This was written over a few sessions across a few weeks, so the dates might feel a little off. Sorry, but it’d been a hell of a start to 2025.
Well, this is a first, and hopefully after the three weeks I’ve just had, most of which was spent in bed, the last time I’ll be blogging about kidney stones!
I’d heard of kidney stones, but didn’t have any idea what they were, what caused them and quite how painfully they are if you’re unfortunate enough to get one. I also had no clue that’s what might be causing the excruciating pain I suffered late on the 27th of January. I’d been out to play badminton for the first time in 2025 after spending the end of 2024 with a thigh injury. It went OK and wasn’t too strenuous, and I felt quite good when I got home. I went to bed at the usual time, read a little of my book on the Kindle, and then tried to get to sleep. I had an aching pain in my side and struggled to fall asleep, and after about 30-45 minutes, I got up to get some paracetamol. I just thought perhaps I’d pulled or twisted something playing badminton, but over the next hour or so the pain intensified and I eventually ended up calling the NHS24 number, a 24 hour service where they can advise on any health issues, and generally a better place to start when the GP surgery is closed and you don’t want to bother the local A&E department.
I got through quickly and explained my situation but was placed on hold while a nurse was available to discuss my problem. After about 30 minutes the pain was unbearable, and I told my partner I just needed to go to A&E. It was about 1 am at this point and my 12yo daughter was fast asleep in her room, so after some discussion and calls, my partner managed to get me a taxi to the hospital, which is about a 20-minute drive away. I continued to hold with NHS24, and did eventually speak to a nurse enroute to A&E. She advised that they would have probably referred this to an out-of-hour services, and not recommended A&E, but as I was on my way suggested I just continue, but they couldn’t tell me how long I might need to wait. They did say they would update my record to say they had suggested going to A&E, which might speed things up, but there were no guarantees how busy St. Johns in Livingston might be. She also mentioned kidney stones as a potential diagnosis, although I wasn’t paying too much attention at this point.
When I arrived, I checked in and sat close to the reception, trying to keep out of the way of the other people waiting. I was clearly in pain and went to the toilet and was quite violently sick, which I think was down to the pain. I only waited about 20 minutes before my name was called, and I saw a triage nurse to whom I explained the situation. Again, they could see I was in lot of pain, and after some questions, I was given a syringe full of medicine to ease the pain. They also found me a hospital trolly in a curtained room so I could lie down while I waited to see a doctor.
I lost track of time a little at the hospital, in part due to the liquid morphine (oramorph) I found out they’d been giving me, but it did take away the pain even if it did make me somewhat out of it! I think I saw a doctor between 5-6 am, and she asked a nurse to take an ultrasound scan of my bladder before and after I’d been to the toilet. They also asked me for a sample (after I’d emptied my bladder, but I’d been drinking lots of water, so I went again not long after. The blood in my urine (nothing visible) was what pointed them toward the kidney stones, and I wasn’t showing any sign of infection but was in lots of pain. The doctor arranged for a CT scan, which they did about 8 am, and this identified a 6mm stone and was the diagnosis for my pain. After this, they seemed keen to send me home, and as the pain was under control, I was more than happy with this. They prescribed some more Oramorph, which I collected from the hospital pharmacy, and my partner picked me up and took me home.
I remained out of it for the next few days, taking Oramorph every 4 hours, although this didn’t keep on top of the pain, especially during the night when I wasn’t talking any. I’d spoken to the Urology department at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, which is where they had referred my case, and they only review new cases on a Tuesday morning, so the timing of my diagnosis meant I needed to wait a full week before I heard from them. I’d called work to tell them I’d be off for a few days and spoken to my GP about the medication, as I was still finding myself in lots of pain. They initially prescribed some more Oramorph and told me to take more of it, but this just made me even more out of it! They eventually prescribed some Co-codamol, which managed to keep the pain to a dull ache rather than a stabbing pain, which I could manage better.
I was just waiting for Tuesday afternoon so I could call the Urology department, but they called me before lunchtime. They have an appointment for Lithotripsy the following Tuesday, which they suggested was the best and quickest option. I was supposed to be on half-term holiday that week, going down to Durham for a few nights to see my Mum, but that wasn’t going to be much fun full of pain killers, so I was booked in and lots of information was sent about the procedure.
Lithotripsy is the least invasive way of treating kidney stones, where they use shockwaves to try and breakdown the stone into smaller pieces, so you pass it normally as you pee. I got through the next few days, and I even managed to do a little work from bed, although I’m not sure it was all that helpful!
