I have a Class C motorhome on a 2014 Sprinter chassis. I found one at a bargain, not realizing how expensive mainenance might be. There are two service procedures, A and B that alternate. A is primarily oil and filter change and various inspections. B adds fuel filter. Because I don’t drive many miles, my maintenance is annual. And because annual maintenance at the dealer is somewhat expensive, I’ve chosen to do it myself with some help. Grandpa Ron has a website that has really helped me get through the maintenance.

There are two gotchas that I struggled with. The first is that it is easy to replace the oil filter element not fully seated. You have to press really hard until you feel the final click. The other is that the the fuel return line has a clip that fits into a slot when you fully press the hose on to the filter connector. I couldn’t press the connector on far enough until I put Vaseline on it. Thanks, Claude!

I found a website hosted by Robert Pooley with a lot of technical posts, many of which relate to homelabs. in 2024, Robert decided to move away from Austin. He has lived in several international cities since. He built a fit-in-your-suitcase homelab for the road that I really liked. He setup started with a GMKtec G3 and 7x4TB used SSD rives in an ICY DOCK enclosure running TrueNAS. More recently he was using a Beelink ME Mini that has room for six M.2 slots.

I stumbled on Robert’s website looking for a way to use a Blink camera to monitor my RV with a Franklin T9 hotspot running on house batteries. The T9 is notorious for shutting down for inactivity, requiring the press of a button to restart it. Robert has a fantastic post on hacking the T9. I’m hoping to last a month with this setup.

This is a comprehensive list of steps for setup of Debian family of Linux. It primarily applies to Proxmox Ubuntu VM’s and LXC’s.

1. Create the VM/LXC from the Proxmox gui on local storage using the correct .iso image file. Sect Qemu Agent, Discard (for SSH TRIM), add public key.
2. Add IP to DHCP
3. edit /etc/ssh/sshd.conf
   • PasswordAuthentication no
   • PubkeyAuthentication yes
   • check /etc/ssh/sshd_conf.d/50… for additional settings
4. mkdir ~/.bin and add it to your path. Edit ~/.bashrc and add ‘export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.bin’ to the bottom of the file.
5. for LXC, create local user
   • useradd <name>
   • apt install sudo
   • sudo usermod -aG sudo <name>
   • new user settings need a lot of work

Placekeeper: distrobox enter abcde-env

sudo usermod -aG sudo

Unattended Upgrades can be full (apt upgrade) or security only and are scheduled by systemd timers between 06:00 and 07:00. Most servers should be security only. Proxmox, Home Assistant and Frigate updates should be run manually.

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades mailutils

run this and select <Yes> for stable updates:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

Then this for configuration changes:

sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

These are the only two uncommented lines to get security updates only:

"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename},label=Debian-Security";
"origin=Debian,codename=${distro_codename}-security,label=Debian-Security";

These two lines to get mailx notifications:

Unattended-Upgrade::Mail “ldh118@gmail.com”;
Unattended-Upgrade::MailReport “only-on-error”;

This one gets logs at /var/log/unattended-upgrades/:

Unattended-Upgrade::SyslogEnable “true”;

The upgrades are scheduled by systemd timers. Otherwise, you can specify it:

Unattended-Upgrade::Schedule “3:00”;

Configure /etc/msmtprc getting app password from Google here:

defaults
auth on
tls on
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile /var/log/msmtp.log

account default
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
from nginx@gmail.com
user ldh118@gmail.com
password <from Google>

Test mail with this:

echo “test” | mail -s “test from proxmox” ldh118@gmail.com

To run immediately use this and add –debug for verbose:

unattended-upgrade

SSH with Key

Generate private key/public key pair and add public key to ~.ssh/authorized_keys.

In /etc/ssh/sshd_config (on both hosts and guests):

PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin prohibit-password   # or 'no' if you use a sudo user
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
UsePAM no                           # optional but tightens it further
In /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/50-cloud-init.conf:
PasswordAuthentication no

Then restart: systemctl restart ssh