I'm still living with my parents (until vaccines are mass distributed and going outside without masks is mostly safe TM) for much longer than I anticipated, thanks in no small part to America's poor pandemic response.
In the meantime, I've still paid my monthly internet bill, despite not having used the internet for 4-5 months now. I decided not to cancel because if I go for the occasional visit, I'll have to deal with the hassle of using data.
Now that I've thoroughly regretted giving Comcast my money without using their services, it's TIME.
It's time to set up a remote access server for remote downloading so I can justify paying for bandwidth every month.
Here are the to-do notes from my initial research:
- Raspberry Pi with Debian. Check. Might need to install a larger SD card instead of its current poverty 4GB card so it won't die the moment it tries to update packages and runs out of space.
- An external hard drive. For holding the downloaded items. Has to be USB since the current Pi does not have any SATA ports and I don't have any SATA to USB adapters.
- Luxury, set up a dynamic DNS.
- Also need a bandwidth monitor so I don't have to check usage on the Comcast dashboard.
raspbian-ua-netinst might be a good replacement installation for diet-pi, which already gives space problems.
Zimaboard popped up on my radar recently, and I'm probably backing it. It'll give a good opportunity to learn about home networking and server setup, not to mention improve general quality of life. The Raspberry Pi can be a serviceable replacement until then.