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when my partner drove me to the Westen General Hospital in Edinburgh for my lithotripsy appointment, but I don’t think I was expecting it to be so painful. We’d arrived quite early due to potential parking issues and traffic, but I think the half-term holiday probably helped. I changed into a gown and wore my Jedi batch robe for most of the time. I’d not eaten anything, but I had taken a single Co-codamol first thing, which threw them in terms of the pain relief they could give me, but eventually, that was all sorted. I’d been x-rayed, and the stone was in roughly the same place, so they knew what they needed to do.
The procedure lasted for about 45-50 minutes, and all I had to do was lie down on a bed with a cutout section about halfway down. This allowed a water bag to be pushed up against my side, through which the shock waves were fired. I’d be told it would feel like I was being flicked with an elastic band, with increasing intensity, but at least by the highest level, it felt more like being repeatedly punched in the kidneys. I was given pain relief at various points, but it wasn’t at all pleasant. Once finished, I had another x-ray and was told they had broken the stone, but little more detail than that.
I was told I’d need a follow-up x-ray in two weeks, which would hopefully show the stone had passed. This would be scheduled at St Johns, which is a little closer and easier to get to. I did a little work from bed for the rest of the week although felt sore for the first few days but did manage to reduce the pain relief, so I’d taken nothing over the weekend.
The next week, I was back at work, and although I didn’t feel 100%, I felt OK and even managed to drive across to Glasgow for a supplier meeting. We’d also rescheduled an emergency shorter trip down to Durham to see my Mum, who has been admitted back to hospital. I was going to touch on that in this blog, but I think that might need to wait for a little while. My daughter and I drove down on the Friday and headed back on the Saturday, after a couple of hospital visits and a short trip to the Metro Centre.
We’d been back about 3 hours, eaten some pizza and were watching The 1% Club when I started to get some strong pains like the first kidney stone pain, but at the front and lower down, around my bladder. I’d taken some co-codamol, but within an hour, I was rolling around on the floor in pain again and on the phone to NHS24 again. It was a slightly quicker process, and I’d not want to end up in A&E, and given I already had lots of pain relief at home, I managed to get on top of the pain more quickly. I did get referred to the out-of-hours service, who called back within 15 minutes and said they’d like to see me at St Johns.
So, it was back in a taxi and across to the hospital. The Out of Hours service is right next to A&E, but I didn’t have to wait and saw a doctor within 10 minutes. She thought it sounded like the stone was moving again, and managing with pain relief was the only option. I could do that from home or be admitted to hospital, which I didn’t fancy. I did give a urine sample, which again had blood levels ‘off the chart’ which supported the diagnosis. I left with better advice on using the oramorph/co-codamol together, and over the next few days, I managed the pain reasonably well, to the point I wasn’t needing anything by the weekend again.
I was back to work on Monday and then back at St. John’s on Tuesday for my follow-up x-ray, but they just took pictures and couldn’t tell me what the results said. I followed up with the Urology department but was told they would review the x-rays over the next few weeks and be back in touch. I’ve been OK since that point and back at work, albeit with a somewhat achy pain around the same area. I even managed to get down and see my Mum again this weekend, which happened to be my birthday. She was now back at home, although in a worse place that I am.
I need to follow up with my GP next week, so try and get some feedback from the x-ray. I still don’t know whether I’ve passed the stone, so I can only hope and keep everything crossed for the next few weeks that things get gradually better. We’re heading on holiday to New York and Mexico in a few weeks, and I’m hoping I’m not going to need any of the pain relief while I’m there.
Anyway, that feels like a monster blog, which I can’t imagine anyone would be all that interested in reading. It will help me remember my kidney stone, although I don’t think I’ll ever forget the intense pain. It was like nothing I’ve experienced before and not something I hope to have again. I’ll try and write a blog about my Mum over the coming months, although that might be even more difficult.
Well, it wasn’t quite done! I spoke to the GP surgery on the next Monday, and they’d not had anything back from the hospital and suggested following up with them. I left them a message and made a note to follow up with them later in the week. I’d bought tickets last year to see Fish’s very last concert in Glasgow on the 10 March, so I’d jumped on the train and after a quick bite to eat, walked down to the O2 Academy. I was standing in the section nearest the stage, but not at the front and closer to the first steps up. After a couple of songs, I wasn’t feeling great and decided to head to the back, hoping to find somewhere I might be able to sit. I found a table that at least I could rest on, but after a couple more songs, I headed into the foyer for a break. One of the O2 Academy staff could see I wasn’t well and told me there was a first aid office if I needed it. I asked about a seat on the balcony, and amazingly, they managed to find me a great reserved seat from which I managed to enjoy the rest of the gig.
