Shdwdrgn

@[email protected]

A person with way too many hobbies, but I still continue to learn new things.

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Shdwdrgn ,

People give the Ender 3 a bad rap all the time, but it's honestly a great little machine. I far prefer it to the $2500 printer we have at work that has "automatic everything" and can't easily be adjusted to manually correct its bad settings.

With that said, how far have you gotten with it? Do you have any software installed? Have you tried printing anything (and was it successful)? You didn't give much clue as to where you're stuck. Yes you need to take some time to learn how to fine-tune the settings, and yes it can be frustrating because there is SO MUCH to learn about 3D printing, but once you get over the hump you can start cranking out all kinds of fun things.

Shdwdrgn ,

Two printers were fighting for the same bed (one with black filament and one with white). Obviously the black printer won and finished the print perfectly.

Shdwdrgn ,

I bitched at someone on reddit about that once... Asked a similar common question and so I asked them if they even bothered LOOKING at the sub before they posted because that exact question had already been asked three times that day! There's being lazy, and then there's crap like this.

Shdwdrgn ,

One thing I learned is that Creality's QC is absolute garbage. When I first got my printer I also picked up a glass plate. Everything stuck perfectly to it, hardly any fuss at all. After several years the coating wore out and I bought a new one. Total trash, nothing would stick without heavy usage of hair spray and I eventually gave up on it.

If you want to try again, look for PEI beds. If you have one with the magnetic base, there are several with the PEI already mounted on a spring-steel plate. PEI is one of the best surfaces you will ever find to print on, although I believe one type of filament (I think a variation of PLA?) sticks too well and can damage the PEI trying to take prints off... but I've used regular PLA, PLA+, and TPU with great success, and have heard that ABS also works well on it. Just keep it clean with 90% ISO and you'll eliminate at least one problem.

Of course there's also the whole thing with bed leveling. I run into a lot of people who think the paper method is the whole process for leveling, when really it's just to get your printer dialed in close enough that you don't ruin the bed when you actually begin to do the leveling. Getting the leveling wrong is by far the most common reason why prints don't stick well so do your best to nail that aspect. You want the nozzle gap about 3/4 of the nozzle size, so for a standard 0.20mm nozzle you would want a gap of about 0.15mm for your first layer (but still use 0.20 in the slicer) to get that proper smoosh. My leveling method involves using a 5-point bed-leveling test print, and you can judge the gap by eye from that. Takes quite a few iterations to get all the corners dialed in, but you shouldn't have to do it often.

Speaking of which... another common complaint is the loose bed springs. You want to Crank those puppies down almost completely closed, then adjust the Z switch to that new position before starting the leveling. Tight springs means you almost never have to readjust the leveling knobs. I check mine about once a year.

Shdwdrgn ,

OK so you want to watch this video and learn how to manually do bed leveling. However if you really want to go over the whole machine (perhaps even tearing it down and rebuilding it so you know where everything is an can assure that it was assembled correctly) the you want to start with this video.

Once the machine is set up, it's time to install slicing software on your computer. Cura is a popular and free option, with support built in for the Ender 3 (you have to set up a new machine in the software and tell it what model you have). Following that, find something to print! There are many sites like thingiverse where you can download models from, but you want to start with something small to work out the bugs without wasting a lot of filament. Look for something like a calibration cube ("calicat" is my favorite) which will provide information on how well you have your machine set up.

Also to consider... if you live in a humid environment and you were given filament with the printer that is NOT in a sealed bag, you should be aware that filament absorbs moisture from the air and "wet" filament will print like hot garbage. Insanely cheap filament like the $12 stuff you find on Amazon can also cause problems, so stick with stuff more in the $20 range until you have some experience in working with your machine.

Shdwdrgn ,

Ah thanks for that! I can never remember PETG, probably because I've never used it myself.

Shdwdrgn ,

Honestly at that point I would tear down the whole thing and use this video as a guide for reassembly. The most important thing to do is to make sure the framework is all squared up, otherwise all prints will suffer.

