Marasm's Meanderings

[marasm]

So, here’s a bit of advice for anyone working with ZFS: do not use desktop class hard drives.

administrator@HOMESERVER:~$ sudo zpool status homeserver_share
[sudo] password for administrator: 
  pool: homeserver_share
 state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices are faulted in response to persistent errors.
	Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a
	degraded state.
action: Replace the faulted device, or use 'zpool clear' to mark the device
	repaired.
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 0h0m with 0 errors on Sun Sep 29 11:52:07 2019
config:

	NAME                        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
	homeserver_share            DEGRADED     0     0     0
	  raidz2-0                  DEGRADED     0     0     0
	    wwn-0x5000c50079d03d03  FAULTED      0     0     0  too many errors
	    wwn-0x5000c500914f0d08  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    wwn-0x5000c500914f83b1  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    wwn-0x5000c500914e140f  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    wwn-0x5000c5009150e95a  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    wwn-0x5000c5009150e570  ONLINE       0     0     0
	    wwn-0x5000c500794622fc  FAULTED      0     0     0  too many errors
	    wwn-0x5000c500a282e0cc  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

I bought eight Seagate 2TB drives several years ago (model ST2000DM001). Of those eight, I’ve replaced half. Now two more are bad, including one of the replacements with only 540 hours. They all have seek and read errors according to SMART data. Nothing is under warranty.

So my main “homeserver” is down. I have a temporary system up with four 500GB WD RE4 drives in it, and I’m basically using that for movies and TV using Jellyfin/Emby/Plex (testing each). When I have the disposable money I’ll get some Easystore’s to shuck.

[marasm]

So, I did a thing.

Truth be told, I lost my temper and in a white heat of righteous rage I slammed my bluetooth adapter on a table like a whip. Not proud of it, but there it is.

Anyway, my $150 Shure RMCE-BT2 bluetooth adapter has been absolute garbage from day one. Just did a warranty exchange and the replacement unit does the same thing. Hence marasm smash. The proverbial straw.

pictures of the internals

Surprisingly it actually still worked after the high velocity joining with the table. So I decided to tear it apart. Also surprisingly it sill worked after that, too.

I guess I should explain what he initial problem is that caused all this violence and tech gore. The bluetooth range was abysmally short. I literally had to have the phone within line of sight and within a couple feet for the audio to not skip. In the pocket? Skipping everywhere. Body (or even arm) between phone and receiver? Skipping. Just unbearable, unacceptable skipping all the time. Only time it works OK is when the phone is on the desk in front of me at work. Which sort of defeats the entire purpose.

And best of all? With everything out of the case the range is greatly improved. I’m going to do more testing, and see if any of the wires is actually a bluetooth antenna. I have a feeling that the antenna is actually part of the USB charging board. There’s a pinkish wire that goes there that’s longer than the rest and was sort of twisted around itself when in the case.

The actual main board of this thing is absolutely spectacularly tiny. Just incredible how small things are now.

[marasm]

Back at the house again this weekend. Trying to figure out structural stuff, how to support things correctly.

Going back over there in a bit to have a good long think about it. Need to get this done and get walls back together. I want to move in before winter.

This is the problem area.

[marasm]

Did a ton of work at the house this weekend. Made a lot of progress. Another couple of weekends like that and I can actually start putting things together instead of taking things apart.

So I decided to completely strip the downstairs bathroom basically down to the floor joists. There was a lot of water damaged subfloor, some of which had been patched, some of which had just been covered over with junk. It was a mess, and I wanted to fix it right.

Here’s the bathroom with the tile off. There was hardwood floor originally in the bathroom, same as the rest of the house.

But I decided to strip the hardwood off, as I’d have to take more than half what was there to fix the subfloor.

Here’s most of the tile off

Here’s the bathroom down to the subfloor.

The original subfloor wood is incredible. It’s all 1 inch thick (actual 1 inch, not modern nominal 3/4), and varies from 6 or 8 inch wide to over 16 inch wide. They made trees big in 1910, I guess.

The maple flooring throughout the house is between 3/4 and 7/8 inch thick.

The best helper

Kneepads are fantastic

Some closeups of the subfloor damage

And most of the rotten bits removed

Removed the wall between the bathroom and the office, going to replace it with a 2x8 thick wall

And even made a small repair to the office floor, as I had to remove a couple rows of flooring to make room for the wider wall

Wow. What a weekend. Every joint in my body hurts.

This week I need to add a few more supports between joists where the old and new subfloors meet, then diagram and measure the new subfloor, which will be a very odd shape. It’ll be made out of 3/4 inch OSB with a 1/4 waferboard on top, which should very closely match the thickness of the old subfloor planks.