Blogs on Benjamin Brahmer

Updated: Minisforum GK41 with Linux

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:33:00 +0200

I recently started looking for a small, affordable computer as companion for my “smart”-TV. My reason to get a small PC for my TV was that the capabilities of Fire-OS which is running on the TV and the built-in hardware. Both were too limited for me.

I wanted to extend my options and my wish was to have a Linux PC, to have maximum freedom.

After some research I settled for the GK41 by Minisforum, the price and features were closest to what I was looking for, I got it discounted from Amazon.

Test automation for apis with bats and httpie

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:00:00 +0200

In this post, I will explain to you how I solved integration testing for the Nextcloud News App.

I recently faced the issue that the Nextcloud News App, which I maintain in my free time, only had limited integration testing. Already in place was automated testing of the command line interface of the app, the provided REST API was not tested at all at this point.

The infrastructure

News is a Nextcloud app and therefore requires a web server, PHP and a database. As I mentioned in the beginning, we already had some testing, so I only needed to extend the existing base setup to be able to test the API.

ODROID-HC4 the flexible NAS

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 12:24:00 +0200

The ODROID-HC4 is a relatively new device created and produced by Hardkernel, the most prominent feature are two slots at the top of the plastic housing that reveals two SATA ports.

I had been looking into NAS for a long time, the thing that always stopped me from buying one was the software. Devices for consumers and small companies usually come with a limited feature set, and you depend on the support of the manufacturer to provide updates and new features. As a Linux user for many years, I’m used to installing the software and tools that I need.

Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana

Sun, 16 May 2021 14:02:00 +0200

I’m part for a local Freifunk community and because of that I’m partially responsible for quite a lot of infrastructure.

Recently we moved a new service into the responsibility of our admin group. The migration was mainly done an prepared by me.

The service was Freitrix, which is a Matrix homeserver, if you don’t know Matrix yet, check it out matrix.org.

While I created the new setup from scratch, I learned that Synapse,the software we use as a homeserver supports Prometheus.

Linux with TP-Link Archer T3U AC1300

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 16:43:50 +0100

Linux, Notebooks and Wi-Fi

TL;DR: Don’t buy notebooks from Lenovo, check https://www.tuxedocomputers.com

I’m a big fan of free software and use and recommend it whenever I can. Now for some years I have been facing a very annoying issue, my notebook, a Lenovo G500 that I bought as a student only supports 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi. And while could upgrade the RAM from 4 to 8 GB and switch the SSHD with a SSD, I wasn’t able to upgrade the WI-FI mini PCI-e card that is build into it.

Hello Hugo

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 20:38:43 +0100

Build your website with hugo

This is my very first blog post and why not use that opportunity to tell you how I built this website, right?

So when I planned to set up this website I thought about using something like WordPress, I know and actually like WordPress for its simplicity and many useful plugins. But WordPress also has a major downside, it’s running software meaning it needs to be updated regularly the same is true for its plugins and themes. Now that is typically done automatically but still it is still an issue. On top of that comes user management and so on.