Blackmail variant – 2023-10-02

Slight variant to the 2023-09-05 variant.

Hello.

Unfortunately, I need to start our conversation with bad news for you.
Around few months back I managed to get full access to all devices of yours, 
which are used by you on a daily basis to browse internet.
Afterwards, I could initiate monitoring and tracking of all your activities on the internet.

I am proud to share the sequence of how it happened: 
In the past I bought from hackers the access to various email accounts (today, that is rather a simple thing to do online).
Clearly, it was not hard at all for me to log in to your email account ([REDACTED]).

A week after that, I had already managed to effortlessly install Trojan virus to Operating Systems of all devices that are currently in your use, 
and as result gained access to your email.
To be honest, that was not really difficult at all (because you were eagerly opening the links from your inbox emails). 
I know, I am a genius. 1_1

With help of that software, I can gain access to all controllers in your devices (such as video camera, keyboard and microphone).
As result, I downloaded to my remote cloud servers all your personal data, photos and other information including web browsing history.
Likewise, I have complete access to all your social networks, messengers, chat history, emails, as well as contacts list.
My intelligent virus unceasingly refreshes its signatures (due to its driver-based nature), and hereby stays unnoticed by your antivirus software.

Herbey, I believe that now you finally start realizing how I could easily remain unnoticed all this while until this very letter...
While collecting information related to you, I had also unveiled that you are a true fan of porn sites.
You truly enjoy browsing through adult sites and watching horny vids, while playing your dirty solo games.
Bingo! I also recorded several filthy scenes with you in the main focus and montaged some dirty videos, 
which demonstrate your passionate masturbation and cum sessions.

In case you still don't believe me, all I need is just one-two mouse clicks to make all your unmasking videos become available to your friends, 
colleagues, and even relatives.
Well, if you still doubt me, I can easily make recorded videos of your orgasms become a public.
I truly believe that you surely would avoid that from happening, taking in consideration the type of the XXX videos you love watching, 
(you are clearly aware of what I mean) it will result in a huge disaster for you.

Well, there is still a way to settle this tricky situation in a peaceful manner:
You will need to transfer $1350 USD to my account (refer to Bitcoin equivalent based on the exchange rate at the moment transfer), 
so once funds transfer is complete, I will straight away proceed with deleting all that dirty content from servers once and for all.

Afterwards, you can consider that we never met before. You have my honest word, 
that all the harmful software will also be deactivated and deleted from all your devices currently in use. Worry not, I keep my promises.
That is truly a win-win solution that comes at a relatively reduced cost, 
mostly knowing how much effort I spent on monitoring your profile and traffic for a considerably long time.
In event that you have no idea about means of buying and transferring bitcoins - 
don't hesitate to use any search engine for your assistance (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.).

My bitcoin wallet is as follows: 1Mo73pEdA2B7xHefJa8j15cLZXMV9WbubW

I have allocated 48 hours for you to do that, and the timer started right after you opened this very email (2 days to be exact).

Don't even think of doing anything of the following:
! Abstain from attempting to reply me (this email was created by me inside your inbox page and the return address was generated accordingly).
! Abstain from attempting to get in touch with police or any other security services. Moreover, don't even think of sharing this to you friends. 
 Once I discover this (apparently, that is absolutely easy for me, taking in consideration that I have complete control over all systems you use) - 
 kinky video will straight away be made public. 
! Don't even think of attempting to find me; that is completely useless. Don't forget that all cryptocurrency transactions remain completely anonymous.
! Don't attempt reinstalling the OS on all your devices or getting rid of them. That won't lead you to success either, 
 because I have already saved all videos at my remote servers as a backup.

Things you should not be concerned about:
! That your funds transfer won't reach my wallet.
- Worry not, I can see everything, hence after you finish the transfer, I will get a notification right away 
 (trojan virus of mine uses a remote-control feature, which functions similarly to TeamViewer).
! That I will still distribute your videos although you make the funds transfer.
- My word, I have no intention or interest in continuing making your life troublesome. 
 Anyway, If I truly wanted that, it would happen long time ago without me notifying you! 

Everything can be settled in a peaceful and just way!
And lastly... make sure you don't get caught afterwards in such type of incidents anymore!
My fair advice - ensure you change all your passwords on a regular basis.

Blackmail variant – 2023-10-01

This one came across with the subject “I RECORDED YOU!”, which I’ve seen before. It also spoofed my email address, which is a fairly common feature of these scam emails and, to reiterate, is stupid-easy to pull off.