As for bed leveling... A lot of people think the paper test is all you need, but really that only gets you close enough to start leveling the bed. First thing is to tighten all the springs to within 1 turn of being closed, then adjust the Z switch so that the head homes to roughly that same height. After that you use the paper method to get the bed roughly level, then move on to live testing with a 5-point bed-leveling test print to dial it in. Ideally you want the nozzle gap to be about 75% of the nozzle size, so for a 0.20mm tip you would want a 0.15mm gap to get your print to stick.

As I mentioned to someone else, Creality's QC is garbage. My first glass bed had better adhesion than PEI and worked beautifully for a few years until the coating wore out. My second glass bed was trash, I never could get anything to stick to it without using hairspray, and now it sits in its box. I have a PEI bed now, which seems to have solved the problem. If you decide to try using the printer again, don't forget to clean the glass with 90% ISO. Worst case try flipping the glass over to the smooth side, clean it with ISO, then use glue sticks on that surface (you won't get any adhesion on bare glass without the glue or hairspray).

Shdwdrgn ,

You never know. Old filament CAN be used, but it takes special care with the slicer settings and it helps a lot if you have a dehumidifier to dry it out. I live in a dry climate, and have filament at work which has been sitting on the shelf for about 7 years, but I can still get beautiful prints out of it. All of my filament at home is left in ziplock bags but it still gets brittle over time (if you can easily snap the filament, it probably has a lot of moisture in it).

Shdwdrgn ,

You may be interested in these links, it can reduce or eliminate the problems which require cold pulls. Basically the issue is that the tubing moves up and down during printing and creates a slack space where the filament gets into a region of the nozzle it's not supposed to reach. This modification uses a short length of tubing inside the nozzle that is pushed down tight, then your regular tubing sits on top of that where the movement doesn't cause any problems. I've never had a single clogged nozzle or needed to do a cold pull in several years since making this change, so I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tCxO17XZtw
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4220059

Shdwdrgn ,

No worries, glad to help. I don't print a lot with my machine any more, but things still come up (like I got a shop press a couple weeks ago and found a knob for the release valve so you don't need a special tool for it ... printed with no trouble and now the printer sits idle again).

Shdwdrgn ,

Want to see shit really hit the fan? Imagine if Taiwan applied for NATO membership. They are already recognized by most countries as an independent entity and I assume are aligned with many Western goals since they conduct joint military exercises with the US, but China would go crazy over attempts at NATO membership.

Makes me wonder if there are are any rules to prevent acceptance if a country is attacked because of asking to join? Like I know Ukraine can't join right now because they're already at war (despite whatever Russia wants to call it), but I think Taiwan is not officially at war with anyone.

Shdwdrgn ,

Taiwan is not recognized by most countries.

Damn, they're not? I thought I had heard otherwise. That's a real shame, people should have the right to govern themselves they way they desire.

Shdwdrgn ,

Seems like a lot of shitty countries are trying to make land-grabs all at once, with the goal being to wipe out the existing population. I figure it's only a matter of time before China starts trying to commit genocide on Taiwan, but Russia and Israel have already jumped into that pool.

Shdwdrgn ,

I wonder if this is a matter of countries refusing to choose a side (by not recognizing new countries), or if they ARE choosing to side with the aggressive countries?

Shdwdrgn ,

To answer your first question, ALL of the mirrors are safe. The idea with mirrors is that you choose one that is geographically close to your location (same country, maybe the same region or state) to help reduce lag in downloading the files. Any selection is valid, all of the mirrors will have the same content, but for your location some mirrors may simply be faster or slower than others.

One other thing you might run in to is different types of installers. Some may be a very minimal install which only give you a command line, while others will provide a fully configured desktop. You might also see an option for a "Live" version -- that is something you put on a bootable memory stick and you can test out a working version of the operating system without actually changing anything on your computer, but all of your settings will go away when you reboot.

I haven't used Mint so I can't provide specific info, however some things that are common to ANY linux desktop -- You probably want to start with printer drivers (install CUPS) and some office software (install LibreOffice). For internet access, Firefox and Thunderbird are good choices. LicreOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird can all also be used on Windows if you want to check them out ahead of time. There are many lists online that can point you to equivalent software, so like if you use Lightroom on windows, you might try Darkroom on linux. basically you just need to make a list of what Windows software you use and then install a similar package in linux.

