u/segdy

Had a leaky drain under my bathtub. easily accessible from basement (no nasty crawlspace). first wanted to do it myself (DIYed a lot) but then it seems old cast iron p trap needs replacement, it would take me a few days and just didn’t want to deal with it

Every single time so far I got multiple quotes. But I’m exhausted by this process. everyone always wants to visit, i have to be home, juggle work … tired of it.

Ao I looked at the issue and thought … will probably take 3-4 hrs. There’s a water pipe a bit in the way and there were some slip couplings that needed replacement too. 800 is my hard limit and hoping for less.

called a plumber which I had good experience in the past, quoted $630.

ok fine, signed and only afterwards I asked “how long is this going to take!” . “uhm, should be done in 45min” (note the scope was very clear before the work started but after I signed)

Indeed, guy was done in about 1 hr. I feel overcharged. Even with $100 material (generous) that’s $500/hr.

Can this really sound right?

Do I really need to go back to set up 3 visits for every small stupid thing?

why can’t these people just quote an hourly rate upfront? I tried asking so many times for this but everyone insists to first see and then quote the project. really annoying

I hate mopping my floors. I actually hate it so much that I never do it. I purely do vacuuming.

What I hate about it is that there is no clear separation between dirt and clean. For me to feel it would clean, I would make one stroke but then change the whole mop and water because otherwise I feel I'm just using dirty water to "clean" the floor. And this is especially true for real bad dirt. Once I wipe something really dirty I have the strong urge to not reuse it. But clearly that doesn't really work.

Is there any good system that would make mopping enjoyable? Yet still works for actual dirt?

I have heard good things about the O Cedar Rinse Clean system. Is this it? Or something else to consider?

And then some basic questions:

1.) Which cleaning solution shall I best use for nice, century old hardwood floor? And which for laminate and tiles?
2.) How do I know how much of the cleaning solution to put into the water?

I would like to get the Air, it really looks like a nice scooter.

However, privacy, no cloud coercion, local control, operation without Internet access is very important to me.

I do not trust privacy policies anyway but I looked over Niu’s and it’s really concerning (data export to China without clear description of data protection, sharing of data to third parties etc). So, with Niu, I won’t get away with this stuff.

It seems I can use the app to set it up, add the key to Apple Wallet and then not use the app any longer.

Can I just remove the app from my phone altogether?

Which features I’m I exactly loosing? (Tracking of the scooter is an obvious one but I’m fine with this).

is there any alternative way to control the scooter local ONLY via Bluetooth and/or prevent/restrict cloud communication?

Suppose public IPs only with a network 192.0.2.208/28 and two RouterOS routers with IPs 192.0.2.210 and .211 which operate in VRRP with IP .222.

Every host in this network has .222 as default gateway and can reach the internet/other networks if either router is down. Simple, well known VRRP setup and I call this “forward VRRP”.

Now suppose that I want the routers (or better: services on these routers) to be available under the unified address .222 from other networks/the internet. Whichever router is the “active” one should take the request. I call this “reverse” VRRP.

Examples:

1. DNS server that runs directly on RouterOS
2. A wireguard “server” instance running directly on RouterOS
3. DNAT rules / port forwardings that may exist for destination address 192.0.2.222

Since both routers are active (just the VRRP address is assigned to only one), a request for .222 could come in to both RouterOS instances.

For (3) I actually do not see a concern, since a DNAT rule doesn’t require the target IP to actually be assigned to the router. So the DNAT rules / port forwarding can just be duplicated on both.

For (1) and (2) I broadly see two options:

1. The “inactive” instance forwards packets to the active. This should happen automatically, right? In other words, if .211 is inactive and receives a packet for .222, RouterOS would determine it’s not a local IP and would use the routing table to send it out the network where the other router is located. The active router would respond to ARP request for .222
2. Making sure that packets for .222 are never even sent to the inactive one. This would require adding the VRRP interface to an IGP protocol, e.g. OSPF. Then .222 would always be announced as being available from the active router but never the inactive one. Is there an issue adding VRRP as stub to OSPF?

I am still trying to wrap my head around all implications and I know this is likely not common because purpose of VRRP is the “forward” direction.

But I am looking for any “best practices” and other things to consider.