I walked straight back to the station afterward and got the train home, but when I arrived at 00:00, I was already in some pain. Stupidly, I just took a couple of paracetamols, so after another hour or so, I was in agony again. I took some Oramorph hoping that might help, but another hour later, I had some co-codamol and more Oramorph before calling NHS24, again! It was quite a quick call this time, but I was already in a taxi when it finished, heading to St. Johns. I’d had a call back from NHS Lothian, who booked an out-of-hours appointment as soon as I arrived. That appointment wasn’t as great, and they took at least 30-45 minutes after speaking to me before staying. I needed to head to the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, where they had a dedicated Urology department, which is where I’d had the lithotripsy. 40 minutes later and £40 in a taxi, and I was waiting at a different hospital.
To be fair, they saw me quite quickly, and I was given a bed while more blood and urine tests were taken and various doctors and nurses visited. I’d been awake for quite some time by then and had lots more pain relief, so I was pretty much out of things for a few hours. I had some more x-rays, and eventually a Urology consultant visited who’d reviewed everything over the last 6 weeks. He went on to explain that the first hospital visit was for the stone leaving my kidney and trying to find its way into the urethra, which it couldn’t due to the size. After the lithotripsy, the x-rays showed my stone had been broken in half (not very common, as they normally shatter into many smaller pieces), with one half finding its way into the urethra toward my bladder and the other heading back toward my kidney, which the consultant hadn’t seen before. He then thought that the second hospital visit was caused by the first stone trying to get into the urethra from the bladder, which is the tightest part of the journey. He thought I’d passed that, but this third visit was the second half of the stone reaching the same point. He expected that to be passed too within the next 4-5 days, after which I should be stone-free. I was sent home a few hours later after some more pain relief and further medication to help pass the stone.
I managed the pain at home over the next couple of days and had a trip to Durham to say goodbye to my Mum before updating this blog this weekend. I’m hoping this is the last I’ll be writing about kidney stones, but who knows?
Well, I didn’t manage to blog every month in 2024, but I did manage more than 12, so I think that’s not a bad effort, given the two-year break!
I know that I have another TrueNAS blog to start this year (after not blogging for so long) here and here, but it has become a bit of an annual event to blog about my server and the services running on it. Better not mess with that balance, so here’s what my boss would call a ‘state of the nation’ or a ‘view from the bridge’ for my TrueNAS server going into 2025…
The biggest change was upgrading TrueNAS from 13.0-U6 to 13.3, which updated the version of FreeBSD from 13.1 to 13.3. This allowed the jails to be updated from 13.1 (which was no longer supported) to 13.3, or for most of my jails to 13.4, which is supported until the middle of 2025. I think there will be a 13.5, which should also be compatible and supported into 2026, hopefully! I blogged about all that here. Although it was quite a challenge at the time, I managed to get the FEMP stack updated for most of the jails running this, which is a good place to start the year:
Airsonic
This is probably running the same version as it was when I did the blog at the end of 2022, as Airsonic hasn’t been updated! As it was back then, it’s rarely used, and I’m now pretty much exclusively listening to music on Apple Music or occasionally through emby. It’s a handy backup, and picks up music from the same place I save it for emby, so it takes zero effort to update.
emby
emby is still my media server of choice and something I (and several family and friends) would be lost without. It’s running 4.8.10.0 (from 4.7.14.0 at the beginning of the year), which is the latest stable release, and I’ve not tested the beta releases at all this year.
Nextcloud
This has become the most crucial jail for me, and while emby gives it a run for its money, I’d struggle without Nextcloud now. I suppose I could migrate everything to Onedrive or iCloud, but the point is to keep my data local. There isn’t an option to do this for emby, so I’d be equally lost without that, but I also have other people using Nextcloud, so this would be the most difficult to replace. The integration with ONLYOFFICE makes it a genuine Office 365 alternative running from my micro-data centre! I’m bang up to date, running the latest 30.0.4 (from 27.1.5), with MariaDB 10.6 and PHP 8.3 upgraded in 2024.
