atelle's Space

Testing out: UGREEN Dual Bay HDD/SSD Array Box

2021.07.21 00:01:01 by atelle

I recently wrote a post about the UGREEN Dual Bay HDD / SSD Array Box, which I ordered from Banggood. You can read more about this here: https://akseltelle.com/2021/07/14/dual-bay-hdd-ssd-array-box/.

The package arrived today and I have tested it out.

I have placed 2 1 TB SSDs in the hard drive box, one from Samsung and one from Western Digital. These SSDs are configured in RAID0, for best capacity and performance, although the data is more insecure than in any other setup, such as RAID1.

As shown in the pictures above, the hard drive box performs very well, with a decent and stable transfer speed. The 2 SSDs give me a total capacity of just over 1.8 TB.

Since both SSDs are used, the lifespan is unproven, but neither of them shows signs of problems, so I just have to wait and see how they work over time. Only I have used the SSDs, so I know what they have been used for.

I’ll be sure to write a blog post about how the box has worked in a while.

Blog Updated

2021.07.20 00:01:01 by atelle

WordPress has been updated from 5.7.2 to 5.8!

Hyper 5000mAh Wireless Battery with MagSafe Support

2021.07.16 00:01:01 by atelle

I recently ordered a power bank made for iPhone 12’s MagSafe technology. I ordered this just days before Apple launched its own MagSafe Powerbank, which is a bit boring.

The power bank is called Hyper, and has a 5000mAh battery. This is in theory almost enough to charge an iPhone 12 Pro twice, but due to the loss of wireless charging, it is probably closer to one charge. The reason I care about how much it can charge an iPhone 12 Pro is that it is this model I have.

The Powerbank sits right on the phone, and a little better when I use it with the official silicone cover from Apple with MagSafe magnets built in, due to the silicone making it stick a little extra.

With a cover without MagSafe magnets, the power bank is almost useless. There is nothing that holds the battery pack in place, which means that you can only charge the phone when you leave it flat on a table.

The powerbank charges fairly quickly with a USB-C cable, and can also charge other devices from the USB-C port, which means that it can be used as a regular powerbank as well, if you have other devices that do not support MagSafe.

I’m pretty happy with the Hyper powerbank, and will keep it despite the fact that Apple has launched its own battery pack. You do not get the battery capacity of Hyper on the iPhone as you do with Apple’s powerbank, but this can be seen on the back of the Hyper powerbank.

You also do not get “reverse charging”, where you can charge the power bank from the iPhone when connecting a charging cable to the phone, but this is not a problem since you can connect a USB-C cable to the Hyper power bank, which will charge itself and the iPhone at the same time.

BlitzWolf® Fingerprint Padlock

2021.07.15 00:01:01 by atelle

I recently bought a product I never thought I would buy. A Fingerprint Padlock. I have been considering buying one for a couple of years now, and opting to buy one after watching a couple of YouTube videos about them.

The padlock I chose to buy was a “BlitzWolf® BW-FL1 Smart Fingerprint Padlock”. This is a relatively small padlock, which works perfectly to have in the basement, in a suitcase when I am traveling, and in the gym.

The padlock supports up to 20 fingerprints, of which the first two are “administrator” imprints. The administrator prints are used when adding a fingerprint, or if you want to reset the padlock. I have personally registered both my thumbs as an administrator imprint, so no one else can add or delete fingerprints, but it is very nice to have the option to allow others to add fingerprints if it is a shared lock.

It is advertised that the padlock has a battery life of around 1 year, but this is probably less if you use the padlock a lot. The padlock is charged via MicroUSB, and the charging time is about 40 minutes. I have only charged it once, and then it took about 5 minutes to fully charge it.

I have only had the padlock for a week, so I do not know how the padlock stays together over time. In any case, I am so happy with the padlock that I have ordered 3 more, so I can use them in several places. Being able to lock something without thinking about a key is very nice, and I use it to lock my electric kickscooter, a Xiaomi M365 Pro, even if the lock is a little small to secure the scooter well.

As you can see in the picture to the right, some wear has appeared on the padlock. This is because it has been used to lock my electric scooter. It seems that the padlock is scratched quite quickly, so this is something to think about if you want to buy one.