I will have a total of 1.9 miles walking distance (one way); 0.7 from my home to train station and ~1.2 from train station to office. All flat, so I am thinking not big requirements. Sometimes I will take the scooter on private vehicles, carry it up stairs or take it in small buses. Hence portability is an important aspect to me and the NIU KQi Air looks promising.

While I would absolutely want to be able to store the NFC key in my Apple Wallet/watch, NIU seems to force cloud accounts and activation which I really don't want. Privacy is very important to me.

My requirements (as a newbie without any scooter experience):

1. As compact, lightweight and portable as possible
2. Name brand (no low quality stuff)
3. Strongly preferred: No cloud connection or cloud fully optional; if there's an app fully local via Bluetooth
4. Strongly Preferred: keeping key in Apple Wallet (watch and iPhone); not just some random app (like Tesla)
5. Preferred: Apple FindMy (but I'm open to just hiding an AirTag)

Are there any other good candidates?

EDIT: Price is lower priority

Or does anyone want to talk me out of a lightweight scooter?

I saw the Ridge 10Ah power bank and it looks pretty awesome to me ... except for the price.

I would be looking for something that's MagSafe, fast charging, can charge watch and has integrated USB-C/Lightning cable and 10Ah ... so pretty much fits the bill.

Is the $80 worth it? Are there any other alternative products to consider?

I would like to read out the speed of the ECM motor of the indoor blower of my heat pump (Unit Carrier/Midea 40MBAB).

There are 3 wires going to the motor: GND, PWM, FG (apart from the 120V supply). Per manual, when on idle (no motor running) PWM should be 5-12VDC and FG 0-12DVC.

I have checked the board and there are two optocouplers (LTV-816) for PWM and FG. The FG pin goes straight into the cathode of the optocoupler's LED. The anode is has 1kΩ+1.5kΩ in series connected to a 12V node (presumably; can't test when the unit when turned on).

Question: Is there are good & safe way to read out the FG signal and feed it into an ESP32 to determine the blower speed? Whatever I do, I only have FG and GND and I can't load the FG pin too much.

It seems to me the motor leaves FG either floating or connected to ground ... meaning that current of approximately 12V/2.4k=4.8mA flows (or none at all).

In order to not interfere with the existing circuit, could I tap out FG and put it into another optocoupler where I supply anode from my own voltage source (which comes from the air handler as well). In this case, I probably should make the resistors 20-30k and then need an optocoupler which can faithfully detect the pulses at 10x or more lower current.

Or, is there any way to put an optocoupler just between FG and GND? In that case I would also aim for ~100k series resistor which means the current through that branch would be at max 120uA ... much smaller than the ~4.8mA of the existing circuit.

I am using the MikroTik iOS app and have a wireguard tunnel to my Mikrotik router. However, I am not able to connect when I am not connected to Wifi (which is for example, on the go).

I confirmed this using the packet sniffer on the wireguard tunnel interface endpoint directly on the Mikrotik router. I see three cases:

1. iPhone is connected to any Wifi --> I see port 8291 packets (and connection works)
2. iPhone is NOT connected to any Wifi (just 5G) --> Connection doesn't work and NO 8291 packets even show up in the packet sniffer!
3. iPhone is NOT connected to any Wifi (just 5G) and I use Safari to open http://10.20.27.2:8291 --> I can see the TCP handshake in the sniffer
4. I try from a different phone (AT&T) --> works
5. Any other apps (e.g. Proxmox) work flawlessly through the tunnel

This concludes it's not a network/firewall/whatnot issue but purely iOS L7.

After debugging for a long time, I think it's related to the particular network on T-Mobile.