Limesurvey
This is the problem, child, as I’m struggling to update the version of PHP beyond 7.4, which hasn’t been supported for some time. Everything else is up to date (Limesurvey 6.6.6 from 6.4.0 and MariaDB 10.6), and I’m not really using it in anger anymore as I’m no longer a Trustee for my daughter’s Out of School Club. It’s handy to have running, though, so I keep it updated. I might try to rebuild the jail to see if I can get PHP onto something supported.
MediaWiki
I rebuilt this during 2024, more to test how to upgrade MariaDB than anything else. I still haven’t found a use for this; it wasn’t even listed in the previous update! Perhaps one day…
OpenVPN
I was always quite nervous about updating this, and I don’t do it all that often, but it’s never been a problem. I still use it when I’m away from home, so I update it every 3-4 months. It’s currently running 2.6.12 (from 2.5.3).
WordPress
This is just running my blog now, as the company (and website) are no more! I keep this pretty much up to date, so it’s running WordPress 6.7.1 (from 6.4.2), MariaDB 10.6, and PHP 8.3. The test instance on Docker hasn’t been updated for way too long, and I really should think about taking that down. It was built when I was thinking about starting up a web development company, but that didn’t happen, and I suspect it never will.
I still haven’t deleted my old calibre jail, but everything else (plex, Bitwarden, Minecraft and Photoprism) is gone.
Given all the changes to TrueNAS and the jails, the Virtual Machines have been a little neglected, at least from an OS perspective. I run application updates and security patches but haven’t updated the OS. I think Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is supported until the middle of 2025, so 2025 might be the year of the VM. I’m cheating here with a table very similar to the one used at the beginning of the year:
Name
OS 2024
OS 2025
Application(s)
cplan
ubuntu-desktop 22.4.3
ubuntu-desktop 22.4.3
This runs Crashplan exclusively, and I forget it’s there, other than the weekly e-mail to remind me it’s backing up my TrueNAS server and the monthly invoice for $11.99! It’s still the cheapest I can find for offsite backup, which is especially important as my onsite backup no longer runs 24×7, given the rising electricity costs and a remodelled home office with no space for two large workstations/servers. It does get updated every few months, but it’s nice to know that Crashplan has a much more up-to-date backup. I’m using about 2.5TB of storage!
mattermost
ubuntu server 20.4.2
ubuntu server 20.4.3
I should upgrade the OS for this one, but it is still supported until 2025 and will be updated whenever I update the LTS release of Mattermost. It was running 8.1.0 and is now running 9.11.0.
oedocs
ubuntu server 22.4.3
ubuntu server 22.4.3
I should have called this oodocs, as it’s running ONLYOFFICE Document Server, which I use with Nextcloud, but it just works, so I have left things alone. I’m getting wiser in my old age! It’s updated every few months and is currently running 8.2.0 (from 7.5.0).
pihole
ubuntu server 22.4.1
ubuntu server 22.4.1
Another one I update regularly has worked brilliantly to hide most advertising when web browsing, but also speed up DNS searches using unbound. The version of PHP is lagging a little behind on 8.1, but Pi-hole is running the latest 5.8.3, although it must be due for an update soon.
portainer
ubuntu server 20.4.4
ubuntu server 20.4.4
It’s another with the wrong name, as it’s running all my Docker containers, although one is Portainer. It is hard to cover them all in detail here. Still, the main ones are Bitwarden, Calibre-web, Teslamate/Grafana, Uptime Kuma, WordPress (a development version), and other web tools (LEMP stack, phpmyadmin, etc.)
I guess you’d summarise the year as ‘updated jails, maintained VMs,’ but most things are running supported versions of the app, database and supporting stack, other than a few exceptions. Storage is starting to become more of a concern. I am down to 12.2TB on FreeNAS0 (70%), my HDD pool, and 228GB on FreeNAS0s (75%), my SSD pool. Both of these are higher than I like, and while I still have another year or so, I really need to give some thought to my future strategy in 2025. FreeNAS1 is my backup server, which I no longer run 24×7 due to energy costs and space. It comes out every month or so, and I back up the really important stuff from FreeNAS0(s), but that’s now over 90%, so I’m not backing up everything. CrashPlan is still doing the offsite stuff, so my backup strategy is still robust, and it’s good I’ve never needed it, touch wood!
I’m still running a Raspberry Pi 4 from an SSD, which runs a pretty up-to-date version of the Home Assistant Operating System (14.1) and an equally up-to-date version of Home Assistant Core (2025.1.0). In addition to providing all the home automation for my Philips Hue lighting and TP-Link switches, I have various integrations for my Tesla and Octopus Energy. Still, the most important is probably the Addon for NGINX Proxy Manager, which controls all access to my network and the Certbot certificate renewals every three months. This has worked brilliantly since I switched from doing this semi-manually in a jail, which I blogged about here!
