Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

lanparty.house

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 397 posts

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#101

Post by kentonv »

tim-- wrote: post #87
kentonv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The server is Linux but the game machines are Windows. But I am going to try switching the game machines to Linux at some point. I can't tell you how many times I've run into what were almost showstopper problems with the whole iSCSI netboot thing with Windows, only to get really lucky with some registry hack that worked around it. I'm sure it's going to just stop working at some point. Whereas with Linux I can dig i…

Have you thought about using Clonezilla and broadcasting out an image using PXE boot? Would completely bypass the iSCSI setup, and each machine would still get the latest image from your server before the lan party begins.

A really neat thing about the netboot setup is it takes zero time to clone the image to all the machines. As soon as I'm done installing updates on one machine, I shut down, run one command that completes instantly, and now I can boot all the machines immediately with that image.

There have been a decent number of times when I actually did this during a party to fix an issue, or between parties just to keep the machines maintained for the family to play with, etc. It'd be hard to do that if I have to spend hours transferring a large image every time.

Aside from the stability issues at boot time, there isn't really a down side. I don't have any problems with load times. So I'm pretty happy with the setup.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#103

Post by devenson »

kentonv wrote: post #36
teruakohatu wrote: post #32

This is truely living the dream, well done mate! It is indeed crazy that cabinetry costs the same as the technology. How does the cat restroom exhaust work? Always on or does it have a sensor? Do the cat doors prevent sound getting into the kids' rooms from the living room?

The cat room fans are standard bathroom fans. At present we just leave them on all the time -- you can see the switches taped down in the photos. I suppose it might be a good idea to rig up a sensor...

Constant fans are sucking outside air into your house. Could be part of your Heat/AC efficiency problem mentioned in your post. A timer to run every 10th minute would be a simple improvement.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#104

Post by laidoffamazon »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #96
compiler-devel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When have increased taxes directly contributed to your take home pay?

It doesn’t. They’re just expressing their jealousy in a thinly veiled and highly embarrassing way.

It’s not very thinly veiled

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#105

Post by tptacek »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #62

This is neat, but as a $NET shareholder and someone with another ~$1m in net worth that can't afford to buy a house for at least another 6 years this makes me think we should significantly increase taxation.

If you can't afford to buy a house, what you want is zoning reform, not increased taxation.

(I want both, but I don't want more taxes to solve the housing problem, because they won't.)

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#106

Post by kentonv »

r1ch wrote: post #102

How did you deal with the length of the USB and display cables? I thought after 5m or so things would start falling apart. Are there active extenders and can they can handle 240+ Hz?

Yes, Monoprice sells a brand called "SlimRun" which actually convert the signal to fiber optic and can handle 100ft runs for USB, DisplayPort, and HDMI. They are pricey but they work.

I haven't tried 240Hz, but I have successfully run 7680x2160 wide screen at 120Hz (using HDMI), and 4k144Hz (using DisplayPort).

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#107

Post by compiler-devel »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #96
compiler-devel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When have increased taxes directly contributed to your take home pay?

It doesn’t. They’re just expressing their jealousy in a thinly veiled and highly embarrassing way.

It truly is embarrassing. Imagine seeing something and thinking, "how can I get the government to forcefully take some of that for my benefit?"

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#108

Post by laidoffamazon »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #95
laidoffamazon wrote: post #62

This is neat, but as a $NET shareholder and someone with another ~$1m in net worth that can't afford to buy a house for at least another 6 years this makes me think we should significantly increase taxation.

You have $1M of net worth that isn’t a house (and is therefore likely to be liquid) and you can’t afford to buy a house? Where and how much?

I spend about $3.2k a month for a studio apartment in an HCOL area. I don’t even own a car.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#109

Post by laidoffamazon »

compiler-devel wrote: post #107
IAmGraydon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t. They’re just expressing their jealousy in a thinly veiled and highly embarrassing way.

It truly is embarrassing. Imagine seeing something and thinking, "how can I get the government to forcefully take some of that for my benefit?"

It’s not for my benefit, I just want to see Stanford grads get punished. I could get more punitive but I keep that for yelling at strangers in person.

Re: Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

#110

Post by asn007 »

That's a sweet LAN setup you've got! The only few things that rub me the wrong way is the choice of peripherals and the lack of headsets. Must be pretty noisy in here!

The tabletops also seems a bit too thin and wiggly for my taste, but, honestly, for LAN parties with chill people you personally know — it's ok

As for the actual host setup with a singular disk image — great job! LAN gaming centres do something similar with their setups, with some differences (a lot of centres either use Windows-based diskless solutions that mount vhdx files as drives remotely over iSCSI, or use ZFS-based snapshotting, which is my personal favourite)

But all in all, seems like my dream house :)

I own a chain of LAN gaming centres, so the feedback is definitely skewered into the business perspective quite a bit

Post reply on HN