Hello everyone, A lot has happened since my last post but that can be considered a good thing as many improvements have been implemented as a result of my focus on the user experience. For starters we reinstalled the operating systems on all three servers and went from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 18.04 and we have also moved all the applications except the dashboard which is just served through plain old Apache rather than from a Docker container. All other services are running in their own containers in Docker instances on all three servers. This enables us to efficiently deploy and manage individual services without having to worry about conflicts from requirements and dependencies between the various types of code. Using a project called Ouroboros (a python based successor to watchtower as described in the project’s Github description) which monitors containers for updates to their images and autonomously redeploys the container(s) in question with the newest image available on the remote registry while maintaining parameters such as environment variables, network configurations and mounted volumes meaning you don’t lose any precious data or settings in the process. Previously I had to regularly check for individual application updates and apply them with… Read More »Spring Cleaning 2019

Hello everyone, After sending out the most recent newsletter I received feedback that many people had found the newsletter after the fact marked as spam and automatically kept it from their inbox usually by placing it in their designated spam folder for a few days/weeks/months (this will depend on the email client settings/provider) until it is purged, never to be seen. I did some investigating and spent the last few days picking away at ensuring that future newsletters/emails sent from the @dev.lightspeedta.co address via the nobreaks.ca domain. To do this a few things needed to be implemented including some DNS TXT records. I won’t get into much detail but it’s worth mentioning that the SPF, DMARC and DKIM records all work together as multiple forms of verification for messages being sent from the domain ensuring that only messages sent from authorized sources will be processed and sent out to their recipients. I got to the point where I had my SPF and DMARC records but once it came to the DKIM, something critical to the successful receipt of an email for many large providers. After some digging I was finding myself in a drought of information for the configuration of… Read More »SPF, DMARC and DKIM Woes

Hello everyone, Just a quick note that I’ve gone ahead and bit the bullet with upgrading Sonarr from the stable v2 release to the V3 phantom release and I must say it’s quite nice. Loving the UI overhaul and only ran into minimal issues during the migration from v2. Fear not, we have plenty of v2 backups if necessary we can revert to v2 however thus far I’ve only encountered some tricky permissions errors between the storage array mounts on the servers and the local filesystem. As a result of these changes, issues may be encountered on the user end and we would appreciate you letting us know by reaching out to us via the contact us page or otherwise. Ombi (Requests) already has integration which is actually how I learned that v3 was available at all when I was reading the change logs I noticed multiple bug fixes relating to the new version and surely enough everything works as intended. Bye for now! -LightSpeedTaco

Hello everyone, Some bad news today. It seems that one of the two uninterruptible power supply units has been acting up and subsequently failed this morning on 2018-12-15 11:29:22 (EST). Typically things would keep on chugging along on the one remaining and the systems would remain functional for the most part, this UPS unit carried the load of one of the main switches as well as the modem necessary to maintain access externally and subsequently caused 5 hrs and 9 mins of downtime across all services. This comes as a decent disappointment as the unit in question is relatively new. Currently the unit is functional and will be monitored however it will most likely need to be replaced. As usual, if you wish to assist in the equipment replacement, you can find our donation like on the homepage on the left to donate via PayPal or reach out to me for other methods of contribution to be arranged. Lastly, I will apologize for this unforeseen and ill timed (weekend) incident and hope the inconvenience caused was not too substantial. -LightSpeedTaco

Hello everyone, Just a quick update in regards to the utilization of the requests system. Up until now, we were unable to take requests for anime via the requests system however now that support for multiple root folders in the Ombi requests script we can now automatically differentiate between anime requests and regular TV show requests without any need for user interference. You can also now subscribe for notifications as if you made the request if an item you’d also like to see on the server has already been requested. Look for the three bars in the top right corner of movie requests and the subscribe button on TV/Anime requests. The speed and performance as well as the level of configuration possible via the latest version offers such perks as mobile app compatibility which is an early access app in the Google Play Store that I myself have found quite useful. As always you can find the latest link to the requests page on the dashboard. Enjoy! – LightSpeedTaco