Yes you will need some time to learn the new operating system and all the new software, very little will be 100% exactly the same, but they are "close enough". You figured out how to use all these things once before, so you can do it again, and it will definitely be worth the effort.

Shdwdrgn ,

I'll just add that nearly all linux distributions have a package manager you can access from the desktop. Simply open it up, find the software you want, and click to install. Not much different than going to the play store and installing an android app. The only time you need to do anything different is if you're trying to install some obscure software that isn't directly supported by your linux distribution, then you might have to resort to the command line.

Shdwdrgn ,

Don't feel bad, that's a shitty process even for those of us in IT. Sometimes it doesn't work for certain models of memory sticks, sometimes something on the computer gets in the way of booting to the drive. I recently worked on some servers where I had to disable EFI, grab a 15 year old installer to get linux booted up on it, then switch to the newer installer to complete the process. So far Dell has been the worst (but also the most frequently used) I've had trouble with for getting linux installed. Unfortunately the solutions usually involve combinations of disabling EFI, changing the hard drive to a different mode, or even changing what mode the memory stick is booted with (all selected from within the BIOS at boot time), and it's not always the same process even for the same release of a machine.

It's not you, it's Microsoft working with the manufacturers to make it difficult for people to switch.

Shdwdrgn ,

Just curious, but have you ever tried installing Windows from scratch on a new computer? I'm just wondering if your comparison of "simpler" is the same installation of both operating systems, or if you're comparing something that somebody else set up for you to something you're doing yourself?

And yeah, it DID used to be dead simple... throw in an installation media and boot up the machine. These days there's so much garbage in the way that they're complicated the whole process without much gain.

Shdwdrgn ,

Back in the days when people still had floppies and cd drives in their computers, yeah things were dead-simple. You pop in a disk, format the hard drive, and walk away while the process completes. I miss that. The machines I've worked on in probably the last decade, it seems like I have to fight against the hardware every time I want to wipe the system or replace a failed drive. The last set of servers I got, I couldn't figure out why the linux image (with full EFI settings) refused to even boot up properly. Turns out Dell had made these machines so you could easily boot a Windows installer from any of the external USB ports, but to install linux you had to use a hidden internal USB port. Once I found out about that then yeah the installation went as planned, but this is the kind of BS I'm referring to about manufacturers trying to prevent users from getting rid of Windows.

Shdwdrgn ,

I wish this helped me, but my back always starts hurting when I go for walks... although it's more my middle-back rather than lower. I try to get in a 30-minute walk at least twice a week, plus of course things like going to the grocery store and mowing the lawn add a lot of time. Never seems to be enough to help though.

Shdwdrgn ,

Don't you just hate spell-checkers changing your words?

I'm certainly not the type to get out on a bike and ride 50 miles a day, but on the other hand despite spending a lot of time at the computer I also spend a lot of time working on projects and moving around. Just this week I started cutting up the steel to build a new utility trailer so I certainly move around a lot, but my body still hates me.

Shdwdrgn ,

Funny, I try to block anyone in my department that wants to purchase a Lenovo. My most recent experiences with them have been a faulty battery driver that was known online for at least six months before it was brought to my attention that the model I purchased for someone (their choice) refused to recharge, and Lenovo continued to deny any problems on their side... We returned the laptop as unusable because the only way to charge it was to boot into the BIOS screen. The last time I dealt with them, the corporate rep I worked with was right on top of emails and phone calls until we made a purchase, then refused to answer my contacts after that. After a month of trying to get in touch with him I finally called the main line, and the person I spoke with said "oh he just walked by my desk, let me grab him". The excuse I was given was that he had been too busy to respond.

Basically every time I've been forced to purchase a Lenovo for someone, there has been zero support provided and half of them had to be returned. Granted, I haven't bought any since COVID but I really hope I never have to deal with them again.