 

The padlock looks very similar to Xiaomi’s Uodi Smart Fingerprint Padlock. I do not know if this is a coincidence, a collaboration or if someone has stolen a design, but as long as the padlock works, I am happy.

I bought the padlock from Banggood.com for $30, but there are several websites that sell fingerprint padlocks.

Dual Bay HDD/SSD Array Box

2021.07.14 00:01:01 by atelle

I just ordered a Dual Bay HDD / SSD Array Box from Banggood called “UGREEN CM381 Dual Bay 2.5″ SATA 3.0 Hard Drive Array Box” This is a Hard Disk box that allows you to install 2 Hard Drives or SSDs, and configure them in a RAID, which reminds me a bit of the LaCie 4TB Rugged RAID Pro, which also has two SSDs in Raid.

The difference between the two is that the price of the UGREEN CM381 is $65, while the LaCie Rugged RAID Pro costs $317.

No Hard Drives or SSDs are included in the UGREEN CM381, so you have to insert this yourself. The plan is to insert two 1TB SSDs, and run them in RAID 0, for best performance.

On the product side, it is advertised that you can reach up to 1000 MB/s. It also states that it is an S.M.A.R.T and TRIM function.

It will be exciting to see what kind of performance I can get out of this RAID box, and whether it is worth buying. I will post a review of the product when it arrives.

The product can be found here: https://www.banggood.com/UGREEN-CM381-Dual-Bay-2_5-inch-SATA-3_0-Hard-Drive-Array-Box-Type-c-3_1-Gen2-HDD-SSD-RAID-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-p-1859690.html?cur_warehouse=CN

New domain, new server

2021.07.13 00:01:01 by atelle

I have registered the domain “akseltelle.com”, and will use this domain from now on. My blog has been moved from my home network to DigitalOcean. All blog posts have been moved over.

Hello world!

2021.07.13 00:01:00 by atelle

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

Cheap DDoS Protection for your home network

2021.07.13 00:00:59 by atelle

If you went to this blog post, you are probably interested in running some servers on your own home network.

It is very fun to run your own servers to offer services, have your own website, or just to learn. Maybe you want to run your own game server, like a minecraft server.

But there is always a risk. Adverse events occur, such as someone wanting to take down your website to mess with you, or attack your game server because you threw them out. When you run a server on your own network, you need to open ports on your network, which are small holes in your network that allow network traffic between your server and other people. Without this hole, people outside your own home network will not be able to access your website or connect to your game server.

You must also provide your IP address, which is your “address” on the Internet. This can change as often as once a day, or be permanent, and be yours for several years. If you only use the internet to surf websites, watch netflix and play video games, it has little to say if your IP address changes often, but when running a server it is best to have a static IP address that does not change. This is because if your IP address changes, people on the internet will no longer know how to connect to your server.

There are many solutions to solve the problem of temporary IP addresses, such as contacting your ISP or using a service like freedns.afraid.org. This blog post will not go into detail on how to get around temporary IP addresses, but how to protect your home network when running your own servers.

To protect your IP address on the Internet, you can use services such as CloudFlare, which hides your IP address and protects you from attacks, but it is most suitable for protecting websites, and not other services, such as game servers. The great thing about CloudFlare is that it’s a free service that gives you access to systems only giant companies can afford.

This blog post will be about setting up your own DDoS protection using a VPS (Virtual Private Server) from a company that has DDoS protection, such as DigitalOcean and OVH. There are many companies that offer cheap VPSs, and DigitalOcean will be used in this blog post. You can get $100 for free for 60 days from DigitalOcean here: https://try.digitalocean.com/performance/.

The DDoS protection that is set up in this blog post is about sending all traffic between your home network and users through the VPS, and using the DDoS protection that comes with the VPS. This will be done with two tools: Linux Screen and socat: Linux / UNIX TCP Port Forwarder.

More information about these programs can be found here:

Linux Screen (linuxize.com)

socat: Linux / UNIX TCP Port Forwarder (cyberciti.biz)

Start by creating a new Virtual Machine. This machine must be running Linux Ubuntu Server. In this blog post, Ubuntu Server 18.04 (LTS) will be used, but the process will be the same on Ubuntu Server 20.04 (LTS). For me who only has a small web server on my home network keeps the cheapest VPS available. This costs as little as $5 /month, but the price may vary from vendor to vendor. This VPS has 1GB of memory and 1 CPU thread, which is more than enough for my website, but this can be increased in the future if the website becomes more popular in the future. There is also a 1000GB limit for transferring traffic, but for most this is more than enough per month.

