Installing Google Coral on Ubuntu 23.10

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MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU!… and also this guide.

I have not tested it in Ubuntu 24.04 but it may work. Let me know in the comments if you try!

This brief guide has been revised from:
https://coral.ai/docs/m2/get-started#2-install-the-pcie-driver-and-edge-tpu-runtime

This will essentially be the first part of a few parts coming for Frigate and Home Assistant.

First, we need to setup the apt repository, and install the required packages:

echo "deb https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt coral-edgetpu-stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/coral-edgetpu.list

curl -fsSL https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/google-coral-edgetpu.gpg

sudo apt update
sudo apt install gasket-dkms libedgetpu1-std

If gasket-dkms fails (it probably will — if it doesn’t, skip down to the udev rule section):

sudo apt purge gasket-dkms
git clone https://github.com/KyleGospo/gasket-dkms
apt install dkms libfuse2 dh-dkms devscripts
cd gasket-dkms; debuild -us -uc -tc -b

You’ll have a .deb file one folder up:

cd ..
ls *.deb
dpkg -i gasket-dkms-*.deb

We need to add a udev rule for permission to the hardware device:

sudo sh -c "echo 'SUBSYSTEM==\"apex\", MODE=\"0660\", GROUP=\"docker\"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/65-apex.rules"

If you don’t want to use the docker group, replace docker in the udev command string:

sudo groupadd apex
sudo usermod -a -G apex your_linux_username
sudo sh -c "echo 'SUBSYSTEM==\"apex\", MODE=\"0660\", GROUP=\"apex\"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/65-apex.rules"

REBOOT!

Verify the device is detected and available:

ls -alh /dev/apex*
crw-rw---- 1 root docker 120, 0 May 4 20:34 /dev/apex_0

Server Service Shuffle

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Over the next week or two as I find time and motivation (Helldivers 2 has been winning both of them lately), I’ll be moving some services to a new server, namely Docker/Portainer, Frigate and Home Assistant. I’ll be doing my best to keep notes from beginning to end and get something posted, finally, to help anyone else trying to get the two of them working.

I do use a coral, and have also used an nVidia card for graphics offloading. With 5-6 cameras I can’t say I noticed a huge impact offloading the graphics, but I will try to cover that part as well since I plan to move the card over anyway. For reference, it’s just a lowly GTX 1050ti that I’m using for the task. I figure if I ever bother to buy a Plex license, I can use it for that as well.

I’ll be using Ubuntu Server 23.10.

Revisiting Frigate & Home Assistant

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I’ve been revisiting frigate as of late, and using homeassistant for sending notifications to my phone. I wish I could do this without homeassistant…it feels so excessive just to get camera notifications.

Anyway, after months and months of procrastinating I hope to post my frigate portainer config soon, and an overall frigate configuration file that I’m using. I’ll also attempt to cover notifications on a separate post afterwards.

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃

Portainer as Docker Compose file

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Updating portainer becomes:
docker compose down
docker pull portainer/portainer-ce:latest
docker compose up -d

version: '3.0'
services:
  portainer:
    container_name: portainer
    hostname: portainer
    command: --sslcert /certs/lan.fullchain --sslkey /certs/lan.key
    image: portainer/portainer-ce:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: bridge
    environment:
      - "TZ=EST5EDT"
    ports:
      - 9443:9443
    volumes:
      - data:/data
      - /ssl/lancerts:/certs:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

volumes:
  data:

Paste the above into a docker-compose.yml file, I placed mine in a ‘portainer’ folder inside my home directory. Then just run docker compose up -d

I use a folder on my system, /ssl/lancerts, which I map to /certs inside the container. You will have to modify your certificate locations in the volumes section, and the command line towards the top of the compose file. If you are not using SSL, then simply comment out or remove the command line at the top of the compose file and remove the volume mapping.

ITBacon is now ARMed!

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…with an Orange-Pi Zero 3! I’ve moved the website to this tiny little device that doesn’t even have a home yet.

A case of sorts is on the way. I did attach a heatsink to the CPU in the above picture, which was not included.

My impressions so far are very positive. I’m running their Ubuntu image and haven’t had any problems. It reboots in several seconds. It runs the website very well.

I even toyed around with building an arm version of q2pro with no problems at all.

Only downsides: USB 2.0 port not 3.0, and SD slot speed. SD speed is maxed around 22-24MB/s. So a high speed card will not make a difference.

Update: Now with a home of its own! This little fan lowered temps by 13+⁰C!

Quake 2

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Update: Please see https://quake2.itbacon.com for more information! Come check out my jump server, itbacon.com:27920

Had a lot of fun learning meson environments this weekend, and finally building a 32bit version of q2pro (in Ubuntu) to load old mods that never released source code. Now I can load gamei386.so mods. I even compiled an i386 version of q2admin just for the heck of it. I love how everything works still.

PacketFlingers excellent work with PakServe and pakutil made creating compressed pkz files a breeze.

Skullernets excellent work on q2pro made using it all just as easy. HTTP downloads, etc.

It’s absolutely wild to me that I can still load a quake2 mod from 20 years ago on a modern system. And everything works.

I’m running the best quake2 servers of my life and there’s nobody to use them anymore! It’s maddening.

I think I am mainly doing this for my own nostalgia at this point. There are definitely still a number of quake2 servers out there but there’s only a small, small handful of people.

I’d give anything for a truly active q2 community again. I want to play weapons factory, and freeze tag, and rocket arena, and expert CTF again.

RoT MUD v1.4 with OLC 2023

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File: rot1.4wolc2023.tgz

Here is a version of the RoT MUD source code, version 1.4 with OLC, that compiles for me on Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS.

It seems MUD resources are growing very thin these days. I’d like to remedy that if possible. If my brain doesn’t find something else to fixate on for a while.

I’ve included a README file in the main folder that outlines the couple of minor changes I made.

Action Quake 2 servers!

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Update 9-15-2023: All servers are now running q2pro instead of r1q2. I’ve disabled the anticheat module because it’s 2023…I believe this should allow Linux clients to play as well.

I decided to throw up an original Action Quake 2 server! I’ll probably make a whole subdomain for this so stay tuned if you’re interested. I’ll be sure to post downloads etc.

You can vote the map with vote map <map>

Check it out if you want, from the Quake2 console:
– Team Deathmatch: connect itbacon.com:27910
– Deathmatch: connect itbacon.com:27911
– Jump Mod: connect itbacon.com:27912 (this is where I’ll usually be!)

Recent Downtime

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Power outages from storms the last couple of weeks have caused some recent downtime. Apologies for that! I guess 30-45min of battery backup just hasn’t been enough. Unfortunately, currently, I have no plans to move itbacon.com. At least not unless it gets way, way more popular!