Hello there!

Unfortunately, there are some bad news for you.

Some time ago your device was infected with my private trojan, R.A.T (Remote Administration Tool), if you want to find out more about it simply use Google.

My trojan allows me to access your accounts, your camera and microphone.

Check the sender of this email, I have sent it from your email account.

You truly enjoy checking out porn websites and watching dirty videos, while having a lot of kinky fun.

I RECORDED YOU (through your camera) SATISFYING YOURSELF!

If you still doubt my serious intentions, it only takes couple mouse clicks to share the video of you with your friends, relatives, all email contacts and on social networks.

All you need is $1800 USD in Bitcoin (BTC) transfer to my account (Bitcoin equivalent based on exchange rate during your transfer).

After the transaction is successful, I will proceed to delete everything without delay.

Afterwards, we can pretend that we have never met before.

In addition, I assure you that all the harmful software will be deleted from your device.

Be sure, I keep my promises!

If you are unaware how to buy and send Bitcoin (BTC) - Google: Where to buy Bitcoin (BTC), to send and receive Bitcoin (BTC), you can register your wallet for example here: www.blockchain.com

My Bitcoin (BTC) address is: 17uHKCWeRBuGEYw2ujLDZna3b7sfxwT2ij

Yes, that's how the address looks like, copy and paste my address, it's (cAsE-sEnSEtiVE).

You are given not more than 48 hours after you have opened this email (2 days to be precise).

As I got access to this email account, I will know if this email has already been read.

Everything will be carried out based on fairness!

An advice from me - regularly change all your passwords to your accounts and update your device with newest security patches.

Blackmail variant – 2023-09-21

It isn’t often that we see a genuinely new variant rather than just a slight modification on something previously seen. Still the same hallmarks, though, so still the same scam.

Hi.
I have very bad news for you. Unfortunately, your private data was compromised.

Your password was compromised through a legitimate website, and that led to events that I will explain to you now.
Using your password, our team gained access to your email. We analyzed all data and after going through found a vector for an attack.
That attack was a success. The result was that your machine was infected with a virus/backdoor. Our team uses individual approach to every victim, our success rate is very high.

We have gained access to the data, but the most interesting part that we are able to control your webcam and microphone.

And you are correct. We have a nice archive with exploding video content.
It's all good, but we are here to make money. So if you don't want those videos to be leaked, please follow the instructions.

You pay $750 USD, and there will be nothing to worry about. No chats, no photos, nothing. Every single file will be deleted and virus removed from your machine

Use Bitcoin to make the transfer. Wallet address is 1J7RYCYp8D7zYoAAR4HQDXujaRU6D9tDbf , it's unique and we will know that you made the payment immediately.
You have 2 days to make the transfer, that's reasonable.
Take care.

Blackmail variant – 2023-09-05

This one is a significant variant to ones I’ve posted previously. And they’ll keep adapting the messaging so it isn’t something that comes up in search engines. Which is why I keep posting these whenever I get them.

Hi there!

Unfortunately, I need to start our conversation with bad news for you.
Around few months back I managed to get full access to all devices of yours, 
which are used by you on a daily basis to browse internet.
Afterwards, I could initiate monitoring and tracking of all your activities on the internet.

I am proud to share the sequence of how it happened: 
In the past I bought from hackers the access to various email accounts (today, that is rather a simple thing to do online).
Clearly, it was not hard at all for me to log in to your email account ([REDACTED]).

A week after that, I had already managed to effortlessly install Trojan virus to Operating Systems of all devices that are currently in your use, 
and as result gained access to your email.
To be honest, that was not really difficult at all (because you were eagerly opening the links from your inbox emails). 
I know, I am a genius. (=

With help of that software, I can gain access to all controllers in your devices (such as video camera, keyboard and microphone).
As result, I downloaded to my remote cloud servers all your personal data, photos and other information including web browsing history.
Likewise, I have complete access to all your social networks, messengers, chat history, emails, as well as contacts list.
My intelligent virus unceasingly refreshes its signatures (due to its driver-based nature), and hereby stays unnoticed by your antivirus software.

Herbey, I believe that now you finally start realizing how I could easily remain unnoticed all this while until this very letter...
While collecting information related to you, I had also unveiled that you are a true fan of porn sites.
You truly enjoy browsing through adult sites and watching horny vids, while playing your dirty solo games.
Bingo! I also recorded several filthy scenes with you in the main focus and montaged some dirty videos, 
which demonstrate your passionate masturbation and cum sessions.

