Meetups/Infra/2026-02-23

Wiki plugins + support + lua, User:Mcint/WikiMaxxing, home assistant in NB, OOB mgmt + IPMI

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Introductions

• [name] - [background]. [goals for meetup, or interests to explore]

• Loren -- infra, scraping, fighting
• Josh -- some kid like playing with computers since I was really little
• Jet -- brought donuts <3
• Ciara -- run some infrastructure, VyOS -- love, also hate, infra
• Chris --
• Dan -- going to help take notes
• Ian --
• Doug - I like computers. doesn't like driving to oakland.
• Perry - likes gentoo and listening to nix users explain why nix is better
• Cole - same
• Will - likes wasm + rust
• Zacchae - runs guix, likes lisp, likes the idea of people in the outside world, but has to use wasm
• Angelo -- Cars and computers
• Ellie -- terminals and servers
• Naomi - does a lot of things, likes making art projects with phones / raspberry pis
• Kevin -- likes computers
• Elan -- likes fixing things until they break
• Wheezy - here to learn, explore, working on verilog, has smol server.

Topics, Lessons, or Demos

• Read aloud: clarify for meetup. We are taking notes in a riseup pad (or I am--help appreciated, and links). We have meeting notes posted to the wiki. noisebridge.net, search Infra, or Meetups/Infra. (the Infrastructure page has a disambiguation link.)
• Shell, web services, self-hosting, networking!

• Zacchae - trouble with TLS & email (and why it doesn't matter)

depending on the email server. lets encrypt does not like manual editing of it's internal folders, tls keys could no longer talk after lets encrypt getting wiped to re-init keys. due to rate limiting, since now it keeps re-requesting new keys. Gmail will not deliver without tls, but that's not part of the email standard?

matrix: room descovery, during user session SSL_CERT_FILE, SSL_CERT_DIR get set, but server does not come up with those initialized.

outros: zacchae spent the whole session debugging and fixed the bug. success!

LetsEncrypt wasing seeing ... so it was reprovisioning each time.

Didn't update his TLS keys Wiped TLS keys

there's rate limiting Because of this wasn't able to get a TLS cert. Was incredibly worried about not recieving emails.

Q: Do you need TLS to send/recieve emails? A: IT DEPENDS!!! If you're Josh... NO (self-hosted email server) If you're Zacchae...YES some email services

It turns out some email servers need TLS (most moderns servers - e.g. gmail)

Takeaways:

• TLS is necessary, unless Josh is emailing you. (for big providers to deliver to you, that is)
• Have persistent state directories for keys? / letsencrypt
  • /etc/letsencrypt is a folder that is managed by certbot, do not try to hack something in there.

• Donation portal --

https://github.com/noisebridge/donate-portal
has some special number handling
shows the highest of current-recent donations (of about 20) in rainbow

• Daniel: added new stuff to https://github.com/noisebridge/donate-portal

(420, 69, rainbows for the highest recent donation, etc.)

What happens
 jet 
   stripe first gets a dollar,
   stripe sends a webhook
   confirmation
   webhook to web socket

Takeways

• any gotchas? any surprises?
• Jetsons are terrible, never use them.
• The one we have is locked to an old version, process to flash it is terrible.

• Wiki -- Module + templates
• Wiki -- caddy + rate limits

Loren made a bunch of recent changes to the wiki. (See "Recent Changes") Added rate limits

• ? DNS DNS DNS
• ? post-mortems

• Erik - Out of band management. such as

IPMI 

IPMI / BMC micro controller for interacting directly with hw, amusingly a security risk when logging into intel management engine via webui.

remote access available via network for bmc on a different machine (intel nuc used for demo), which... is not great.

can buy hw / install 3rd party software to enable remote desktop login to do arbitrary things, presumably up to and including accessing the hardware root of trust? (possibly not)

PCIe card, or Raspberry Pi embedded

Useful with vpn access to get remote machines via single endpoint. runs minix.

https://hyperpolyglot.org/lightweight-markup

• demos at end:

• • kera

openclaw or similar. Set up with claude use, talk to through telegram

• • jet - robots, in an art gallery, remote streaming video, remotely over the internet, 50-80ms latency. pi, usb, tailscale, proxy to open internet, then however internet gets to your phone. Over this connection, a websocket, allowing bi-directional messaging. The website is hosted on the pi, both creates the WebRTC connection to the robot, serves this to the robot. Rust server running them all. Robot near Union Square, server in Fremont, pi at nb? laptop?

not done in time for Valentine's day

• Loren - request for software resources to make hosting meeting irl easier, esp for in-person users, to complement live use.

(Screen sharing, link sharing, etc.)

• Naomi / nthmost - check out http://homeAssistant.local:8123 noisebridge:noisebridge

there's a project thing on discord
(will have a wiki page at some point soon)

try pointing an LLM at it, they can check status & make changes
send me (nthmost) an ssh key to let you log in and point to it

Outros

• Loren -- systems at scale papers
• Wheezy -- learn about LazyVim from my next door neighbor. NeoVim with plugins at the ready buy lazy loaded
• Ellie -- cool to see Home Assistant, haven't set it up at home though considered it for years, cool to see
• Elan -- OOB/ IPMI extra features are always there, but only available if you pay
• Zacchae -- spent time debugging matrix server
• Robert -- going test out emacs! Loren to Zacchae: would you recommend DoomEmacs or SpacEmacs? Zacche: try it vanilla, do the tutorial
• Cole -- would like to go over router management, particularly from a security/administration perspective
• Naomi -- wants to coordinate on "stupid space tricks"
• Chinese Man -- learned not everone uses "the best models" Qwen2.5. Looking for use of old hardware that is not supported by new-Windows
• Perry -- enjoyed learning about the true scope of IPMI (time to libre-boot!). Looking forward to the holy war over what to install on Chinese Man's machine
• Doug -- enjoyed learning about the homeassistant, big fan of wikimaxing
• Karan -- nice hearing about mediawiki, documentation is good, to feed to the LLMs so they can replace all of us
• Ian (left)
• Dan -- -- liked learning about the wiki plugins, was blown away about Lua support in MediaWiki"lua inside php is the craziest thing I've seen"
• Ciara -- some people still use Guix.
• Jet -- thinks they need to check out Guix
• Josh -- I like WikiMaxxing User:Mcint/WikiMaxxing

Questions, Discussion, or Coworking

• [Issue]

For next time

Readings & Exercises

• Readings
• Exercises