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Server Upgrade 1: The Case of Constrained Case Constraints

2025-05-14

Thinking outside the box is overrated. Having a set of constraints and trying to get the absolute most out of the situation is usually where true creativity shines. In this case the constraints are literal constraints of a case.

Hardware Upgrade

Every once in a while you encounter a deal too good to pass up on - such was the case when I saw a black friday deal for 64GB of DDR4 memory. One thing lead to another and I also bought a used motherboard and processor. Together with the PSU and SSDs I already had lying around this makes a server.

…

The case! I completely forgot about a case!

Thinking About the Box

My current server resides beneath the television, in the space I’m told has historically been reserved for magnetic tape readers of some sort. Since we don’t need that level of archival backups, this space has been unoccupied - perfect for my server. Having used a small convertible minitower by HP up until now, I never paid much attention to the height of the available space, but as it turns out, regular ATX cases aren’t really available in widths of less than 13cm.

At first, I thought about screwing all parts onto a plastic board and creating a basic cover out of the same material but then I found a cheaper, more readily available material - cardboard. I totally didn’t buy an appropriately sized plastic board and lose it on my way home.

The Signature Box 2

I’m not going to move the server about a lot and it doesn’t have to look particularly nice (just inconspicuous). It should be somewhat shielded from dust and most importantly: it needs to be done yesterday.

I got to cutting, gluing, creasing, bending, folding, taping and painting my new case. I hope its design is more of an insight into the arbitrary deadline I’ve set myself than it is a representation of my crafting abilities.

Cardboard isn’t exactly known for its structural integrity, so the more complex and intricate case design will have to wait until I get my hands on another plastic board.

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Installing Proxmox went fine, their installer does everything it needs to do, nothing to see here. Which is precisely what I wanted, to see nothing, so I turned off the machine, removed the GPU, and restarted it.

I am unsure what exactly was happening but the server didn’t boot anymore - at least not in the way I wanted it to. At first I thought the UEFI wants to show me that the hardware changed but it can’t since there is no GPU (there is no integrated graphics either (Ryzen)). But what I think was actually happening, is that the name of the network interface changes when the GPU is no longer plugged in, something about PCI enumeration, and this confuses Proxmox, which is actually booting but unreachable from the network. There is a random piece of paper somewhere where I’ve written down exactly how I solved this problem, but since the problem is solved and this piece of paper no longer needed, it probably resides somewhere in the pocket dimension where pens teleport to when they fall off the table, never to be seen again. Something about changing the interface name to eth0 I think it was.

What’s in the Box?

My case doesn’t really look particularly nice - one might even call it laughably hideous. Maybe I could take the attention away from the case itself and direct it toward the actual hardware with all of the RGB everywhere. The CPU fan, all four RAM modules, and the motherboard greet you with the finest unicorn themed light show when you turn it on. Unfortunately, how ever pleasant this display of lights may be, it shouldn’t distract from the quotidian televiewing experience, so now I have the pleasure of installing OpenRGB onto Proxmox and create a systemd unit so I can turn off the lights after boot. Such fun. I just need it to run openrgb --mode static --color 000000 on boot, how hard can it be?

[Unit]
Description=Turn off unicorn vomit

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/opt/openrgb --mode static --color 000000

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Turns out you need a metric tonne of dependencies for OpenRGB, many of which I would rather not install on the same OS as Proxmox, not only for security reasons but also for maintainability reasons - the less my proxmox install deviates from the default, the less exotic and unique problems I’ll have to solve. Many weeks of trying different things and procrastinating later I was too frustrated with this whole light thing and just bought a cheap second-hand atx case (that is too wide for my constrained space of course). Not having the server neatly tucked in underneath the television is a visual burden I will have to bear after all, assuaged only by the tenebrous lack of RGB illumination. So much for my constrained case creativity. At least I can now focus on the important part - finally migrating all of my old stuff onto a new server.

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