remote system so I have devised a way to manage it from the secondary system. When a remote system is delivered to a new location it will be headless. No monitor, no keyboard, and no mouse. At the remote location it is plugged into a UPS and attached to the network with an ethernet cable and attached to the UPS with a usb cable. Then it is turned on. Even without a keyboard or a mouse there is still some local control of the system available. As part of the remote system install we go into the power management settings and next to "when power button is pressed" we select shutdown. So, a short press on the power button initiates a Xubuntu shutdown just like the shutdown that you get from the menu or Alt F4. If that doesn't work a long press of the power button will turn the system off. This is like unplugging the system or losing power and is not recommended but Xubuntu will rebuild the file structure when the system is restarted. And if you do lose power the UPS will send a signal to the computer shutting it down with a controlled shutdown, just like a short press of the