Progress

As we wrap up this project, we want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who supported this journey — from the late-night troubleshooting sessions to the countless “why isn’t this working?!” moments. For our final goal, securing PomenykPosts was more than just a technical challenge; it was a chance to grow, learn, and prove to ourselves that persistence pays off. Though this chapter closes, the skills and memories will stick with us as we keep pushing forward. Here’s to more wins, more growth, and yes, more Olive Garden celebrations. Thank you all for being part of this ride. 

A Bittersweet Final Project Update: Securing PomenykPosts

✅ Mission Status: Secure !

After months of planning, configuring, and a lot of troubleshooting, we’ve successfully secured our class forum site, PomenykPosts. The site now features verified HTTPS encryption, visible with the secure lock icon 🔒 — ensuring safe communication for all users. No more “not secure” drama here.

🔧 What We Did

Configured TSL with CLOUDFIT to encrypt our site traffic.

Verified DNS + domain settings to ensure trusted site validation.

Resolved backend certificate and trust issues (painfully, but successfully).

Took photos along the way!

When the full team reunites in mid-May, they will pursue their third and final goal: a secure web server. The groundwork has been laid for systems engineers from Lynchburg’s very own CloudFit to join the Linux 4 Student Team on May 15th in our HHS classroom lab. They will collaborate for the big win. 05-08-2025

~~~ Spring Break ~~~

Gabe, pointing to the screen: "I see all eight drives and here are the four volumes!"  

As the LCS Linux 4 Student Team enters the endgame, all four members met in Room 1-102 during 3rd Period today. Gabe and Shaud successfully installed the four new SSDs—replacing the old spinning drives—in our server's Leg 2 drive bank. Within minutes, Gabe had them mirrored.

POMENYK is now 100% solid-state, with four logical volumes, each mirrored. That’s right—four independent terabytes of storage, each with real-time backup.  

Can we mirror all of Leg 1 to Leg 2?  Yes. But for now, to avoid scope creep, were moving forward to setup our Linux SAMBA software.  

SAMBA is open-source software that allows Linux systems to share files and printers with Windows, Ubuntu Linux— even iPads— over a network. It lets Linux act like a Windows file server, enabling seamless cross-platform file access.  03-27-2025

Earlier this week, Gabe successfully mirrored a pair of drives in ZFS (Zettabyte File System), mirroring also known as RAID 1. This setup writes identical data to at least two same-sized disks, with total capacity equal to a single disk. Mirroring ensures redundancy and availability, allowing the server to keep running if one drive fails. It's proof of concept for now.

We were concerned that PROXMOX might not support our drives and controller cards without complex firmware setup and had prepared for challenges. However, ZFS in PROXMOX allowed Gabe to mirror the drives seamlessly through the graphical interface (GUI) in a plug-and-play fashion.

This morning, Savannah used her study hall period to fix our system date and time issue in Chrony, an NTP implementation for Linux systems. Chrony syncs the system clock with NTP servers, reference clocks, or manual input. Savannah performed a manual override—she squashed it.   03-20-2025

Software people and coders are famous for their snacks—Kiah presents Mandarin Big Orange Snacktopia!  Oh, and Savannah and Kiah have... a fully functional network service launched! Vanilla Forum is an open-source, cloud-based community discussion platform designed for engaging user interactions, Q&A, and customer support—now hosted on our classroom server, POMENYK. Yes, they did it! It happened so quietly and suddenly. Savannah quickly registered everyone in the class, and the hilarity of postings began (moderated by Savannah). We can't overstate this—it was a big moment.           03-17-2025

Sunday Business Notes: Robbie and Rachel approved and placed the order for four SSDs, making POMENYK completely solid state!  03-14-2025

Sunday Business Note: SilverStone Email: "Hi Bill, you guys can keep the second backplane as a backup, no need to return it, curtesy of SilverStone. As for power supply modular cables, yeah, those points are correct! With respect to having standardized approach to power supply modular cables, we were probably the first brand to commit to it, way back in 2009!  https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/tech-talk/wh_PSU_connector_design"  03-14-2025

Having successfully nested Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine (VM) within PROXMOX a couple of weeks ago, Savannah and Kiah are now setting up their first Proxmox Linux Container (LXC). Inside the container, they chose to install a self-hosted Vanilla Forums instance on Apache2, a web server. Vanilla is a feature-rich, lightweight discussion platform.

Savannah had set up the container and Apache2 and was agonizingly close to getting Vanilla Forums up and running—it was just out of reach. She hunched over, and we couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. Muttering to herself, she said something like, "Is it launch, initiate, create, start—these terms!"

Kiah, laughing, patted her on the back. We all took a break and watched the AI-generated fish swimming on the 4K wall monitor.

Container vs. VM:

• VM: Proxmox Host OS → Create VM → Load Operating System (Linux or Windows) → Install Application  

[Advantage: Security and Isolation]

• LXC: Proxmox Host OS → Shared Host OS Linux Kernel → Install Application 

[Advantage: Lightweight, Efficient, Faster Performance, and Easier Management]   