Anyway, that was my New Year TrueNAS update! It feels like a while since I’ve wished anyone reading this a happy New Year! I’m hoping to keep blogging through 2025, as enjoyed my return in 2024. It wasn’t perhaps as regular as I’d planned, but I think I managed an average of a blog month which will be the target again for 2025.
Let’s finish with a gallery of logos, which I think helps to show the scale (pun intended) of what I’m running on my TrueNAS Core server. I hope you have a wonderful 2025…
It feels like quite a long time since I blogged about PHP, and that’s because it is! Over 5 years, to be precise. Unsurprisingly, none of the supported versions of PHP I was running back then (7.2 and 7.3) are supported today. How about we start with a similar timeline from the PHP website:
As you can see, only 7.3 is still visible on their support roadmap, and support for that ended back in 2021! 7.4 is pretty much the minimum most web-based applications will work with now, but support for this ended just a year later, at the end of 2022.
Fortunately, most of my online services are running supported versions, but some are proving more problematic to update than others, and I’m not entirely sure how to upgrade them all.
The process for updating my TrueNAS/FreeBSD jails is still pretty much as described in the blog from five years ago. The PHP modules change occasionally, with some dropped as they’ve been included in the core and some new ones added, but they’re mostly pretty straightforward. Here’s a quick table of my services using PHP:
LimeSurvey
7.4.32
MediaWiki
8.2.24
Nextcloud
8.3.12
Pi-hole
8.1.2
WordPress (live)
8.3.12
WordPress (test)
7.3.12
APE Services PHP Versions
LimeSurvey is running in a FreeBSD jail, which I’ve updated to 13.4. This will undoubtedly cause me problems, as 7.4 is no longer supported, so a pkg update && pkg upgrade will break things by removing PHP. I have updated the database to 10.6, and LimeSurvey is running the latest version. Still, when I update PHP to anything other than 7.4, I get the error reported here on the LimeSurvey forum. When I get some free time, I’ll play around a bit more, but this one might need to be rebuilt, perhaps starting to move away from jails to docker containers.
I rebuilt MediaWiki as much as a test as anything when I had some database upgrade issues. This is running a supported version and could be upgraded further if required. The suggested version was 8.2, so that’s where I went.
I upgraded NextCloud to the latest version, and that seems to be running fine, although I have noticed a few issues in the TrueNAS console where PHP is exiting in this jail, so I will need to keep an eye on things:
Nov 4 13:21:48 freenas0 kernel: pid 29684 (php-fpm), jid 36, uid 80: exited on signal 10
Pi-hole is running in its own VM, following the instructions on the website and using the simple curl build script. Other than updating things when I noticed a new version, I’ve not tried to do anything with PHP. It’s still receiving security updates until the end of 2025, so I have about 12 months before I need to do anything.
My live WordPress jail, where this blog is hosted, runs 8.2 and could be updated to 8.3. I’m not really sure why I haven’t done that, so I will before the end of the year. UPDATE 10-Nov-24: It is now running 8.3.12!
My test WordPress jail is running in a VM as a docker container, and other than updating WordPress, I’ve not touched the docker container. This is still running 7.3, and I really need to consider updating this, but I’m unsure where to begin. I will need to understand Docker a little more than I currently do if I’m considering migrating from TrueNAS Core to Scale at some point in the future, so this might be a good place to start. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I completely broke this and needed to create a new test environment.
Anyway, this is starting to sound like one of my annual ‘state of the server’ blogs, and given we’re not too far from the end of the year, I might be doing one of those again, very soon (sorry, Chris)
TrueNAS and FreeNAS (as it was named before that) have been one of, if not the, most blogged-about subjects in the last 250 blogs (yes, I made it to 250 and didn’t even notice) over the past 8 years (or at least it will be in November 2024).
I’ve just upgraded from TrueNAS 13.1-U6 to 13.3, which could be the last major release of TrueNAS Core, the FreeBSD-based version that was FreeNAS 9.2.8 when I started using it in 2013.
Upgrading TrueNAS is usually pretty uneventful, even though it causes me no end of worry for weeks before and sometimes weeks afterwards. This is one of these updates that I might still be fighting with in months to come!
