Skip to content

2023

Moar users = Moar bugz

I made a post on LowEndSpirit yesterday, mentioning the 50% off on storage. This got some attention, resulting in an influx of new users, bumping us from 90 to 128 subscribers overnight!

The extra user load brought some issues to light, which I've spent today chasing down..

  • in new-app
  • 2 min read

Your ElfHosted streamer now includes autoscan!

Our users may have large media libraries stored either on [ElfStorage][elfstorage], or some other, BYO storage, which may be subject to API ratelimits, increased latency, etc. As such, the default behavior of rescanning the entire media library at a set interval is both resource-intensive and time-consuming.

Thanks to user suggestions, we've now bundled Autoscan with our streamers (Plex / Jellyfin / Emby).

By simply adding a webhook connection on the Arrs (Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr, Readarr), you can configure the Arr to fire a webhook at Autoscan when new media is downloaded.

Autoscan will then use an API token to instruct Plex / Jellyfin / Emby to rescan just the parent folder that the media appeared in, so that your library is instantly updated, rather than relying on regular filesystem scans.

See the Autoscan page for instructions on how to set it up!

50% more download capacity, better (and bigger) /tmp volumes

In a previous blog post, we discussed how we've expanded our node types to provide compute (CPU, RAM), storage, and network bandwidth for high-traffic-volume apps (torrent / NZB clients, data sync tools, etc) seperately from the resources for general-purpose and streaming apps.

In November, we provisioned 2 "download-class" nodes, but a month later, I've added a third node. This gives us an extra 1Gbps aggregate bandwidth capacity, provides better failover for workloads when doing maintenance, and allows for better automated balancing of workloads across the download-class nodes, since we can calculate a "mean" CPU/RAM/pod usage, and move workloads around accordingly.

  • in new-app
  • 2 min read

G'day, Wallabag! 🦘

Today's new app is an old open-source classic (which is still receiving regular maintenance, updates, and new features), Wallabag, an excellent, feature-full read-it-later app:

Screenshot of Wallabag

From the official site:

wallabag extracts the article's content (and only its content!) and displays it in a comfortable view. Moreover, wallabag is responsive: you can read your articles on your smartphone or your tablet.

If you already have data on Pocket©, Readability©, Instapaper©, Pinboard©, Firefox or Chrome, you can import your data into wallabag: add easily thousands of articles in your account.

  • in new-app
  • 3 min read

Introducing Homepage

Hello, Homepage 🎨

Today's new app is an alternative dashboard, Homepage...

Screenshot of Joplin

Why do you need another dashboard, what's wrong with your default ElfHosted dashboard?

Probably nothing, but it's soooo pretty! Also, some of the app integrations are pretty sick! Unlike Homer, which hits the various APIs using your browser, Homepage runs a backend proxy, so it's much easier to configure it to talk to your other ElfHosted services, and much richer data can be retrieved.

For example, the Jellyfin integration will show you exactly what media is currently streaming, along with the expected summary of your library stats.

You can customize homepage by adding your own services (like the weather in your location, or the price of your favorite crypto), your own custom background, etc, and changes are effected instantly.

If there's popular demand, I'll add an option for Homepage to replace your default dashboard 👍

Bulk-transfer network load isolated from streaming / realtime apps

Our platform is built on Hetzner auction server nodes, each of which has unlimited bandwidth, but is physically constrained to a 1Gbps NIC. As we've been bringing more subscribers on board, we've started to see occasional poor performance from the streamers (Plex, Jellyfin, Emby), most likely due to congestion on these 1Gbps links.

When you look at the graph below, the problem is immediately apparent (note the change when our maintenance window started):

So, today I added 5 more nodes to the cluster, to address two areas I felt were likely to become resource bottlenecks..

Radarr's at v5 now!

It turned out that due to changes in Radarr v4 compared to v5, our image wasn't passing testing, and so we didn't get the juicy new v5.0.3.8127 release a few weeks ago.

I was under the impression that v5 would support multiple resolutions for content, meaning a separate Radarr4K wouldn't be required anymore, but in the brief testing I've done so far, I've not been able to work out how to do this!

Anybody know how this works?

Notifications enabled on low ElfBuckz balances

A longstanding issue we've been dealing with is that the Wordpress plugin we use to provide ElfBuckz doesn't include the ability to notify users when their balance is running low. So unless you manually keep track of your ElfBuckz balance, you're at risk of having your services stop when your ElfBuckz run out, without notice! 😱

Since we recently fixed the deprovisioning bug, this has become even more important, so today I finally got my hands dirty and modified the plugin myself, adding the ability to notify users when their account balance goes low.

So.. you should now be alerted whenever your ElfBuckz balance drops below $1, which should give you plenty of time to arrange a topup (of course, once you subscribe to a top-up with the appropriate quantity, your ElfBuckz will "refill" every month, and you may never see these notifications)