In case you still don't believe me, all I need is just one-two mouse clicks to make all your unmasking videos become available to your friends, 
colleagues, and even relatives.
Well, if you still doubt me, I can easily make recorded videos of your orgasms become a public.
I truly believe that you surely would avoid that from happening, taking in consideration the type of the XXX videos you love watching, 
(you are clearly aware of what I mean) it will result in a huge disaster for you.

Well, there is still a way to settle this tricky situation in a peaceful manner:
You will need to transfer $950 USD to my account (refer to Bitcoin equivalent based on the exchange rate at the moment transfer), 
so once funds transfer is complete, I will straight away proceed with deleting all that dirty content from servers once and for all.

Afterwards, you can consider that we never met before. You have my honest word, 
that all the harmful software will also be deactivated and deleted from all your devices currently in use. Worry not, I keep my promises.
That is truly a win-win solution that comes at a relatively reduced cost, 
mostly knowing how much effort I spent on monitoring your profile and traffic for a considerably long time.
In event that you have no idea about means of buying and transferring bitcoins - 
don't hesitate to use any search engine for your assistance (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.).

My bitcoin wallet is as follows: 1G8U8mNRBkBPmMrHZ3MMZnM1dH5bLKhLhp
An important notice: I have specified my Bitcoin wallet with spaces, 
hence once you carry out a transfer, please make sure that you key-in my bitcoin address without spaces to be sure that your funds successfully reach my wallet. 
I have allocated 48 hours for you to do that, and the timer started right after you opened this very email (2 days to be exact).

Don't even think of doing anything of the following:
! Abstain from attempting to reply me (this email was created by me inside your inbox page and the return address was generated accordingly).
! Abstain from attempting to get in touch with police or any other security services. Moreover, don't even think of sharing this to you friends. 
 Once I discover this (apparently, that is absolutely easy for me, taking in consideration that I have complete control over all systems you use) - 
 kinky video will straight away be made public. 
! Don't even think of attempting to find me – that is completely useless. Don't forget that all cryptocurrency transactions remain completely anonymous.
! Don't attempt reinstalling the OS on all your devices or getting rid of them. That won't lead you to success either, 
 because I have already saved all videos at my remote servers as a backup.

Things you should not be concerned about:
! That your funds transfer won't reach my wallet.
- Worry not, I can see everything, hence after you finish the transfer, I will get a notification right away 
 (trojan virus of mine uses a remote-control feature, which functions similarly to TeamViewer).
! That I will still distribute your videos although you make the funds transfer.
- My word, I have no intention or interest in continuing making your life troublesome. 
 Anyway, If I truly wanted that, it would happen long time ago without me notifying you! 

Everything can be settled in a peaceful and just way!
And lastly... make sure you don't get caught afterwards in such type of incidents anymore!
My fair advice - ensure you change all your passwords on a regular basis.


Other wallets associated with this:

Blackmail variant – 2023-08-30

This one’s a pretty substantial change to previous variants. But has many of the same hallmarks of previous scam emails.

Greetings!

Would like to introduce myself - I am a specialized hacker, and have succeeded in hacking your operating system.
At this moment, I have obtained a complete access to account of yours.
On top of that, I was also unnoticeably observing all your activities and spying on you for few past months.
It was possible because your computer was infected with malicious spyware, 
which infiltrated your computer while you were visiting a website containing adult videos.

Give me a few minutes to clarify how that affects you. 
Because of Trojan viruses, I am now able to have an unrestricted access to your computer as well as any other devices owned by you.
In other words, I can see without any restrictions everything in your screen and even activate the camera together with microphone anytime I want, 
and you won't even know about that.
Moreover, I have complete access to confidential data of yours including emails, chat history etc.

You may be rightfully puzzled how come your antivirus is not able to detect the harmful software of mine.
I don't mind explaining that at all: my malicious software is driver-based; hence it refreshes its signatures every 4 hours,
which makes it impossible for your antivirus to identify it.

I have come up with a video exposing the scenes of your passionate masturbation sessions on the left side, 
whereas on the right side it shows the dirty videos you were watching during that time. `.`

Trust me, it takes several mouse clicks to distribute this video to your entire email addresses list as well as messenger contacts on your PC or other devices.
Additionally, I can easily share all your emails as well as chat history to public too.