I’ve already blogged about some of iXsystems focus changes here, with TrueNAS Scale based on Linux being the future direction of travel. What this means for TrueNAS Core is still a little unclear, but hopefully, there are still a few years before that becomes a major issue for me.
After updating TrueNAS (which is built on FreeBSD 13.3 rather than 13.1), the process of upgrading the jails begins. This updates them to the base version of FreeBSD. I successfully upgraded one jail from 13.1 to 13.3 and then updated and upgraded the packages (#pkg update & pkg upgrade), but it was only my Airsonic jail, which isn’t really used in anger anymore. I wouldn’t be upset if it broke and I had to destroy it.
Lots of my jails are web-based applications running on a FEMP stack, or FreeBSD (as the operating system), Nginx (a web server pronounced Engine-X), MySQL (a database server, in my case Mariadb), and PHP (a programming language to process dynamic PHP content). I’ve kept the jails running by upgrading the operating system between versions of TrueNAS using commands like #iocage upgrade -r 13.3-RELEASE <jailname> and then within the running jail #pkg update && pkg upgrade. I needed to update PHP separately, which I blogged about here, but the one thing I neglected was the MySQL element. My Nextcloud, WordPress, and LimeSurvey jails are all running Mariadb103, which, along with Mariadb104, are no longer supported. The latest version of MariaDB is 10.11, so I’m pretty far behind.
I asked for some help from the TrueNAS forum, and as ever, I wasn’t let down with some excellent advice. It turns out I can update the jail base to FreeBSD 13.4 on TrueNAS 13.3, so I’ll be doing that and then trying to update Mariadb103 to Mariadb105 as a first step. I’ve struggled with this in the past and simply rolled back and found a way to update without touching the database. In hindsight, that wasn’t a great idea, but at least now I have a problem that needs to be solved, and once I’ve solved it for one, it should be easy enough to apply to the others.
It turned out to be a little more problematic than I thought, although that’s more down to my lack of System Administration skills than the technology. The first rule of updating databases is to ensure the old database has been shut down correctly and not aborted by trying to jump a step ahead and simply install the new one! I’m sure this will be in System Administration 101, which I think I also skipped.
I also learned about something called tmux, which lets you keep a session running on TrueNAS even when your SSH session is lost. How have I made it 10 years without knowing this? To be fair, they have only just removed the built-in shell console, which I tended to use more than the SSH method.
Anyway, I’m going to list some commands I’ve used to upgrade, which is more for me than anyone reading this:
#tmux new -t iocage (starts a tmux session called iocage)
#tmux a (restart the previous tmux session – I’m guessing you have could several running, although I’ve only tried with one)
#iocage fetch -r 13.4-RELEASE (downloads the release)
#iocage upgrade -r 13.4-RELEASE <jailname> (update the jail to the specified release – note, there are various ‘y’ prompts to confirm the process here, which is where tmux comes in handy. There is also a step which appears to stop with a : prompt, and this is skipped by entering q several times)
#iocage restart <jailname> (restart jail after upgrading)
#iocage console <jailname> (console session into jail)
#pkg info (lists all installed packages and versions)
#service mysql-server stop (clean stop of database server)
#pkg install mariadb105-server (this will remove the old database server and then install the new one – 10.5 – along with any dependencies)
#service mysql-server start (this should start the new database server; check with #service mysql-server status)
#mysql_upgrade -u root -p (to upgrade the databases)
#pkg update && pkg upgrade (this will upgrade all of the other packages in the jail)
I’m not going to pretend I understand exactly what changed between mariadb103 and 105, but the main issue I encountered was the UNIX socket connection, which changed from /tmp/mysql.sock to /var/run/mysql/MySQL.sock. These changes were in the /usr/local/etc/mysql folder and ./conf.d folder.
So, while the database started and the upgrades worked, none of my web applications would start, as the configuration to the database was wrong. So far I’ve fixed Nextcloud (/usr/local/www/nextcloud/config/config.php where you set ‘dbhost’ => ‘127.0.0.1’,) and WordPress (/usr/local/www/wordpress/wp-config.php where you set define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘127.0.0.1’);)
This got everything back up and running but after a reasonably stressful afternoon and several snapshot rollbacks where I’d broken things and had no idea what to do. Thank goodness for TrueNAS snapshots and the incredibly helpful people who use their forum. It’s still one of the best online communities I’ve come across, even though I visit less frequently since the forum platform changed. I need to try and fix that!
When writing my last blog on the Kindle Scribe, I linked back to an Old iPhone blog, which I thought might be interesting to revisit some five years later! I think my daughter has interrupted the natural order of upgrades, although other factors may be at play, too.
