Software – Look, It's Another Blog

Running Stable Diffusion Image Generation on AMD GPU & Windows

AI image generation has been making a lot of buzz lately. It’s an exciting space due to the systems like DALL·E and Midjourney becoming available for people outside the AI world to play with. However, the one I find compelling, from a tech nerd viewpoint, is Stable Diffusion because it is open source and can run on local hardware. So, of course, I have to try it out and see how it worked.

Getting Stable Diffusion running on my hardware is more complicated than at first glance. Out of the box, the project is designed to run on the PyTorch machine learning framework. That’s a problem for me because PyTorch only supports hardware acceleration on Windows using NVIDIA’s CUDA API. And I have an AMD GPU. Linux has a better chance of success because PyTorch supports AMD’s ROCm API, but that’s a project for another day. There is another option.

Running Stable Diffusion Image Generation on Your CPU

Getting Stable Diffusion running on my hardware is more complicated than at first glance. Out of the box, the project is designed to run on the PyTorch machine learning framework. That can be a problem because PyTorch only supports hardware acceleration using NVIDIA’s CUDA API, AMD’s ROCM API, or Apple’s Metal API (using MPS). What if you don’t have a system supported by those APIs, like most laptops? There is another option.

Plex+Docker+Synology=❤

This post is either a cool idea or ridiculous. Having received a Synology DS220+ NAS over the winter, I decided to dive in to see how much stuff I could run on the system. Previously I used an old Ubuntu PC as a storage/print server, Plex server, and other various things. The system filled my needs as a home server for several years, but eventually, I ran out of storage space and needed to decide on the next stage of my home sever life.

All of this got me thinking about Docker. It’s not a technology I got to use a work, but software containerization is something I felt I’ll need to be familiar with going forward. With that decided, I dove into learning Docker and rolling out Plex on the Synology.

Resolve Port 1900 Conflict between Plex and Synology

I recently played around with a new Synology NAS and got the crazy idea to run Plex on the system, but from a Docker container (there may be a post about that soon). The setup process should have been simple. Most of the environment settings and port publishing were configured automatically. I just had to add a volume mapping to my media share. Except the Plex container would not start.

The Compaq Support Software CD for Compaq Portable Products

While looking through spindles of software, I rediscovered an old CD called the Compaq Support Software CD for Compaq Portable Products. This disc was a fantastic CD to have in the 1990-2000s when my Internet connection was a 28K dial-up service. It contained drivers, utilities, firmware, and more for Compaq’s 90s laptops in an easy-to-use web browser interface. Several members of my family and I had LTE 5000 series laptops and used the CD to reload drivers and software after OS installs.

The Support Software CD is not as important as back in the 90s. But people in the retro PC community are always searching for computer restore or driver CDs. In addition, some hardware isn’t usable without the software contained on those discs. To do my part, I have created an ISO image of the CD and uploaded it to Archive.org. My hope is it will be preserved long after I’ve forgotten about the Compaq LTE laptops and associated CDs.

Have fun,
Tony

https://archive.org/details/compaq-support-software-cd-for-compaq-portable-products-v-98.07

Turn YouTube into a Podcast Feed

While watching some YouTube videos, I got the idea, “I wish I could listen to these as a podcast while driving.” Digital Foundry’s Direct Weekly was a perfect example of this until recently (they have a podcast version now). Another good example was Hardware Unboxed’s monthly Supporter Q&As. Of course, someone already had the same idea and wrote a program called Podsync to take YouTube channels or playlists and create RSS feeds for use with your preferred podcast player. What’s even better is the setup of Podsync is simple to set up and run on your own server or cloud provider.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager: A LouMug Presentation

This past November, I got the opportunity to present at the Louisville Microsoft Users Group. The topic this time was Microsoft Endpoint Manager, where I discussed the components of Endpoint Manager and how we are using the platform at work. The interaction from the audience was fantastic, with several people asking great questions and giving comments. A recording of the talk has been uploaded to YouTube for anyone who wants to watch. The slide deck is also available below, with embedded links to several resources.

