Pi-Net

The Story of My Upgrade Partially Pi Powered Backup Network

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I have written a few posts on using Resilio Sync to replicate my personal data as a backup network. Currently I have several nodes running at home on various devices. I have one remote nodes running. It is on a VPS that I may write about in more detail separately. I had another remote Pi at a friends house for years. With the cost of the VPS being so cheap and easier to manage remotely I gave up on the extra node with my friend.

Instead I have 2 Pi’s running Resilio at home. In addition to a ODROID HC2 and instances on my laptop and NAS. Every device does not have all the data on it except for the NAS. Some of the shares are so big I had to shard them out. Only the NAS has all the data. However all of my data is replicated at least twice in the house. All, but my videos are replicated to the VPS.

I also started using Amazon Glacial Deep Freeze to backup (approx $1 per tb) some shares. Deep Freeze is so cheap my intention is to add bigger shares to backup. I just have not gotten around to it yet.

The Raspberry Pi’s photographed are the Pi 2’s (white cases) and Pi 3’s (Grey cases). The current generation of Pi’s I am running are two Pi 4’s. One with four gigs of RAM and the other with eight. I have a third Pi 4 with four gigs of RAM that I am playing around with alternative configurations on. I still have the second and third generation Pi’s. I use the third-generation ones periodically. Most recently one was a dedicated Pi-hole, however I recently stopped using it.

Pull disclosure, pictured is the older P2 and P3’s.

A Note To My Future Self On Why I Do Not Use Android Phones

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In July before my trip to Bangkok i picked up a mid range Android Phone. I opted for the Motorola G7 since it offered dual SIM cards. I got the phone for less than 200 pounds. An iPhone that would do that was several times more than that. My need was for a dual SIM phone so i could keep my UK SIM and have a Bangok one. Then when I went to NY for most of August I would also have a US SIM and my UK SIM card.

My intentions mostly worked out the way i wanted it. As much as I prefer iOS for many reasons the new Android was ok. I liked the big screen for a cheap price. I wasn’t happy about some of the security trade off’s however i was letting that go and being in deial about it.

I then put in a Pi-hole as my DNS at home. Looking at the metrics from that made it impossible to be in denial as to how bad my Android phone probibly was to violating my privacy after i clicked on agreeing to whatever terms and conditions. The cover photo is a graph of my entire DNS queries in my house for a 24 hour period. The part on the right where there is a huge spike is purely my Motorola G7 making calls out to the internet. Doing what i am not 100% clear since i wasn’t using the phone. It just got on wifi and started phoning home alot.

The photo below shows that the same Android phone is one the chattiest device on my network at home and also gets its requests blocked more than any other device. For a phone that i dont use alot and wasn’t in my house for most of the 24 hour period measured that is pretty creepy. To put it in context M and i have iPhones and iPads and none of them get blocked or “talk” on the internet that much if we are not using them.

The Motorola G7 in question is being reset to factory defaults and wiped as I write this article. It will get sold on ebay shortly. This entire episode highlights why I had reservations about Android as a technology in the first place. It is slick however the trade off on my privacy is not worth it. i would rather save longer and keep using iOS.