Shdwdrgn ,

I'm still trying to figure how anyone (including Musk) ever thought he was a genius? Like ok so he has a lot of money that he throws at interesting problems, and those problems attract actual geniuses to solve, but what has Musk himself ever done except be an employer? It reminds me of all the talk about how Edison was supposed to be a genius, when the reality was that he ran a sweatshop to steal other people's hard work.

Shdwdrgn ,

We've been seeing these electronic tags on sale items at Walmart for the past few years. It's been a few months since the last time we were in the store, but last weekend we noticed ALL items now had small two-color OLED price tags on them. I don't know if that means we're just lucky enough to be one of the first to get the new tech, or that the chain had already started rolling them out well before the article, but they're definitely out there. I'd actually love to get ahold of some just to play with them, although seeing the prices of OLEDs on ebay makes me wonder how any store is saving money by using them.

Shdwdrgn ,

Sorry, yes! I've got my head in another non-electronics project right now and was thinking of the wrong thing.

Shdwdrgn ,

Nice, thanks for the link. I might have to grab a couple to see what else I can do with them.

Shdwdrgn ,

There's also the issue of very little (if any) used EVs on the market, and in an affordable range. Most people are looking for a reliable used car for around $1000-$2000 US, and the cheapest EV I have seen is around $7500. And there's always the question of what condition the batteries are in -- if you had to replace all the batteries in a used EV then you easily doubled the cost of it. Fortunately it seems like Tesla is the only manufacturer asinine enough to seal their batteries, other manufactures allow replacement of individual cells which will really help in the used market.

Shdwdrgn ,

I thought the torus shape was the accepted theory? Guess I haven't been keeping up on this.

Near the bottom of the article they mention that if the universe wasn't flat, we would see multiple copies of the universe in the sky. I'm not sure that is exactly true? Given the speed at which the universe is expanding, especially during the early period after the big bang, it seems reasonable that the light from most stars wouldn't have had a chance to loop back around yet. Even the light from the earliest stars is just reaching us, so I don't know why they think it would have had time to loop back around multiple times, unless there's something I'm missing?

And nothing in the article really touched on the "holes" mentioned in the title. Are they referring to the center of a torus, which isn't really a hole that we could observe? I don't get it.

Shdwdrgn ,

You know, I've been wondering why everyone is talking about all these new Doctor Who episodes and yet I couldn't find it in any of my lists. Today I did a search for just "Doctor Who" without the year (2005) or season number (14)... and WTF is "Doctor Who 2023"??? This is still the 2005 series, and still season 14, so why is it now being listed under 2023 season 01 which isn't even when the current season began? None of this makes any sense.

Questions about migrating a ZFS RAID

I've recently been looking at options to upgrade (completely replace) my current NAS, as it's currently more than a little bit jank and frankly kinda garbage. I have a few questions about that and about migrating my current TrueNAS scale installation or at least it's settings over....

Shdwdrgn ,

I've never used TrueNAS, but my experience with ZFS is that it could care less what order the drives are detected by the operating system. You could always shut down the machine, swap two drives around, boot back up, and see if the pool comes back online. If it fails, shut it back down and put the drives in their original locations.

If you are moving your data to new (larger) drives, before anything else you should take the opportunity to play with the new drives and find the ZFS settings that work well. I think recordsize is autodetected these days, but maybe for your use things like dedup, atime, and relatime can be turned off, and do you need xattr? If you're using 4096 block sizes did you partition the drives starting at sector 2048? Did you turn off compression if you don't need it? Also consider your hardware, like if you have multiple connection ports, can you get a speed increase by spreading out the drives so you don't saturate any particular channel?

Newer hardware by itself can make a huge difference too. My last upgrade took me from PCIe x4 to x16 slots, allowing me to upgrade to SAS3 cards, and overall went from around 70MB/s to 460MB/s transfer speeds with enough hardware to manage up to 40 drives. Turns out the new configuration also uses much less power, so a big win all around.

Shdwdrgn ,

Nothing wrong with used servers, that's the only thing I've ever run. Ebay has provided a ton of equipment to me.