I honestly think you would certainly like to abstain from letting that happen.
There is a solution for you in this case - perform 750 USD transfer in Bitcoin equivalent to Bitcoin account of mine 
(it is really not difficult to do, and you can find online the step-by-step guide, if you have no idea about it).

My bitcoin account details are below as follows (Bitcoin wallet): 15wQk4AHFCtWGyAzjsG9c947prqdeR2tGb

Once the aforementioned amount gets transferred to my account, I will straight away erase all those kinky videos and vanish from your life completely.
Please, settle this payment within 50 hours (2 days).
A notification will be sent to me right after this email gets opened, which will trigger the countdown.

Believe me, I am very cautious, professional and never fail.
If I get to know about you sharing this message with anyone else, I will right away distribute your private videos to public.

Best of luck!

Blackmail variant – 2023-08-27

This is a slight variation on the one I posted here. It also brings back the password statement from this one, in which they make it look like they’ve hacked you by using a password they obtained from a data dump, similar to this one.

Hi there!

I am a professional hacker and have successfully managed to hack your operating system.
Currently I have gained full access to your account.

When I hacked into your account, your password was: [REDACTED]

In addition, I was secretly monitoring all your activities and watching you for several months.
The thing is your computer was infected with harmful spyware due to the fact that you had visited a website with porn content previously. ╭ ᑎ ╮

Let me explain to you what that entails. Thanks to Trojan viruses, I can gain complete access to your computer or any other device that you own.
It means that I can see absolutely everything in your screen and switch on the camera as well as microphone at any point of time without your permission.
In addition, I can also access and see your confidential information as well as your emails and chat messages.

You may be wondering why your antivirus cannot detect my malicious software.
Let me break it down for you: I am using harmful software that is driver-based,
which refreshes its signatures on 4-hourly basis, hence your antivirus is unable to detect it presence.

I have made a video compilation, which shows on the left side the scenes of you happily masturbating,
while on the right side it demonstrates the video you were watching at that moment..ᵔ.ᵔ

All I need is just to share this video to all email addresses and messenger contacts of people you are in communication with on your device or PC.
Furthermore, I can also make public all your emails and chat history.

I believe you would definitely want to avoid this from happening.
Here is what you need to do - transfer the Bitcoin equivalent of 1490 USD to my Bitcoin account
(that is rather a simple process, which you can check out online in case if you don't know how to do that).

Below is my bitcoin account information (Bitcoin wallet): 1CzF6GSJmz6iKAC63xkyPk8oaNpEUnfuXg

Once the required amount is transferred to my account, I will proceed with deleting all those videos and disappear from your life once and for all.
Kindly ensure you complete the abovementioned transfer within 50 hours (2 days +).
I will receive a notification right after you open this email, hence the countdown will start.

Trust me, I am very careful, calculative and never make mistakes.
If I discover that you shared this message with others, I will straight away proceed with making your private videos public.

Do not reply on this email, the sender's address has been generated automatically.

Good luck! 

More upgrades but… no more NVMe

Build Log:

With the last update, I mentioned upgrading from 990FX to X99 with the intent of eventually adding an NVMe carrier card and additional NVMe drives so I could have metadata vdevs. And I’m kind of torn on the additional NVMe drives.

No more NVMe?

While the idea of a metadata vdev is enticing, since it – along with a rebalance script – aims to improve response times when loading folders, there are three substantial flaws with this idea:

  1. it adds a very clear point of failure to your pool, and
  2. the code that allows that functionality hasn’t existed for nearly as long, and
  3. the metadata is still cached in RAM unless you disable read caching entirely

Point 1 is obvious. You lose the metadata vdev, you lose your pool. So you really need to be using a mirrored pair of NVMe drives for that. This will enhance performance even more, since reads should be split between devices, but it also means additional expense. Since you need to use a special carrier card if your mainboard doesn’t support bifurcation, at nearly 2.5x the expense of carrier cards that require bifurcation.

But even if it does, the carrier cards still aren’t inexpensive. There are alternatives, but they aren’t that much more affordable and only add complication to the build.

Point 2 is more critical. To say the special vdev code hasn’t been “battle tested” is… an understatement. Special vdevs are a feature first introduced to ZFS only in the last couple years. And it probably hasn’t seen a lot of use in that time. So the code alone is a significant risk.

Point 3 is also inescapable. Unless you turn off read caching entirely, the metadata is still cached in RAM or the L2ARC, substantially diminishing the benefit of having the special vdev.