Have fun,
Tony

LouMug_2021-11_MEM Download

Update Configuration Manager Application Content Locations

I had planned to write this excellent article about using PowerShell to update the content locations of all the applications in an SCCM environment. At work, we moved the source files to a new file server and needed to update 350+ deployment types. Of course, there were some challenges. The biggest is Configuration Manager’s PowerShell cmdlet to get deployment types doesn’t have an explicit property to list the content location. You can still get the information from the cmdlet, but it’s located in the XML data of the object. A PowerShell script to update the content location would have required parsing that XML to get the current location and using the Set-CMDemploymentType cmdlet to update the deployment with the new location.

As usual, someone already did a better job. Nickolaj Anderson from MSEndpointMgr.com wrote a great PowerShell tool with a GUI to help find and update applications. I recommend visiting his website to learn the details.

https://msendpointmgr.com/2017/02/23/configmgr-content-source-update-tool-version-1-0-2-released/

https://msendpointmgr.com/2015/08/26/configmgr-content-source-update-tool-1-0-0/

Have fun.
-Tony

Review of the Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro

In 2019 purchased a Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro external hard drive to take on trips so kids in the car could watch videos but not suck down all the data from the cell networks. It’s a cool device, sporting a regular 2.5″ laptop hard drive, 6400mAh battery that could be used to power the device while on the go or charge a USB device, and stream videos and music to devices using the built-in Plex Server. As you can guess, Plex was the main reason to get the device. I already ran a Plex Server in my home for video/music streaming and felt that would be a solution for carrying large amounts of videos without having to worry about filling up all the storage space of tablets or phones. I also happened to be going on a cruise that year where access to the Internet would cost up to $10 a day to get access to video streaming services.

Overall, I felt the Passport Wireless Pro was a useful device. It was easy and fast to load content onto the device using USB3. Setting up Plex was the same as any other platform, point the libraries to their respective folders, and allow the application to sync all the metadata. It wasn’t without issues, though.

You need to be proactive and set up Plex to work without authentication. How-To Geek has a good article about this. Go into the Plex Server’s network settings and add “192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0” to the setting “List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth.” Doing this allows apps and the web interface to work without going through Plex’s authentication servers.
It can be unreliable sometimes. Changing the Passport’s optimization mode to “Battery Life” made Plex streaming stop working, so I recommend leaving it in “Performance” mode. Still, there are times when streaming to the Android apps doesn’t work. The web interface fairs better, but Chrome on Android has a stutter every few seconds. I am using an older tablet that’s causing the issue.

From a security perspective, the Passport Wireless Pro is not a well-maintained device. The drive was released in 2016 as a follow up to the original 2014 Passport Wireless. The information of the Linux distro has a build date of 2015. The kernel, 3.10.24, was released in 2013. Ezploit.cz has an article from August 2019 that lists some of the shortcomings. I’d recommend not connecting the Passport to networks you are not familiar with and configuring passwords for the local admin and root accounts.

I looked to see if it was possible to install the Emby media server onto the Passport and use it as an alternative to Plex. Sadly, I was stopped short by a lack of necessary dependencies in Linux. A few Emby community members tried alternate methods of getting Emby to run on the device, but that appears to have stalled out.

Anyway, I thought you would find this information useful if you’re thinking of grabbing a My Passport Pro.

Have fun.
-Tony

Super Simple Raspberry Pi Print Server

For a log time I’ve been network printing in my house to a small laser printer connected to my Linux Server. This year I decided to move my server to the basement of the house, but didn’t want to relocate the printer from the office. The solution was to pickup a cheap Raspberry Pi 2 and set it up with the same settings as my primary server. Yes this is a waste of a perfectly functional Pi, but you have to make sacrifices sometime. Continue reading “Super Simple Raspberry Pi Print Server”