Shdwdrgn ,

I have an MFC-9340 and have also run into this problem. The drivers available in cups allow me to either print two-sided in b&w, or print single-sided in color (at least for the drivers that work at all with the printer). I finally broke down and installed the binary from Brother to get it working fully, but it's annoying that I can't just use a generic driver with this printer.

Shdwdrgn ,

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet... Yes a failing drive will significantly slow down a computer. Drives are built to be fault-tolerant, so if it reads a block of data and that doesn't match the block's checksum, the drive will attempt to re-read the same data until it gets what it believes is correct data, or until it gives up and sends a failure to the computer.

So now imagine your drive is in a state where nearly every block is having trouble being read, so it re-reads each block several times, adding a significant amount of time to every operation. A scan of the drive may indicate everything is working correctly if the drive does eventually return valid information, but the drive itself is having to work very hard to get this data.

One thing you might try to check for internal errors is running a read/write test of the drive, and recording the speed these operations were performed at. If that number is close to the parameters of the drive (you can check with the manufacturer or online reviews to find real-world drive speeds) then the drive is probably ok. However if the test is running a lot slower than the expected speeds, it's a good bet that your drive is failing and you will want to back up the data as soon as possible.

Shdwdrgn ,

Sectors that cannot be read reliably will get marked out, but I've seen plenty of HDDs that tested fine but still had obvious issues when reading data from certain areas. If your OS happens to be within that area then it becomes a problem very quickly, and you'll probably lose data before the drive marks those sectors as bad.

CAD Software Suggestion

I am currently on win10 but have been toying with mint and liking it. I intend on fully switching over soon. I have also been toying with the idea of some simple 3D modeling, like making custom parts for projects around my house. Maybe using a CAD software to generate stls for a 3D print or using it to spec out parts for a...

Shdwdrgn ,

A lot will depend on your preferred workflow, and since you mentioned SolidWorks I assume that means you prefer a more GUI-oriented approach. However as an alternative, if you are comfortable with more of a programming approach, you might look in to OpenSCAD. Most things are done from a more primitive standpoint in how you create each part of an object, but I like having the direct control over every aspect.

Shdwdrgn ,

I played around with it in the early 2000's to learn more about Linux. Eventually used it to build a micro-release of a firewall running samba, cups, apache, and postfix, all crammed onto a bootable zip-100 disk. You can do quite a lot when you understand the bare minimum requirements to get a system running.

Shdwdrgn ,

I feel like I want to agree with you, but on the other hand what would happen if everyone were free to use any dead celebrity's likeness any way they wanted? Keeping in mind that Sinéad O'Connor's estate just sued Trump for using her music without permission at a rally that goes against everything she stood for, if we weren't allowed to keep a tight reign on these things then it would unleash some truly unspeakable horrors. For example, what if a speech from MLKJ were allowed to be twisted by white supremacists to spread hatred? It could get out of hand so quickly and the good deeds done by these people could be white-washed. I think we just need to accept certain restrictions in order to safeguard the strongest voices that speak up for the rest of us.

Shdwdrgn ,

All it takes is one big company like Amazon changing their services to IPv6-only and most of the world would be converted over in a month or two... but now I guess we know the reason WHY Amazon doesn't push such a policy.

Shdwdrgn ,

Seriously? How can any device call themselves current gen and not support something as basic as this? That's just embarrassing.

Are we living in a baby universe that looks like a black hole to outsiders? ( lemmy.sdf.org )

Our Universe appears to be expanding and cooling, having originated some 13.8 billion years ago in a hot Big Bang. However, it's plausible that what we see from inside our Universe is simply the result of being inside a black hole that formed from some parent Universe. If the black holes that form in our cosmos give birth to...

Shdwdrgn ,

It seems like you are making the assumption that time and the laws of physics follow the same rules inside the singularity. If we ourselves are inside a singularity, the net result was enough matter to create our known universe... but maybe in the next layer down matter behaves differently and stars can be produced on a smaller scale. Or maybe the matter is heading towards its own scale of big-bang. And what if time contracts to the point that the life of the black hole, and its relative size, corresponds to the life of that universe and its expansion?

