Before we came to Ireland for extended stays, I setup an old Dell laptop to be the media server while we travel. This system runs Ubuntu 24.04 Server with a GUI, and makes it possible for us to watch our ripped movies and related media. I use Tailscale to securely access my remote systems, and in the Tailnet this server has the uninspired hostname of dell4800.

I made a couple of updates today to make my day-to-day maintenance work more efficient.

First, I set up SSH on dell4800 with key-based authentication, and disabled password authentication. On my Windows 11 laptop, I generated a fresh set of SSH keys, and used ssh-copy-id to copy the .pub file to dell4800. I can now open a terminal session on dell4800 from my Windows laptop without a password. (The Tailnet provides ample security.)

Next, I installed and configured Samba, the Linux/Unix app that provides SMB/CIFS file sharing services. I added the dell4800 media directory as a share, and can now mount the directory on my Windows laptop.

dell4800 runs Syncthing in a Docker container managed by Portainer, and automatically syncs various folders from my main Synology DS220+ NAS system currently based in Texas over the Tailnet.

Nothing earth-shattering, but these tools make it easier and more efficient for me to do routine maintenance on the Syncthing target directories.