Specifically I noticed that my iOS cellular data connection looks like this:

awdl0 (Apple Wireless Direct Link)
fe80::2425:46ff:fe27:7b6b%awdl0/64
ipsec0 (IPSec tunnel)
fe80::f21f:c7ff:fe14:577d%ipsec0/64
ipsec5 (IPSec tunnel)
fe80::cc7e:91aa:3c8:66fd%ipsec5/64
2607:fc20:3711:75fa:cc8:4a0e:1c9c:4bf0/64
ipsec6 (IPSec tunnel)
fe80::cc7e:91aa:3c8:66fd%ipsec6/64
2607:fc20:3711:75fa:cc8:4a0e:1c9c:4bf0/64
llw0 ()
fe80::2425:46ff:fe27:7b6b%llw0/64
lo0 (Loopback)
127.0.0.1/8
::1/128
fe80::1%lo0/64
nan0 ()
fe80::b00e:2cff:fe6c:c052%nan0/64
pdp_ip0 (Cellular Data)
fe80::108a:5f73:f88:ef00%pdp_ip0/64
2607:fb90:378b:8a79:e:7ec8:6c68:feaa/64
2607:fb90:378b:8a79:7508:e68a:4a61:a25e/64
192.0.0.2/32
pdp_ip1 (Cellular Data)
fe80::101d:54bc:492f:cfdf%pdp_ip1/64
2607:fc20:3711:75fa:cc8:4a0e:1c9c:4bf0/64
2607:fc20:3711:75fa:d89d:550b:5153:ad9f/64
utun0 ()
fe80::e412:3c19:e04f:1bf2%utun0/64
utun1 ()
fe80::d348:457d:39e6:6d81%utun1/64
utun2 ()
fe80::a625:585d:ae51:ed71%utun2/64
utun3 ()
fe80::ce81:b1c:bd2c:69e%utun3/64
utun4 ()
10.227.33.10/24

Notice that there is no real IPv4 but only 192.0.0.2/32. I think this is IPv4/IPv6 dual stack which is described in RFC6333.

So it seems the mere presence of this configuration (192.0.0.2/32) makes the Mikrotik app not even make a connection attempt ... even though 10.227.33.10/24 of the wireguard tunnel interface (plus its routes!) exist.

This is clearly a bug to me ... but it's hard to imagine that I am the only person encountering this. Hence hoping someone can confirm.

EDIT: it IS a freagging bug in Mikrotik app. This is so insane that it wouldn’t even have crossed my mind trying something like this without CLAUDE! When using a DNS name instead of IP in the app it magically works! The DNS name must just resolve to an A record to exactly the same identical IP (in my case 10.22.1.2). Insane. Just insane.

Suppose I have an AS with a public prefix, say 192.0.2.0/24. This prefix is subnetted and multiple geographic locations have their own /28 or /29, for example 192.0.2.192/28 or 192.0.2.232/29.

Now assume that there are services which run on a single host (e.g. a mail server or DNS server) ... but these hosts should be "floating" across different networks. Say, for example 192.0.2.192/28 is at Location1 and 192.0.2.232/29 at Location2 and the mail server should be hosted at Location1 but sometimes moved over to Location2.

The actual movement of the host could be implemented by virtualization or a distributed cluster, for example, two Proxmox clusters in each location and live migration (via Proxmox Datacenter Manager).

I assume the right way to do this is to assign the mail server a unique /32, for example 192.0.2.174/32. Then all that needs to be done is set the routes in such a way that they either point to Location1 or Location2. Is this a reasonable approach so far?

Then, my main question is how to handle the routes. Assuming the AS uses OSPF, I see two options:

1. I manually set static routes on the main routers in Location1 and Location2. I need to make sure that only one of them is enabled at a time. OSPF would then propagate these routes throughout the network
2. I set up an ospf instance (e.g. bird) on the mail server itself and make it a peer with the routers on Location1 and Location2. This avoids any static routes and the /32 host is reachable automatically.

Generally I like (2). In this case, I could do actual live migration from one location to the other and the routes would dynamically adjust: Once live migration is completed from location1 to location2, the bird instance on the mail server would disconnect from OSPF neighbor 192.0.2.193 (and its route is removed) and connect to 192.0.2.233 at Location2 where route to .174/32 is added The route to .174/32 then automatically propagates through the whole network.

With (1) I would need to manually disable the route on the first router and enable it again on the second.

On the other hand, running bird inside of the mail server feels a bit odd too.

Lastly, either way, I potentially waste IP addresses because the mail server needs two addresses: one from their respective subnet (192.0.2.194/28 or 192.0.2.234/29) and the /32, which is assigned to a dummy interface. However, I do not see a way to avoid this, other than using either DNAT or private internal subnet addresses.

