A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
I dont use it myself, so some others can vouch for me here. The biggest reason to use PiKVM is to access your computer "physically". Internet down on server? KVM. Change settings in BIOS/UEFI? KVM.
I would also take a guess that you have misunderstood the requirements of VNC. The documentation states that you dont need VNC at all to make it function, but its an alternative to the web interface
Hi, thanks for your comment. I do realise that a KVM is a physical connection to the computer. I might not have worded it properly in my post, I'll edit that.
I was trying to ask about what exactly does the software stack in PiKVM do: and I think the selling point is likely the part of the software used to interact with the HDMI stream coming from the server. Am I correct in thinking that if I were to run the PiKVM software on my computer, get the HDMI capture from my server into my computer, and run a VNC client to access the PiKVM server which is being fed the capture stream, I will have, in essence, created a "DIY PiKVM"?
PiKVM is a collection of tools rolled into a distro to make keyboard/mouse input and attaching an emulated install media (virtual USB disk using ISO files) easily possible through a VNC-based web application. The idea is you can just build your own using the same software on different hardware, but it's aimed at using a raspberry pi for low power consumption, portability, and it has specific hardware compatibility with a HAT/addon board. The software can also make "reverse connections" through a remote NAT for support purposes, and you'd just port forward on your end. There are a lot of well thought out features in PiKVM (hardware) that make it much more convenient than building your own solution. You could install PiKVM on a different system than a Pi and try to make it work with your configuration.. You'd probably lose things like simulated power button press and virtual USB storage support. You might consider alternatives like PXE/netboot and wake-on-lan for those, but that might not always work for you.
(YMMV, I have not tried running PiKVM on an x86 cpu)