A story which comes to mind and presents an interesting theory that could apply here can be found in He Who Shrank.

Shdwdrgn ,

But you're still judging all of this based on our current laws of physics, or that anyone even knows for certain what is occurring within a black hole. Also remember that time loses all conventional meaning once you pass the event horizon. Now compare that to what we think we know of our own big-bang... that we believe all matter started as a singularity, and that in the initial expansion both time and the very laws of physics were quite muddy and took a bit to settle into what we know today. Within the black hole we don't even know if the concept of matter still has the same meaning -- what appears as a known value of X suns to us could resolve to a whole universe if the physics change.

I'm curious why you think the matter coming it to a black hole would be observed are rushing towards the singularity? We've already seen just how insanely that much gravity distorts the perceptions around the outside of a black hole, so why wouldn't the same be true on the inside? Our own universe has a finite amount of matter, and yet the space it is 'contained' in wraps around on itself so there is no center. The boundary of a black hole could potentially create the same result -- a threshold that we could never cross, but also a wrapping of the space within back onto itself. Also consider the unknown nature of time, what if all the matter that will ever be consumed by the black hole feeds into that singularity while simultaneously exploding into the life of a new universe? In a place where time doesn't exist, all of time would happen simultaneously, so from another viewpoint the billions of years (not trillions) that comprise the history of the life and death of our universe could happen all at once. We know that as we look back towards the time of our own singularity the math surrounding time and space break down to a point where they no longer have any meaning. The same is true for what happens inside a black hole, it all breaks down and become meaningless under our current math. Until we know more about what is happening, or find some way to peer back before the big bang, you really can't discount the idea that what happens inside a black hole could be similar to the creation of a new universe. What appears to us as stringification could be the result of the math showing us the entire history of a moving object instead of a single point in time. Hell we don't even know if time works the same way, maybe once you cross the event horizon time starts moving backwards and what we see as everything moving towards a singularity appears in there as a universe expanding away from it.

Yes all of this sounds like fantastical sci-fi stuff. Then again, what we know about the birth of our universe and how space and time are warped within a black hole also sounds like fantastical sci-fi stuff, and until we have a better grasp on the nature of all of it, there's nothing yet that proves or disproves if a whole universe could exist inside a black hole.

Shdwdrgn ,

Yeah I agree that we shouldn't try to contradict the evidence we have without a good hypothesis to back it up, I just feel like we're still at a stage where the mathematics give us an idea of what might be possible, but that is seriously constrained by our limited understanding of what happens at these grand scales. Without letting your mind wander to the possibilities of what could be, we would never take the time to look beyond what we know. I'm just trying to say that our knowledge of the subject is still greatly limited, and this idea can't be ruled out completely until we know more. In the meantime, what if someone did seriously explore the notion? Perhaps they'll find proof that shows it can't be possible, but perhaps they might also stumble upon a idea even more fantastic.

Ok, how do I start self-hosting?

I've been following this community for some time in order to learn about self-hosting and, while I have learnt about a bunch of cool web services to host, I'm still lost on where/how to start. Does anyone have, like, a very beginner guide that is not just "install this distro and click these buttons"? I have an old laptop that...

Shdwdrgn ,

It sounds like maybe you're looking for a primer on how networking works across the internet? If so, here's a few concepts to get you started (yeah unfortunately this huge post is JUST an overview), and note that every one of these services can also be self-hosted if you really want to learn the nuts & bolts...

DNS is the backbone of everything, it is the service that converts names like "lemmy.world" into an actual IP address. Think of it like the phone book of the internet, so like if you wanted to call your favorite pizza place you would find their name, and that would give you their phone number. Normally any domain that you try to reach has a fixed (or static) IP address which never (or rarely) changes, and when you register your domain you will point it to a DNS server that you have given authoritative access to provide the IP where your server can be found.