On datasets with substantially more cache misses than hits – e.g., movies, music, television episodes – disabling read caching and relying on a metadata vdev kinda-sorta makes sense. Just make sure to run a rebalance script after adding it so all the metadata is migrated.

But rather than relying on a special vdev, add a fast and large L2ARC (2TB NVMe drives are 100 USD currently), turn primary caching to metadata only and secondary caching to all. Or if you’re only concerned with ensuring just metadata is cached, set both to metadata only.

You should also look at the hardware supporting your NAS first to see what upgrades could be made to help with performance. Such as the platform upgrade I made from 990FX to X99. If you’re sitting on a platform that is severely limited in terms of memory capacity compared to your pool size – e.g. the aforementioned 990FX platform, which maxed out at 32GB dual-channel DDR3 – a platform upgrade will serve you better.

And then there’s tuning the cache. Or even disabling it entirely for certain datasets.

Do you really need to have more than metadata caching for your music and movies? Likely not. Music isn’t so bandwidth intense that it’ll see any substantial benefit from caching, even if you’re playing the same song over and over and over again. And movies and television episodes are often way too large to benefit from any kind of caching.

Photo folders will benefit from the cache being set to all, since you’re likely to scroll back and forth through a folder. But if your NAS is, like mine, pretty much a backup location and jumping point for offsite backups, again you’re likely not going to gain much here.

You can improve your caching with an L2ARC. But even that is still a double-edged sword in terms of performance. Like the SLOG, you need a fast NVMe drive. And the faster on random reads, the better. But like with the primary ARC, datasets where you’re far more likely to have cache misses than hits won’t benefit much from it.

So then with the performance penalty that comes with cache misses, is it worth the expense trying to alleviate it based on how often you encounter that problem?

For me, it’s a No.

And for most home NAS instances, the answer will be No. Home business NAS is a different story, but whether it’ll benefit from special devices or an L2ARC is still going to come down to use case. Rather than trying to alleviate any performance penalty reading from and writing to the NAS, your money is probably better spent adding an NVMe scratch disk to your workstation and just using your NAS for a backup.

One thing I think we all need to accept is simply that not every problem needs to be solved. And in many cases, the money it would take to solve a problem far overtakes what you would be saving – in terms of time and/or money – solving the problem. Breaking even on your investment would likely take a long time, if that point ever comes.

Sure pursuing adding more NVMe to Nasira would be cool as hell. I even had an idea in mind of building a custom U.2 drive shelf with one or more IcyDock MB699VP-B 4-drive NVMe to U.2 enclosures – or just one to start with – along with whatever adapters I’d need to integrate that into Nasira. Or just build a second NAS with all NVMe or SSD storage to take some of the strain off Nasira.

But I don’t really see a need for either at the moment. It’d be a ton of time and money acquiring and building that for very little gain.

And sure, having a second NAS with all solid-state storage for my photo editing that could easily saturate a 10GbE trunk sounds great.

But why do that when a 4TB PCI-E 4.0×4 NVMe drive is less than 300 USD, as of the time of this writing, with several times the bandwidth of 10GbE? Along with the fact I already have that in my personal workstation. Even PCIE-3.0×4 NVMe outpaces 10GbE.

Adding an L2ARC might help with at least my pictures folder. But the more I think about how I use my NAS, the more I realize how little I’m likely to gain adding it.

More storage, additional hardware upgrades

Here are the current specs:

CPU: Intel i7-5820k with Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U cooler
RAM: 64GB (8x8GB) G-Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3200 (running at XMP)
Mainboard: ASUS X99-PRO/USB 3.1
Power: Corsair RM750e (CP-9020262-NA)
HBA: LSI 9400-16i with Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX attached
NIC: Mellanox ConnectX-3 MCX311A-XCAT with 10GBASE-SR module
Storage: six (6) mirrored pairs totaling 66TB effective
SLOG: HP EX900 Pro 256GB
Boot drive: Inland Professional 128GB SSD

So what changed from previous?

First I upgraded the SAS card from the 9201-16i to the 9400-16i. The former is a PCI-E 2.0 card, while the latter is PCI-E 3.0 and low-profile – which isn’t exactly important in a 4U chassis.

After replacing the drive cable harness I mentioned in the previous article, I still had drive issues that arose on a scrub. Thinking the issue was the SAS card, I decided to replace it with an upgrade. Turns out the issue was the… hot swap bay. Oh well… The system is better off, anyway.