Let’s start with a lovely picture gallery!
iPhone 3GSiPhone 4iPhone 5 Space GreyiPhone 6iPhone 7 Jet BlackiPhone XiPhone 12 ProiPhone 13 MiniiPhone 15 Pro
In the previous blog, I’d just upgraded to the iPhone X, with my partner using the iPhone 7 and my daughter using the iPhone 6 (the middle row). My grandma was using the iPhone 5, but sadly passed away in 2021 at the grand old age of 89. That’s probably the main thing I’ll take away from this blog: regular blogging acts like a time machine and takes you back to places you’d started to forget about. It’s also a helpful reminder of some of the things you did, which this site now takes me back to 2016!
Anyway, I reminisce! Back to the iPhones. Since the previous blog, we’ve all had a few new phones starting in 2020 with the 12 and 12 Pro. My X was only two years old for me at that point but was three years old from release. The 7 my partner used is even older, so we all got an upgrade, including my daughter, although she was using an iPad at home now. The iPhone 7 sat as a spare for some time (before being sold on eBay in 2021, when I sold both the 6 and 7 for £76 – can’t remember individual prices).
The 12 Pro was a great phone, but the following year, I upgraded again to the iPhone 13 mini. I’d found the 12 Pro quite heavy and liked the idea of a smaller phone. It was also the first time I’d ever bought an iPhone where I just went for the lowest storage configuration as I was starting to use iCloud more and more and had signed up for an Apple One account, giving me lots of iCloud storage and access to all the Apple services, importantly Apple Music so I didn’t need to carry a big music library with me. So we all upgraded again, with my partner getting the 12 Pro and my daughter the X, which she did use a little more as you could send emojis!
I loved the iPhone 13 mini and might still be using it if my daughter did not want to start using a phone as an actual mobile phone when she started high school! This is where the cycle was broken!!! I bought an iPhone 15 Pro on the day it was launched from the Apple Shop in Glasgow, and the iPhone 13 mini was handed down to my daughter, with my partner sticking with her 12 Pro and 12 months later, after the iPhone 16 launch that’s still what we’re all using.
It’s certainly true that every year, Apple make a slightly better iPhone that offers slightly better functionality than the previous generation, but that doesn’t mean that the latest will always be considered the greatest. I’m sure some would argue for the 1st generation, and while I didn’t own one, it was a flawed device. Limited storage and missing some fundamental stuff like copy and paste kept me using a Nokia Communicator until the 3rd generation. Even then, it didn’t feel too far ahead of the limited competition. I think that changed with the 4th generation, and the design of that still carries through into today’s devices. I certainly have a soft spot for the 4th generation, and it would be in my top 3. The 5th generation felt like a step back in some ways, although looking back, it was probably better than I gave it credit at the time. I loved my 7th generation Jet Black iPhone and used it for almost 3 years. It was perhaps the longest of any iPhone. I also liked the iPhone X (10) and think that would also be in my top 3, introducing the button-less form factor and FaceID. It was also the first which cost over £1000! I loved the mini form factor, although I think the 15 Pro combines the best of the 4 and the 10 and might be my favourite of all time, disproving the statement I started this paragraph with!
To finish up, the only device I still have in the house (well, garage, actually) from the original Old iPhone blog where all this started is the iPhone 4. It’s a bit of a classic, and I still have it in the original box, although I suspect they made too many for it to be worth anything in the future. It’s part of the IT history cave, along with some 1980s Sinclair computers, but that is probably another blog altogether; I should have blogged about that when Sir Clive sadly passed away. As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, I’m a bit of an Apple fanboi (although I work in IT, so I have devices running Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and ChromeOS in the house!) As well as the family of iPhones, we all have other Apple devices, which is probably another blog. In fact, I blogged about some of them here, here and here (although my daughter is now using an M1 iPad Pro from 2021, and the iPad I blogged about here is used to Facetime, another grandparent, this time my Dad or my daughter Grandad).
Page 1 I’ve been an Amazon kindle fan for quite a while now and have just upgraded a kindle Voyager to a kindle Scribe. I thought it might be interesting to test out the note taking abilities of the Scribe by writing this blog on the kindle scribe itself, and testing how it converts my terrible handwriting to text and PDF! This blog might look a bit different as I’m not quite sure how to demonstrate that yet… Lets start with a kindle history lesson. I wasn’t really an early adopter with this, as the first kindle was launched in 2007 and the first one I aned was a kindle keyboard which wasn’t released until 2010. That was a 3rd generation device, which is similar to my adoption of the iPhone which stall at the 30S model!