But what if you're running a small setup at home and you don't actually have a static IP for your server? Then you look to DDNS (Dynamic DNS) and point your domain's DNS to them. There are several free ones available online you can use. The idea is you run a script on your server that they provide, and every time your IP from your ISP changes, the script notifies the DDNS service, they update their local DNS records so the next person looking for your domain receives the updated IP. There can be a little delay (up to a few minutes but usually only seconds) in finding the new address when your IP changes, but otherwise it will work very smoothly.

You mentioned DHCP, so here's a quick summary of that. Basically you are going to have a small network at your home. Think of your internet router as the front-end, and everything behind it like you computers or mobile devices are going to be on their own little private network. You will typically find they all get an IP address starting with 192.168.* which is one or the reserved spaces which cannot be reached from the internet except by the rules your router allows. This is where DHCP comes in... when you connect a device it sends out a broadcast asking for a local network IP address that it is allowed to use. The DHCP server keeps track of the addresses already in use, and tells your device one that is free. It will also provide a few other local details, like what DNS server to use (so if you run your own you can tell the DHCP service to use your local server instead of talking to your ISP). So like the phone book analogy, your DHCP service tells all of your local devices what phone number they are allowed to use.
other
Now to put all of this together, you probably have a router from your ISP. That router has been pre-programmed with the DHCP service and what DNS servers to use (which your ISP runs). The router also acts like the phone company switchboard... if it sees traffic between your local devices like a computer trying to reach your web server, it routes those calls accordingly. If you are trying to get to google then the route sends your call to the ISP, whose routers then send your connection to other routers, until it finally reaches google's servers. Basically each router becomes a stepping stone between your IP address and someone else's IP address, bringing traffic in both directions.

OK so now you want to run a web server for your domain. This means that besides getting the DNS routing in place, you also need to tell your router that incoming web traffic needs to be directed to your web server. Now you need to learn port numbers. Web pages traffic on port 80, and SSL pages use port 443. Every type of service has its own port number, so DNS is port 53, ftp is port 21, and so on. Your router will have a feature called port-forwarding. This is used when you always want to send a specific port to a specific device, so you tell it that any incoming traffic on port 80 needs to be sent to the IP address of your web server (don't worry, this won't interfere with your own attempts to reach outside websites, it only affects connections that are trying to reach you).

Now if you've followed along you might have realized that even on your local network, DHCP means that your server's own IP address can change, so how can you port-forward port 80 traffic to your web server all the time? Well you need to set a local static IP on your server. How that is done will be specific to each linux distribution but you can easily find that info online. However you need to know what addresses are safe to use. Log in to your router, and find the DHCP settings. In there you will also see a usable range (such as 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.199). You are limited to only changing the last number in that set, and the router itself probably uses something like 192.168.0.1. Each part of an address is a number between 0-255 (but 0 and 255 are reserved, so except in special cases you only want to use the numbers 1-254), so with my example of the address range being used by DHCP, this means that you would be free to use any address ending in 200-254. You could set the static IP of your web server to 192.168.0.200, and then point the port-forwarding to that address.

Now remember, your local IP address (the 192.168 numbers) are not the same as your external internet address. If you pay your provider for a static internet address, then your router would be programmed with that number, but your web server would still have its local address. Otherwise if you're using DDNS then you would tell that service the outside IP address that your router was given by your ISP (who coincidentally is running a DHCP that gave your router that address).

Let me see if I can diagram this... OK so imagine your router has the internet address of 1.2.3.4, your web server has the local address of 192.168.0.200, and someone from the internet who has address 100.1.1.1 is trying to reach you. The path would be something like this:

100.1.1.1 -> (more routers along the way) -> your ISP -> 1.2.3.4 (router) -> 192.168.0.200 (server)

They send a request to get a web page from your server, and your server send the page back along the same path.

Yes there's a lot to it, but if you break it down one step at a time you can think of each step as an individual router that looks to see if the traffic going to something on the outside or going to something on the inside. Which direction do I need to send this along? And eventually the traffic gets to a local network that says "hey I recognize this address and it needs to go over to this device here." And the key to all of this routing is DNS which provides hints on where to forward the information to the next router in the path. I can break things down further for you if something isn't clear but hopefully that gives you a broad overview on how things move around on the internet.

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