Now given what I said above, that doesn’t completely preclude adding a second NVMe drive as an L2ARC – just using a U.2 to NVMe enclosure – since I’m using only 3 of the 4 connectors. The connectors are tri-mode, meaning they support SAS, SATA, and U.2 NVMe. And that would be the easier and less expensive way of doing it.

This also opens things up for better performance. Specifically during scrubs, given the growing pool. I also upgraded the Mellanox ConnectX-2 to a ConnectX-3 around the same time as the X99 upgrade to also get a PCI-E 3.0 card there. And swap it from a 2-port card down to a single port.

The other change is swapping out the remaining 4TB pair for a 16TB pair. I don’t exactly need the additional storage now. Nasira wasn’t putting up any warnings about storage space running out. But it’s better to say ahead of it, especially since I just added another about 1.5TB to the TV folder with the complete Frasier series and a couple other movies. And more 4K upgrades and acquisitions are coming soon.

One of the two 4TB drives is also original to Nasira, so over 7 years of near-continuous 24/7 service. The 6TB pairs were acquired in 2017 and 2018, so they’ll likely get replaced sooner than later as well merely for age. Just need to keep an eye on HDD prices.

To add the new 16TB pair, I didn’t do a replace and resilver on each drive. Instead I removed the 4TB pair – yes, you can remove mirror vdevs from a pool if you’re using TrueNAS SCALE – and added the 16TB pair as if I was expanding the pool. This cut the time to add the new pair to however long was needed to remove the 4TB pair. If I did a replace/resilver on each drive, it would’ve taken… quite a bit more than that.

Do the math and it’s about 111 MiB/sec

Obviously you can only do this if you have more free space than the vdev you’re removing – I’d say have at least 50% more. And 4TB for me was… trivial. But that obvious requirement is likely why ZFS doesn’t allow you to remove parity vdevs – i.e. RAID-Zx. It would not surprise me if the underlying code actually allows it, with a simple if statement cutting it off for parity vdevs. But how likely is anyone to have enough free space in the pool to account for what you’re removing? Unless the pool is brand new or nearly so… it’s very unlikely.

It’s possible they’ll enable that for RAID-Zx at some point. But how likely is someone to take advantage of it? Whereas someone like me who built up a pool one mirrored pair at a time is a lot more likely to use that feature for upgrading drives since it’s a massive time saver, meaning an overall lesser risk compared to replace/resilver.

But all was not well after that.

More hardware failures…

After installing the new 16TB pair, I also updated TrueNAS to the latest version only to get… all kinds of instability on restart – kernel panics, in particular. At first I thought the issue was TrueNAS. And that the update had corrupted my installation. Since none of the options in Grub wanted to boot.

So I set about trying to reinstall the latest. Except the install failed to start up.

Then it would freeze in the UEFI BIOS screen.

These are signs of a dying power supply. But they’re actually also signs of a dying storage device failing to initialize.

So I first replaced the power supply. I had more reason to believe it was the culprit. The unit is 10 years old, for starters, and had been in near-continuous 24/7 use for over 7 years. And it’s a Corsair CX750M green-label, which is known for being made from lower-quality parts, even though it had been connected to a UPS for much of its near-continuous 24/7 life.

But, alas, it was not the culprit. Replacing it didn’t alleviate the issues. Even the BIOS screen still froze up once. That left the primary storage as the only other culprit. An ADATA 32GB SSD I bought a little over 5 years ago. And replacing that with an Inland 128GB SSD from Micro Center and reinstalling TrueNAS left me with a stable system.

That said, I’m leaving the new RM750e in place. It’d be stupid to remove a brand. new. power supply and replace it with a 10 year-old known lesser-quality unit. Plus the new one is gold rated (not that it’ll cut my power bill much) with a new 7-year warranty, whereas the old one was well out of warranty.

I also took this as a chance to replace the rear 80mm fans that came with the Rosewill chassis with beQuiet 80mm Pure Wings 2 PWM fans, since those had standard 4-pin PWM power instead of needing powered direct from the power supply. Which simplified wiring just a little bit more.

Next step is replacing the LP4 power harnesses with custom cables from, likely, CableMod, after I figure out measurements.

Youporn scam

Porn seems to be a common… avenue by which scams play out. All of the links in the below email are inoperable, but I’ve changed the Bitcoin address link to Blockchain.com. I’ve seen scam emails for Geek Squad, Norton Internet Security, Best Buy, etc. But this is honestly the first time I’ve received a scam email from a porn site.

