Great Test for Project Nomad

Lately, I have been implementing my own set of computing services. Some of you might recall my NextCloud project to implement my own set of cloud services. I did that primarily to reduce my reliance on the cloud services of a certain company in Redmon, WA. It's not that I think that are evil or, at least, no more evil than any other tech company. It's just that all of these cloud service companies have a history of dropping and changing services that I've come to rely on. It was also good geeky fun.

In that vein, I've just completed a new project to implement information services as self-hosted services. The idea behind self-hosted information services is to provide access to important information when the Internet is unavailable. I could potentially turn off my Internet service or go out into some place off-the-grid and still have essential information. 

Now there are three classes of people who do this:

1. Techie geeks me who do it because we can
2. Folks who live somewhere that internet service is unreliable or unavailable
3. Preppers

Many of these systems deliver internet-based information to schools in places that have no or poor connectivity. The Preppers are something else altogether. These are folks who want to be prepared (prepped) for disaster. There is a bit of overlap with survivalists but, as far as I can tell, preppers are more about readiness then wanting to hide from humanity or the government. For the record, I'm in the first category.

There were a number of options for software, but I chose to use Project Nomad. Project Nomad is an open source control plane for implementing and managing other services such as Kiwix. It runs on Linux (because Docker) and I was able to use an old laptop that I had already loaded Ubuntu onto. Project Nomad is one of the easiest bits of server software I've ever installed. It sets up Docker containers, installing Docker, if necessary, asks what you want to install, and then just does it. Once the core software is in place, you can choose what content to download which happen in the background.

There are five major components, and you can choose any or all of them to install. They are:

1. An information library, including Wikipedia. powered by Kiwix
2. Maps from OpenStreetMaps
3. A drug database
4. A learning platform with content from Khan Academy
5. An AI LLM

I went with the information library, maps, and the drug database. The AI component was not going to run well on the hardware I had, and I really didn't care if I had AI support. The learning platform was just not something I'd ever really use. It would be different if I was trying to run a school in a caven. Any service can be removed or added later as well as a few other services such as Jellyfin media server and Vaultwarden password manager. 

The next step is telling Project Nomad what content you wanted to download. I choose Wikipedia, Wiktionary, some Stack Exchange forums on technical subjects, a bunch of categories of books from Project Gutenberg, a collection of medical information including military medical books, the iFixIt website, and a bunch of prepper material. That last bit of information was mainly out of curiosity. There was an entire set of videos on how to put together a bug out bag. It's not what I normally think about.

A lot of the information is useful to have around, internet or not. The real test came when I experienced a substantial ISP outage. Project Nomad meant that I had a lot of useful information still available and I wasn't floundering. It worked perfectly with no glitches or hidden connections to internet sites. The only thing Project Nomad couldn't do was pull updates for the software and content. That's to be expected. 

That need to pull information down, at least initially, is the Achilles Heel of Project Nomad. You need a stable internet connection to install the software and content. If you have your Project Nomad server already set up before the zombie apocalypse, then you're fine. If you didn't think about it until the manure hit the rotating blades then you're out of luck.

At the moment, Project Nomad is mild assurance against sporadic internet outages. It could also be setup by someone and shipped to someone else off-the-grid. It's easy to install and pretty low on resource usage, if you skip the AI. That's fine because when the robot apocalypse happens, I'll be trying to kill AI not run it off soar energy in my cave.

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