Special Note: The LXCs and the GUI were the primary reasons John, our IT Director and Staff Project Supporter, proposed Proxmox to the team in January. We are deeply grateful because, day in and day out, Proxmox gives us the confidence that we can do this. There’s a big difference between something feeling just out of reach and feeling defeated.                 03-14-2025

It is worth pointing out that, quote, on 02-17-2025 "Kiah suggests that we check each new wire on a known good PC." After testing the hypothesis about the backplane, two weeks later, we came back to something very similar to what Kiah was suggesting.  Just saying. :)   03-12-2025

Email Subject: Power Supply Issue – Proposed Troubleshooting Step

(Bill) Hold up, Tony, new information does not support the hypothesis of a faulty backplane! As an experiment, we bypassed the backplane circuit board completely, connecting a SATA drive to the data port on the motherboard. Then, we connected the SATA power cable from the power supply to this drive. Unexpected results -- the power cable heated up quickly. We immediately shut down the PC. The system would not reboot while this SATA power cable was still connected. Once we disconnected the SATA power cable from the drive (we waited a moment) the machine booted up perfectly.

(Tony) Hi Bill, that doesn't sound good.

(Bill) Gabe suggested pulling a known good Corsair power supply from one of our existing gaming PCs, along with the known good cables currently connected to it, and transplanting the whole "spider" into the new server. How does this sound? However unlikely, it’s possible that we have two NEW ThermalTake power supplies with faulty SATA power outlets, and we've been swapping these in and out while testing. This means that there would likely be no issues with our SilverStone circuit board.  [We later found references in tech forums to issues with ThermalTake SATA power outlets, and this information confirms our problem.] 

(Tony) Yes, that sounds great!    03-06-2025

Tony from SilverStone had an Email waiting for us this morning: "Hi Bill, can your students please take few photos showing how the backplane is connected to the system? The symptom you described sounds like there may be a short somewhere. You may want to check and see if power still cuts out with the backplane removed and operating outside the case. If problem goes away with the backplane outside the case, then double check and see if any part of the backplane other than the mounting posts/screw holes are physical touching the case metal. I have seen cases that had rough shipping gets slightly deformed and ends up misaligned."    03-05-2025

Replacement backplane (drive-bay circuit board ) professionally installed this morning -- same results -- the PC will not power on if the power supply is connected to the backplane.  Disconnected, the PC runs great.  We're still troubleshooting. Email to the case supplier sent in afternoon. 03-04-2025

A critical replacement part should arrive any day for Gabe and Shaud via USPS from SilverStone Technology. 

With the brief hardware-side delay, Kiah and Savannah are experimenting with a reserved/static IP address for our server, POMENYK. What follows is the clean, calm, unicorn version of our story: 

"POMENYK is shy and not requesting an IP address on restart, so... we can't find him. This agitates the parental units. We are correcting this behavior with direct instruction."

Meanwhile, on the experimental server, "Little Bird," Ruben, Daniel, and Evan are working quietly, engaged—occasionally smiling—being very stealthy, and Wireshark (a network traffic analytical tool) reveals a new network host by the name of "Minecraft."

02-25-2025

And... we had more snow days.  We'll be back soon. 🥰  02-19-2025 to 02-21-2025

POMENYK has been running and awaiting instructions while the rest of us have been out of school due to snow and ice. Recall that the PROXMOX Server is a platform that runs multiple virtual machines to provide various network services. Today, Kiah and Savannah made their first attempt at creating our first virtual machine.

For experimentation, they chose the long-term support (LTS) version of Linux Ubuntu —Ubuntu 24.04 "Noble Numbat"—which was released in April 2024. Unfortunately, after watching a "spinning icon," they were only rewarded with a "communication error."  02-13-2005

Tomorrow is another day. :)

Tuesday, Wednesday, and part of Thursday = Snow Days  :)

Monday, Monday – Gabe successfully established a remote login to the PROXMOX Server and explored the graphical user interface (GUI). His mission is to identify the solid-state drives (SSDs), which are not yet visible. Logic is leading him to the UEFI/BIOS, where the Broadcom LSI SAS 3008 RAID controller cards (to which the SSDs are connected) are detected in the PCI Express slots. "I see them. How do we communicate with these things?" 02-10-2025

Linux PROXMOX Server - Friday Update: Our server has been running smoothly and silently since Shaud powered it on yesterday morning. A fan speed adjustment lowered the idle CPU temperature from 47°C to 45°C. Kiah and Savannah finished installing the PROXMOX VE OS on the new machine just before the 2:25 PM bell. The system, named "POMENYK," is up and awaiting instructions. 02-07-2025

"Smooth & Very Quiet. I like that!" ~ Shaud

Power-On Self-Test (POST) was initiated by Shaud, our E.C. Glass team member, by pressing the Magic Button at 10:00 AM on 02/06/2025. The server hardware is up and running the UEFI System Monitor. A normal idling temperature for a workstation PC CPU typically falls within the range of 30°C to 50°C under normal ambient conditions. We are idling on the warm side at 47°C -- we will be watching and adjust if needed.