��Youporn
Uploaded content: Feedback required
Greetings!

You have uploaded a sexually explicit content to our platform.

At our company, we take the security and privacy of our users very seriously, and we use advanced technology to help detect and prevent the distribution of non-consensual intimate images and videos.

While our tools are powerful, we also rely on human oversight to ensure that our platform remains safe and secure for everyone.
If you have approved the upload of this content, you do not need to take any further action. The video will be published to our library within the next seven days, and you will have an opportunity to review the content after the grace period has passed.

However, if you did not approve the upload of this content, we kindly ask that you follow the instructions below to take immediate action.

Our platform boasts an extensive network of websites and partners, which means that ensuring the security of our content is a top priority.

To achieve this, all uploaded content is digitally fingerprinted using both the MediaWise® service from Vobile® and Safeguard, our own proprietary digital fingerprinting software.

This helps to prevent unauthorized distribution of content on our platform.

If you did not authorize this video upload, you can remove it for free here.

However, if you need an extra protection, we can initiate a quick automated removal process, but we would require a fee to do so.

The basic express removal, blocking, and protection against re-uploading of content on our network of 20 websites costs $199 USD.
As a digital company, we take great pride in our integrity and measures, which is why we offer additional options for protecting against unauthorized content uploads 24/7.

We have all our processes automated, including payment processing, for your convenience.

Our Plan A includes everything in the basic removal option, plus digitally fingerprinting of the content and automated removal and protection against re-uploading to our vast network of partner websites (300+) for one year, all for $699 USD.

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Using Fullscreen Lightbox with Ghost

Add this code to the default.hbs file in your theme at the bottom before the {{ghost_foot}} helper. Don’t forget as well to include the fslightbox.js file. And to ensure the code is used only when needed, enclose both the line pulling in fslightbox.js and the below code block in the {{post}} helper.

// Lightbox: https://fslightbox.com/
// Adapted from: https://brightthemes.com/blog/ghost-image-lightbox
// Improved to make it so each gallery has its own lightbox
// unless the galleries are immediately adjacent to each other.

// Also removed using a lightbox for individual images since my
// current Ghost theme ("Edge") doesn't use a lightbox for
// individual images.

let galleries = document.querySelectorAll('.kg-gallery-card')
let galleryIdx = 0
let hasImages = false

let lastGallery = document
galleries.forEach(function (gallery)
{
    // Ghost has a limit of 9 images per gallery. So if two or more
    // galleries are placed one immediately after the other - no
    // other blocks between them - then treat the galleries as if
    // they are together.

    if(lastGallery.nextElementSibling != gallery)
        galleryIdx++

    lastGallery = gallery

    let images = gallery.querySelectorAll('img')
    images.forEach(function (image)
    {
        hasImages = true
        var wrapper = document.createElement('a')

        wrapper.setAttribute('data-no-swup', '')
        wrapper.setAttribute('data-fslightbox',
            'gallery_' + galleryIdx.toString())
        wrapper.setAttribute('href', image.src)
        wrapper.setAttribute('aria-label', 'Click for Lightbox')

        image.parentNode.insertBefore(wrapper,
            image.parentNode.firstChild)

        wrapper.appendChild(image)
    });
});

if(hasImages)
    refreshFsLightbox()

Migrating Plex from a VM to Docker

In a previous article, I described migrating Plex from one VM to another. In recently rebuilding my virtualization server, now called Cordelia, I decided against creating a VM for Plex. I have a few Docker containers running on it and decided to let Plex be another rather than constricting it to a set amount of memory and core count through a VM.

Migrating from a Plex VM to the Docker container is pretty straightforward. Just a few things to keep in mind. Along with creating a script you can run whenever there are server updates, since you can’t just… install a new version over the existing one like you could before.

Note: If you’re considering migrating Plex to Docker or running anything through Docker, make sure to install Docker CE from Docker’s repository. Don’t install the version of Docker from your distribution’s repositories. This will ensure you have the latest version – meaning also the latest security updates – and greatest compatibility.

I’ll also presume in this article that you know your way around a Linux setup, particularly the bash command line. You don’t need to be great with Docker containers, but some knowledge there will be helpful as well.

Backing up the server

First step is to back up the library on the original server. As root or an administrator, after stopping Plex Media Server:

cd /var/lib
sudo tar cvf plexmediaserver.tar plexmediaserver/
gzip plexmediaserver.tar

This should give you a .tar.gz backup of your Plex instance. I have a pretty large library – over 400 movies and specials, over 300 music albums, and 37 TV shows, most of which are complete series (and yes, I own physical copies or licenses to everything on it) – so my backup ended up being over 4GB. Compressed. Your mileage will vary.