What is conceptually the best practice for such "floating nodes" across different networks? Method 1 or Method 2? Or are there others which I am not thinking of?

UPDATE: seems there are 3 major options:

1.) What I’ve described above with #2 (and people seem to prefer BGP instead of OSPF to announce the /32). Most people call this concept anycast

2.) VXLAN

3.) NAT hacks or higher layer concept like reverse proxies (not an option for me)

I am running three proxmox systems in separate locations; two of them pseudo clusters with 2 nodes each (hot standby) and one without. The latter one is "untrusted" (still under my control but off-site).

I'd like to use Proxmox Datacenter Manager to manage these 3 systems together and be able to move machines between them.

Normally it should be installed on a dedicated machine ... but for my small system this is not an option. It can be installed into a VM. This is an option where I would install it as a VM in just one of the three locations (and probably hibernate it most of the time since it's not permanently used).

But, I am also wondering if there's any issue installing it directly on one of the Proxmox PVEs (or all)?

For everyone who tried it out in a similar small capacity, what did you do and why?

Today after a bath in a bathtub that's not used a lot I noticed a small paddle of water underneath the bathtub in the crawlspace.

There is absolutely nothing that indicates the water would have come from the tub itself, rather, it seems to come from a junction where the newer drain goes into some old cast iron P-trap (*).

On the picture you can see that there seem to be deposits and you can also see the trace of the water (and a drop still waiting to fall) ... so, it's not a major leak, rather something seeping.

It's not our main bathroom but it used there and there (maybe every week or so) and so far I have never noticed this.

Is there a good explanation for this?

And, an easy fix that doesn't break the bank (and definitely avoids replacing the whole cast iron pipe)?

(*) The house is 100 years old, could be the original sewer piping.

https://preview.redd.it/hfcvh7e3rjbh1.png?width=1238&format=png&auto=webp&s=0dbe966fda6fd9ccd82a4a29bd46912a69ce382e

Following best practice, things like switches, routers, access points, PDUs, KVMs, bare metal hypervisors (Proxmox PVE) are in a management VLAN (e.g. vlan99). Another good practice is to put that VLAN into a separate management VRF on the switch. But this also means no routing any more (even with firewall).

But sometimes internet access is requires for system updates etc, especially for proxmox. There are multiple ways:

1. Set up proxy server (or local mirror): Inflexible because some devices do not support proxy server or are not necessarily Debian based
2. Temporary route leaking: Inflexible and doesn't sounds right
3. VPN (wireguard): Inflexible and also just works for things like Proxmox but not switches etc
4. Dual home: Give devices which need (temporary) internet access access to an additional VLAN with internet access
5. Anything else? I think even a NAT based solution does not work without route leaking because of the VRF transversal

How would this be done?

I want to attempt my luck on this stupid problem here ... in the hope anyone stumbled across this before.

I am using OSPF within my network and on top of it iBGP to distribute default routes to the internet. Mikrotik router receives multiple default routes and should make the most optimal active. Clearly, the most optimal is defined by the one which can be reached optimally, i.e., the one who's next hop has the lowest OSPF cost ... or IGP metric.

In my understanding this is exactly how it's supposed to be done: OSPF defines the best path through my network while iBGP on top defines the best path to the internet.

Per my understanding, if all BGP metrics are equal, it should fall back to IGP metric as tie breaker, and this is even documented as Step 9 in: https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/328220/BGP#BGP-Best-PathSelection

However it seems RouterOS just ignores this .... outrageously frustrating!

Here are the two default routes I am getting from my iBGP peers 172.20.215.129 and 172.20.215.130:

/routing/route/print detail where dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 and routing-table=default_uplinks              
Flags: X - DISABLED, F - FILTERED, U - UNREACHABLE, A - ACTIVE; c - CONNECT, b - BGP

  b   afi=ip contribution=candidate dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 routing-table=default_uplinks gateway=172.20.215.130 immediate-gw=192.0.2.176%wg-bg2-ftth 
       distance=200 scope=40 target-scope=30 belongs-to="bgp-IP-172.20.215.130" 
       bgp.session=BorderGate2-1 .as-path="64515" .local-pref=100 .med=0 .origin=igp 

 Ab   afi=ip contribution=active dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 routing-table=default_uplinks gateway=172.20.215.129 immediate-gw=192.0.2.184%wg-bg1-ftth 
       distance=200 scope=40 target-scope=30 belongs-to="bgp-IP-172.20.215.129" 
       bgp.session=BorderGate1-1 .as-path="64515" .local-pref=100 .med=0 .origin=igp

You can see the one to .129 is active.

