Overengineering your home net
If something is worth engineering, it's worth overengineering. Witness my home network, the Nerdhole. There is nothing improper about the term "Nerdhole." It means a dwelling dedicated to Nerdish activities. In my case, I am setting up my home network to such standards that a small company could do the same. There is a progression to the amount of engineering needed as your organisation grows. It goes something like this:
- A single PC or laptop. - You bought a computer in the shop. You turned it on, signed away your soul to Microsoft, and now you are happily putting all your deepest thoughts in the Cloud.
- Taking charge of your own computer - You are no longer satisfied with what the PC shop put on your machine, and you have re-instaled the operating system, being very careful to choose only the things you really need. You spend time learning about all the settings, and disable most of the stuff.
- Choosing your operating system - Your current unnamed software provider is doing things that you are no longer comfortable with. You acquire an operating system of your own choosing, and insall it yourself. You are on your phone constantly, trying to find out why it isn't working, and have to dig into things like BIOS settings. And then your setup starts working. You bask in the glow of no longer being a mere user, a mere consumer. You are now... root!
- Getting more kit - Almost without you noticing, bits of electronics start appearing in your home. You now have more than one computer. One for the day to day work, emails, web browsing, and the other for tinkering with. Maybe it's a tiny raspberry pi sitting on your desk with all its electric entrails hanging out. Maybe it's your old PC that is now running Linux because Microsoft deems it unworthy of Windows 11. You no longer want to plug everything in your broadband modem, and WiFi is clearly not cutting it anymore. So now you have a Gigachad Ethernet Switch. More and more things in your home are now on all the time!
- Chaos and order - You now have four or five computers. Each computer holds some kind of essential information, but where did you put that Spaghetti Carbonara recipe? You take a deep breath, and purchase a bit of kit, maybe a NAS, to put all your information in one place where you can at least find it. There is now a computer in your home that you use all the time... without touching it! You have a server. It's better, but you keep having to fiddle with the settings so you can read the files on this computer from another computer. But usually you can get it to work.
- Get organised - You've had a visit from a friend and showed him your pride and joy. He tells you that chmod 777 is like inviting the Devil into your home, only worse! You are now setting up an authentication service (FreeIPA) and pointing all your Linux computers at it. You set up proper security with Samba and NFS, so all of your computers can poke into the same storage without letting just anyone who wanders into your house do what they will with your data. It takes a lot of research and a lot of trial, error, and heartbreak, but in the end, it works! Also, you now have one friend less.
- Gainful employment - Someone at your place of work (a small company) has noted that you are "good with computers" and thus you have been promoted to "System Administrator." Which is nice. They now come to you whenever their laptop is misbehaving, which is less nice. But still, you have the Knowing of Linux, and you set up a reasonable bunch of services, so that all the computers know each other's name and number. You persuade the Boss to buy a NAS like you have at home. But now, something changes. You are no longer the only person to use this stuff, and you spend your days explaining the most basic things to anyone carrying in a laptop. You are no longer just a power user... you are a Sysadmin.
- IT Department - The bags under your eyes become too prominent even for the Boss to ignore, also as he so charmingly puts it: if you jump in front of a train then the company is stuffed. You get an Assistant. You are the BOFH, he is the PFY. Together, you can do anything. You can now at least take turns on the sleepless nights. And then one fine day you find that the file server is no longer serving files, so you set about fixing it... and find... weird things. You certainly did not configure it like that?! Who, besides you, could have done such a thing? Your PFY walks into the room, eyes aglow, eager to tell you about the brilliant idea he had. Severe beatings are not legal in this jurisdiction. It is time for...
- Change management - With the company growing larger, you have acquired a few more bright-eyed enthusiastic coworkers, who all want root access to the shinies. And they get it. And they all work at cross purposes. And they don't follow the agreements you made. So one fatefull night you say that enough is enough, and you change all the root passwords to something only you know. And none of you bastards touches anything without first explaining what and why! You install a piece of software where problems are logged, and their solutions written up. A wiki appears with all of your decisions documented in an orderly fashion. And since you can prove that the on-call person will have more chance of a quiet night if everyone behaves, peace and quiet returns. And all is well, for a while.
- Raising the standards - Your company keeps growing. Your little IT department runs like a well-oiled machine. All the users are happy. Then, one of the vague yet menacing money people wanders in asking about the customer database. You say it's up and running and happy as usual. your financial bod smiles: "But is it... compliant?" So suddenly, a load of non-technical and annoying work lands on your table. You need to write up how the database is secured. How the customers it contains can verify that their information is correct. How you guarantee that nothing... happens to it. How you guarantee that random admins can't make off with the information. Which is an bit of a bugger because at this moment you have no such guarantee. So, you need to convince everyone that nne of you smelly Linux nerds can make off with the goodies.
- Who is this claiming to be in IT? - Much to your susprise, another department has sprung up.