Server:Server Status

Impossible Minecraft – Our Guide

The whole family recently went through a playthrough of Impossible Minecraft by McMakistein and it was a HECK of a ride. It's very difficult and frustrating, but we made it all the way through. We didn't see a lot of people playing this and there were no guides, so we figured we'd take a stab at what we discovered. You have to be on 1.21.1 for this datapack.

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Guide – Using Canvas Data v2 to download exports of tables using Powershell

This was originally posted Here but I'm cross-posting it to my site for preservation and self-reliance.

We, at California Northstate University, are implementing canvas data v2, but we are finding that unless you use the python client library (which is not an option for us, we have no python developers or anyone to maintain a python environment) the documentation is extremely inadequate. We are attempting to communicate with the API using powershell to download selected data exports for import into Microsoft SQL using other methods. You probably don't want to do this, but as a non-developer, there was no sample code out there and it was a MASSIVE struggle. I want to share what we came up with so other people aren't starting from scratch, because the official documentation is woefully inadequate.

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Automated import of selected Canvas tables into Microsoft SQL Server using only canvas-data-cli (via node) and SQL Server Agent.

This was originally posted Here but I'm cross-posting it to my site for preservation and self-reliance.

We wanted a way to import selected data from selected Canvas tables into a Microsoft SQL Server instance in a way that can be scheduled for automation and required the smallest number of dependencies and tools. Using canvas-data-cli, we were able to accomplish this on a windows server with only node, Powershell, and the SQL Server Agent. There are many other solutions out there for this, but we wanted to share ours because of its maintenance simplicity. There is a bit of setup the first time you want to grab a new table, but overall it is extremely simple and can be managed with very little DB knowledge, making it maintainable even by new admins.

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Hacking the HiWonder MasterPi!

For Lucas' birthday, he got a HiWonder MasterPi robotic arm. He wanted to learn to code and wanted a robotic arm, so this is the one I found. It's a VERY cool product, however out of the box it had a LOT of issues. We did NOT get the included RaspberryPi, meaning we had to get and provision one ourselves (we got a 4b, and I strongly recommend this over a 5 as a python package is not yet built for the 5), and it was a mess out of the box. I googled a lot, but didn't find a lot of resources about this product, so I figured I would make a guide to help other people who want to go on this journey.

IMPORTANT NOTE: it's impossible to get to the sdcard of the pi once it's assembled, so do all the pi provisioning first. At least get it onto the internet so you can ssh/vnc into it later.

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Proxmox VE and ZFS over iSCSI on TrueNAS Scale: My steps to make it work.

This was originally posted Here but I'm cross-posting it to my site for preservation and self-reliance.

I found a lot of searching and testing with people struggling on this, but I was able to make this work. I wanted to document my exact steps in the hope it helps someone else. I have a VM povisioned, working, with snapshots and migrations.

First, on TrueNAS Scale, I have a ZFS dataset with a bunch of space. Initially I wanted to create a zvol under it and limit the space for VM's, but interestingly this doesn't work, you get the error "parent is not a filesystem." I dunno, but mapping it directly to the dataset works, so keep that in mind; either make it's own dataset or expect your vm drives to be in the root of the dataset next to other storage. Record the exact name of the dataset for later, visible under "Path" in the details for the dataset.

Then, go to Shares, Block (iSCSI). Most of my config was sourced from here https://www.truenas.com/blog/iscsi-shares-on-truenas-freenas/ If you go through the Wizard, give the share a "Name", the extent type is "Device", The device should be your dataset which will be in the dropdown, the sharing platform should be "Modern OS: Extent block size 4k, TPC enabled, no Xen compat mode, SSD speed". I created the target outside of this wizard which you can see about just below.

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