However, when we look at the IGP (=OSPF) metric, it's undoubtedly clear that the one from .130 should be active because it has the lower OSPF cost:

/routing/route/print detail where dst-address=172.20.215.129/32 or dst-address=172.20.215.130/32
Flags: X - DISABLED, F - FILTERED, U - UNREACHABLE, A - ACTIVE; c - CONNECT, o - OSPF, b - BGP
 
 Ao   afi=ip contribution=active dst-address=172.20.215.129/32 routing-table=main gateway=192.0.2.184%wg-bg1-ftth 
       immediate-gw=192.0.2.184%wg-bg1-ftth distance=110 scope=20 target-scope=10 belongs-to="ospf-instance-1" 
       ospf.metric=75 .type=intra 

 Ao   afi=ip contribution=active dst-address=172.20.215.130/32 routing-table=main gateway=192.0.2.176%wg-bg2-ftth 
       immediate-gw=192.0.2.176%wg-bg2-ftth distance=110 scope=20 target-scope=10 belongs-to="ospf-instance-1" 
       ospf.metric=10 .type=intra

WTF?

Now a sub optimal route is selected! I can of course overwrite this with all sorts of router filters, local-pref etc but then the route will be sub-optimal if the underlying metrics change.

Similarly, it seems I can set a static attribute bgp-igp-metric in route filters but this is really pointless. The whole point of such layering approach is that the default route dynamically adjusts to the best available path.

Is there any way to get this working in RouterOS or is it really doomed?

Suppose I have a VRF vrf1 with multiple interfaces and prefixes like 10.55.1.0/24, 10.55.10.0/24, 10.55.100.0/24 etc.

I can now leak routes to each of these prefixes, for example, 10.55.10.0/24, destination vlan10@vrf1. Note that as a destination I must specify the interface (vlan10) and this means I have to leak every single route by itself.

Is there any way to just leak, say 10.55.0.0/16 to vrf1? (Note I emphasize a single leak/route)

Suppose you have a network containing multiple segments with publicly routable addresses (e.g. a public /24) and then some segments using RFC1918 addresses. There is no technical reason that prevents routing between these two.

There are two options:

1. no NAT: Allow routing between these two networks freely. No issue as long as the RFC1918 addresses don't leave the network. Advantage: No NAT, pure routing. Disadvantage: More complex routing (can be tackled via OSPF for example) which causes issues especially when VRFs come into the picture. For example, when I put RFC1918 segments into a VRF and the public subnets into another and want them to communicate, I need to leak the entire possible destination space
2. NAT: Never allow an RFC1918 address even in my own public segment. Whenever routing between these two happen, NAT must be employed. Advantage: Very simplified routing and firewall rules. For example, the segments/VRF with the public segment do not need to know the structure of the RFC1918 segment/VRF. Disadvantage: NAT (which I still do not prefer since it breaks end-to-end philosophy) and can't use IP as source filters in services in the public network segment (e.g. "Allow From 10.20.30.77 but disallow from 10.20.30.78 if NAT happens at 10.20.30.1)

What is the best practice?

I often implement mixed strategy which results in issues either way, so I'd like to stick to the best practice and enforce it as a "basic principle".

I have two physical uplinks (fiber and 5G) and I want this redundancy as transparent as possible. There are 2 separate aspects of my setup:

1. Each uplink carries two wireguard tunnels (4 total) which route public /24 subnets and BGP/OSPF. This setup makes 100% transparent redundancy without NAT. Vanilla as it should be.
2. The uplinks themselves are used as well but due to NAT and separate public IP networks, can't be redundant but merely hot standby: fiber should be primary and 5G backup

Previously I did this with usual hacks. #2 is trivial: Enable masquerade for both fiber and 5g interfaces, put two default routes with fiber higher priority; done.