Page 2 like the iPhone, he had a ite a few bundle’s since that first 3rd gen kindle keyboard, and the old ones other get handed down to family members, i. e. an excuse to upgrade! The bundle keybard was upgraded to a land Touch in 2012 and that will a handle Voyage in 2015, the 7th Gen. I’ve actually been using that voyage for quite some time, as that’s what my new handle Scribe has replaced. Its replaced the bundle Paper white 3rd italian or 10th gon device my partner was using( I think the Voyage is better even though it was slightly ever) and we have a Paper while 5K generation that my daughter uses with a handle Unlimited subscription. So why did I buy the Scribe? Good question!
Page 3 I quite liked the idea when it first came out in 2022, Lt it was quite expensive and I caldit justly spending almost £400 on a handle. for context, the lenddle voyage had been the most expensive one at abut £160( the Paper whites were ball and £80 and the keyboard perhaps £ too at the time). The scribe was an offer for £279, but I discard Amazon do a trade in offer where they give you a small gift card in exchange for an old device AND 20% off a new one. With ball applied to the already discounted price, I pided up a 320 Scribe with Premium Pen for £213.99! A bargain i’m sure you’ll agree? But hats sill more than any of the other handles. What makes the Scribe so special? More great auctions! The clue is in the name. The Scribe is the first binder hat allows you to write or scribe on the
Page 4 device, so comes with a pen and is almost twice as big as the Voyage or Paper white. Ya can mask up PDF files and some e Pub bodes, but the main reason I bought it was to make notes in meetings and then convert them to text or searchable PDF tiles. Now if you made it this for you will have seen how bad my handwriting is! I’ve had other devices that promised to do this, and never rally waled that well. Possibly dan to my illegible unting, but also down to the technology working too well. I’ll let you decide how well this works. I still don’t know as I need to send this to my Mac and see how its done. I’ll finish up oer Here once I’ve assessed the results…
So, how did it do? Let me try to explain what I’ve done. On the Kindle Scribe, you can choose to share a notebook and then have options to Convert it to text and quickly send it to an e-mail address. That’s what I did, which sends an e-mail with two links. One downloads a text file, which is the unadulterated text blocks at the beginning of this blog. The second link downloads a searchable PDF file, which is shown above. I also added the picture gallery with the 5 Kindle devices I’ve owned to break things up, and a hyperlink to an iPhone blog!
I know my handwriting is terrible, and I’ve even used the fountain pen option on the Scribe, which makes it look a little better. You can select Felt tips and pencils with various degrees of thickness and pressure sensitivity, but so far, I quite like the fountain pen effect. There are options for highlighting (which you can do using the premium pen user configurable button) and deleting (the premium pen also has an eraser on the end). You can also lasso blocks, move things around, or copy and paste between notebooks.
But what about the conversion to text? Well, you can see for yourself it’s far from perfect, but it wouldn’t take too much effort to correct and spell check, as it’s broadly captured what I tried to write. The search facility in the PDF file is also remarkably good. I think it’s done a better job than the Livescribe 3 Smartpen I bought back in 2013. That was quite a fat ballpoint pen that wrote onto specific notebooks with small dots tracking the writing. The pen transferred these to an App, which allowed you to convert them to text, although I never really got on with it, and the conversion to text wasn’t anywhere near as good. If I did this professionally, I’m sure I’d be recreating the text again using the Livescribe pen for a side-by-side comparison, but I’m not!
The other thing I’ve not mentioned is the Kindle bit of the Scribe! It has a much bigger 10″ screen, so reading eBooks is much nicer than any of the previous Kindle devices. It is still missing the page-turn buttons the original Keyboard device had, which Voyage tried to replace with haptic ones, but so far, I’ve not missed them too much as there’s less page-turning, and tapping the side of the bigger screen feels quite responsive.
So, would I recommend a Kindle Scribe? For £213.99, absolutely. It’s probably worth that as an upgrade over a standard Kindle device, but adding the note-taking functionality makes it a no-brainer! I would be more difficult at the RRP, so you’d probably need to consider the competition. They are generally more expensive but better as a note taker or Reader, but from all the reviews I’ve seen, the Kindle probably does the best job of both, and when it’s almost half the RRP, it is excellent value for money.
ps: I corrected the text I typed below the PDF file. I hope you noticed the difference 😉
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