At DigitalOcean you can choose the location of the VPN. Since my website is based in Europe, a server nearby will be selected, but this can be chosen freely. Furthermore, one must create an SSH key pair or a password for the VPS. An SSH key pair is much more secure than a password, but to make it easy, a password will be created.

After a short time, the VPS will be created and is ready for use.

When the VPS is ready, you can connect to the VPS using the “Console” button in the top right corner, or with a software like PuTTY. I recommend Solar-PuTTY, a free application from SolarWinds.

When connecting to the VPS, you must log in before you can access the command line. The username of the server is “root”, and the password is what was created when the VPS was created.

Once you have connected to the VPS, you have to run a number of commands. The first commando is “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade“, and is used to update the server and install the updates. The VPS should be up to date, but it is always a good idea to update the server anyway.

After updating the server, Linux Screen can be installed. This is done by running the command “sudo apt install screen“. Linux Screen is a software that allows a service to run in a command window without exiting after disconnecting from the VPS.

The latest software to install is socat: Linux / UNIX TCP Port Forwarder. This is done by running the command “sudo apt install socat“. Socat is the application that will let us redirect traffic from users to your server through the VPS.

You can update the system and install all the required applications at once by running the following command (Not required if you have updated and installed the programs separately): “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt install screen -y && sudo apt install socat“

When the installation is complete, you can start creating a new “screen” session. This is done with the command “screen -S session_name“. I call my session “proxy”.

When you run the command, you enter a new, empty window. It seems that the command did not work, but it did.

Here you can run the next command, which is “socat TCP-LISTEN: 80, fork TCP: YOUR_IP: 80“. This will create a tunnel that allows all traffic coming to the VPS on port 80 to be forwarded to the destination, which is your home network. In this blog post, the destination is another VPS at DigitalOcean, with IP address “46.101.194.150”.

You can forward traffic for any port, which is very nice if you run a game server such as a Minecraft server, which runs on port 25565. Just change port 80 to the port you want to continue traffic for.

If you want to forward traffic for multiple ports, you can either create multiple VPS, which will provide better protection for your network, or create multiple sessions in the current VPS. This is done by using the keyboard combination “Ctrl + a X” to exit the current window, and use the command “screen -S session_name” where “session_name” is something other than the previous session.

Once a session has been created, it is active immediately. When we visit the IP address of the VPN in a web browser, we will see the web page running on another server, with the IP address “46.101.194.150”. You can now point a domain to the VPS’s IP address. All traffic to the VPS on port 80 will be diverted to the destination, without the user knowing about it. This means that an attacker will only see the VPS and its IP address, and not your home network server or IP address.

Written by Aksel Telle on the 13th of July 2021.

Blog Updated

2021.07.08 00:01:01 by atelle

WordPress has been updated from 5.7.1 to 5.7.2!

PHP has been updated from 7.2 to 7.4!

About

My private space on the web

Domain Portfolio

norhood.com (Registered 2012-06-03)

fawdaw.com (Registered 2014-06-21)

pxcd.org (Registered 2018-11-28)

akseltelle.com (Registered 2021-07-13)

atelle.xyz (Registered 2021-12-18)

atelle.org (Registered 2022-10-19)

buildnorge.no (Registered 2022-10-20)

hobbyrack.no (Registered 2022-10-28)

hobbyserver.no (Registered 2022-10-28)

hellofriend.no (Registered 2022-10-31)

telle.at (Registered 2022-11-02)

telle.pw (Registered 2023-01-02)

ticketcore.net (Registered 2023-04-24)

monitorcore.net (Registered 2023-06-30)

crypt3r.com (Registered 2023-12-10)

https.no (Registered 2024-03-17)

bilreg.net (Registered 2024-04-02)

Archive

April 2024
March 2024
July 2023
June 2023
April 2023
January 2023
September 2022
July 2022
June 2022
February 2022
November 2021
October 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
July 2020
April 2018
August 2017
July 2017
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
November 2015
October 2015
July 2015
June 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014