But #1 is a real pain: I need to make sure that the Wireguard tunnels only go through their respective uplink: wg-fiber1/wg-fiber2 must only go through the fiber uplink and wg-5g1/wg-5g2 must only go over 5G. To do this, I am using different ports for the wireguard endpoints and have a complex set of route marking / route rules.

I was SO excited when finally VRF support was added to wireguard: I thought everything simplifies and becomes super elegant now: I would put each uplink in their respective VRF (vrf-fiber, vrf-5g) and assign the wireguard tunnels to their respective VRFs. The 4 wireguard interfaces themselves land again in VRF "main". Super nice separation.

But now the issue is #1. I can easily leak the default route from main to both uplink VRFs. However, any return traffic is then stuck in the uplink VRFs. I would need to duplicate my entire routing information in all three VRFs (vrf-fiber, vrf-5g, main). I can use /bgp vpn but is it really the right way to have my entire routing info (connected, static, OSPF, BGP) duplicated for each VRF? What's the point of VRF then?

Worse, it seems RouterOS has a bug that does not permit bgp vpn to leak routes from main. So I would need to move everything into a dedicated VRF (e.g. vhrf-main) and abandon main (as a pure local management VRF). But this comes with many other headaches as VRF support is still not 100%. For example, /ip cloud only works in main VRF.

So I am not sure if VRFs are the right use case for this. If not, is there any use case except the trivial "management VRF" or 100% isolated VRFs (e.g. different customers)? I feel everything that needs route leaking gets extremely complicated, except there is a 1:1 connection being leaked. But leaking anything default route related always needs to leak back all possible (local) destination for the return packets.

Am I better off to just use policy routing / packet marking / route marking / route rule HACKS for this instead? VRFs really feel so elegant ... until they are not.

Apr-June is always the worst time of the year for me: The entire north half of the globe has summer just here it’s cold. We’re not even getting 70s. Just 4 miles down south mid-high 70s, arguably the most ideal temperature. And South Bay (eg Campbell) has real summer feeling starting from April. Always at least 10F warmer.

And this wind drives me nuts even more.

And with the Temps dropping so badly in the evening it’s rarely nice to just have a nice BBQ or sit outside and during night/morning it really gets chilly even inside so I’d often think of turning on the heat.

I guess it’s fine for people who grew up here or moved from a very different place.

Ive lived in Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Campbell and now San Mateo. I never thought it would be SO different here. Definitely my own fault for not having been more thorough… microclimates are well known.

But curious, are there people who actually like this compared to other places on the Peninsula/South Bay? Why?

Not sure how to best cope with this; moving is just non-trivial.

Spider webs are perfect to determine whether rats are still walking around or not. but I can’t decide where they are

are there some artificial webs (ideally something easy to spray) that I can use to detect activity?

I have a webcam but detection doesn’t work well and I have too many spots which id like to monitor.

Im not looking for something on flat surface but edges under the roof. I had a lot of activity there, tons of grease marks but I plugged a hole and installed some spikes. I do have the feeling theres no activity left but I’d like to have better assurance.

I’m traveling alone with a 2yr old in that region and I’d really love to visit a nice onsen.

visiting onsen has always been a highlight for me but it’s easy without kids.

i see there are ryokan with private onsen but not only are they very expensive, I haven’t found any with availability tomorrow (May 12).

Any options or recommendations?

PS: Toddler can likely not go into the water but it would need to be possible for him to in the stroller for example next to the water while I go in. I assume any sort of public one is out for that reason :-(

Is anyone able to identify this box?

https://preview.redd.it/rjwx83srjvyg1.png?width=1822&format=png&auto=webp&s=8be1e9b3f693d1f30302b3c7db104d979497acaa

I would like to get this exact box: I find thousands similar ones on Amazon but my major concern is:

1. Exact size. I do not want to oversize my box and the above looks it just fits perfectly. Not too big, not too small

2. Routing from backside: In my case there will be a hole in the wall and all wiring comes from the back. With many on Amazon it's not clear the wiring will fit behind the panel but in the picture above there is clearly sufficient room to fit all wiring behind this perforated panel

3. Non-contiguous mounting panel: All I can find have contiguous mounting panels but as you can see in the picture above, this one has middle left/right available to nicely route the wiring behind the panels