My Plex server pulled from NFS shares on my NAS, so I made sure to also copy off the relevant fstab entries so I could restore them. Make note of however you have your media mounted to your Plex VM or physical server, the actual paths to the media. For example, on my Plex VM, I had the media mounted to these paths, meaning these paths are also what the Plex Docker container would be looking for:

  • /mnt/tv
  • /mnt/movies
  • /mnt/music

Transfer the backup file off the server somehow and shut it down.

Mount points

Here is where things get a little tricky. I think it best I just illustrate this using my directory mounts. To recap, these were the paths to the media I had with my Plex VM, meaning these are the paths the container will want:

  • /mnt/tv
  • /mnt/movies
  • /mnt/music

Paths work far different in containers compared to a virtual machine. When you install the Plex service on a virtual machine, it can see all paths it has permission to access.

Containers are a bit more isolated. This means you don’t have to worry about a container having access to more than you want it to, but it does mean you have to explicitly mount into the container whatever you want it to access.

There isn’t anything wrong, per se, with maintaining these mount points on the Docker host. It’s not like I’m going to have any other Docker containers using them. But I instead chose to consolidate those mount points under a subdirectory under /mnt on Cordelia:

  • /mnt/media/tv
  • /mnt/media/movies
  • /mnt/media/music

Why do this? It’s cleaner and means a simpler set of commands for creating the container.

Had I kept the same mount points as before – e.g., /mnt/tv, etc. – I would need a separate volume switch for each. Having everything under one subdirectory, though, means having just one volume switch that catches everything, as you’ll see in a little bit.

However you create the mount points, don’t forget to add them to your /etc/fstab file for your Docker host.

Your library

Now you’ll need another directory for your library files – i.e. the compressed archive you created above. Just find a suitable spot. You can even put it back at /var/lib/plexmediaserver if you want, following the restore commands in my previous Plex article. I have it on Cordelia’s NVMe drive.

Just remember that the archive you created above will create a directory called plexmediaserver when you extract it. And, obviously (hopefully), do NOT delete the archive until you confirm everything is working.

Creating/updating the Plex container

sudo docker stop plex
sudo docker rm plex

sudo docker pull plexinc/pms-docker

sudo docker run \
-d \
--name plex \
--network host \
-e TZ="America/Chicago" \
-v /path/to/plexmediaserver:/config \
-v /path/to/media:/mnt \
-h plexmedia \
plexinc/pms-docker

Copy and paste the above script into a shell file on your server – e.g. “update-plex.sh” – and give it proper permissions. Whenever Plex tells you there’s a new version available, just run the above script. Obviously (hopefully) the first time you run this, the commands to stop and remove the Plex container will print out errors because… the container doesn’t exist yet.

  • /path/to/plexmediaserver is the path where you extracted your backup archive
  • /path/to/media is, in my instance, the /mnt/media directory I mentioned above

If I had kept the separate mount points, I’d need individual -v switches for each path – e.g. -v /mnt/movies:/mnt/movies. Having all of them consolidated under /mnt/media, though, means I need just the one -v switch in the above script.

The latter volume mount is what ensures the Plex container has the same path for the library files. So when the library says the episodes for Game of Thrones, for example, are at /mnt/tv/Game of Thrones, it can still find them even though the Docker host has that path mounted as /mnt/media/tv/Game of Thrones.

After you create the container for the first time, you’ll want to interact with the container to make sure your mount points are set up properly:

sudo docker exec -it plex bash

Under /config you should see just one directory: Library. Under Library should be… everything else Plex will be looking for. And check your media mount point to make sure the directories there look as they did on your previous VM.

If any of the mount points don’t look right, you will need to massage the script above and re-run it to create a new container. Then just rinse and repeat with interacting with the container to validate the mount points.

Don’t forget to add the needed ports to your firewall: you must open 32400/TCP, and if you intend to use DLNA, you need to open 1900/UDP and 32469/TCP.

Making sure it all works

And lastly, of course, open one of your Plex clients and try playing something to verify everything works and that it doesn’t show the media item as “unavailable”. If anything is “unavailable”, you need to double-check your -v paths in your script. Use “Get Info” on the media item to see what path it’s trying to use to find it so you can double-check everything.