I am specifically asking about software and needed libraries, not stuff like Wikipedia or the writings of Ernest Hemmingway.
To keep people from archiving all of github on thousands of shucked external hard drives cobbled together all Frankenstein-y to create a postapocalyptic data center assume a ~1TB storage limitation. Though I’m sure that person exists here on Lemmy somewhere :D
FreeBSD ports with distfiles for things really necessary, with dependencies. I guess that would fit in 1TB and leave some for ebooks and music.
Also software RAID is not Frankensteiny at all, neither are storage clusters of Ceph or alternatives.
What those things necessary would encompass, I don’t know. I suppose similar to Slackware full installation.
It would all make little sense without the Internet. You’d suddenly find that a year 1995 machine, one year older than me, and a few friendly BBSes are not as unrealistically small as they seem now.
Probably just clone and host a pornhub
Pornhub, but it’s just your cul-de-sac
Wikipedia
Maps would be the most valuable data.
Printed maps exist already though
How do we get this locally
openstreetmaps I think, and GPS.
I need 800 GiB to host a Gentoo distfile mirror. This is what I would do.
- Fire Zeal and Fetch every API documentation listed there
- Pull latest deepseek models
- Clone entire debian current repo
- Clone Firefox, Linux and the gnu coreutils
- Clone Litecoin and Litewallet
- Download the most recent dump of Wikipedia
- Download all the maps and data available today in OSM
That should do for me
As a base: The Linux kernel source, GNU software sources and compiler binaries so I can - in theory - write missing software myself. For convenience probably some stable, offline-installable, ready to use distros.
I would probably also archive sources and binaries of day-to-day software like web-browsers (I might still have an intranet to use), office tools, photo management software, audio/video players and all the codecs, etc.
I think that’s a solid starting point but im sure I’m missing something important :D
I’d also keep DNS, DHCP and routing software,detailed manuals about how IPV4 and 6 work, nginx and maybe Wordpress, lemmy, Peertube, and other federated software
Good point! And Docker. Also: Encryption software
My home servers time to shine
Everyone shitting on me for having a nas with ~ 200tb of storage and tape backups would finally have to eat shit because I’d have the only streaming service in town
I got enough anime to make crunchy roll blush, I have something like 3,000 series of manga and like 8,000 books in my komga server, I got non weeb shit. I archive tons of webpages and youtube channels, terabytes of music, etc.
In a situation like this I could even throw a lemmy instance on it or something. I don’t do that now but I could
Also all my anime has dubs stripped out to save space and the majority of my manga is in Japanese. 英語しか話せない奴らはクソくらえ
So I eschew your 1tb limitation. I have seen this scenario coming. I planned for it. I’m ready for it. There are others like me on lemmy in the home server page, plus if you look on the truenas, proxmox, unraid, etc forums you’ll find even more
That’s bonkers! How much physical space does your setup take? A room? A house?
20TB hard drives are around $300/each. 12 gets you there with excellent redundancy built in.
Toss them in one of these and you have 200TB, with redundancy and room to grow.
Not cheap to do, but the above would only run about 5-6k.
Mine is similar to this except it’s a rack mount case with bays that holds 15 drives (using 14 right now, 252tb -36tb for parity). All of my drives are 18tb and were bought refurbished in the 160-200 range depending on where prices were at.
To anyone looking to do this I strongly suggest reading about raidz expansion. You do not need to just go out and buy 15 drives, you can do what I did and get 2-3 drives many years ago then just keep popping in another every time it gets full and/or one dies
I’m at 80% utilization. Next project: disk shelf to add more drives
I recently bought a 2U nas with 12 bays. 6x20T disks at the moment, but with 12 disks it could be configured as a single 200T array.
I have 90tb and it sits on a shelf 6’ up in my laundry room (4x in server router/4x in external nas usb-c enclosure)
It’s not even going to this - publishers are pulling games, tv series and movies for various reasons.
This is an argument I regularly make
I have several shows in objectively better quality than streaming. We can argue about bitrate (mine definitely has more) but putting that aside, my anime has better subtitles almost always, many of my movies combine physical releases for best quality (eg video from release a with audio from release b)
But more so than anything my library doesn’t have to deal with stupid licensing and reactionary bullshit. My library has Daria but with the original music spliced back in, not the bullshit version you get on streaming now that has all the licensed music stripped out. My library has beavis and butthead with the original music videos and all the parts they had censored. My library has the dungeons and dragons episode of community. Etc.
I guess you’re the guy OP was referring to
Besides the basics (operating systems, compilers, office, CAD, database, etc software):
-
A copy of open street map together with the linked Wikipedia articles, along with the software to view and edit them. I know you said no wikipedia, (since that’s pretty much a given), but this is basically the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.
-
A copy of Godot’s editor so people can still make games.
-
As many games as I could fit in the remaining space, concentrating on the ones that give you the most bang for your buck in terms of space.
what are you looking at in terms of bang for buck games?
just hours per MB so all retro?
Retro is a good starting point. You can store just about every NES game ever released in less than a GB, and the SNES isn’t that much bigger. Once you get into the 3D era you might have to be a little more selective, but you could still fit a lot of early 3D games in there.
Another way to economize space would be video game mods. Since many mods reuse the same models and textures to make a new game, you could multiply the amount of content you get per MB that way. And there are a ton of Half Life 1 mods, Thief mods, and Doom WADs out there. Gmod can run over LAN, and there’s an absolute ton of maps and game modes for that.
Finally, there are some more modern games that are remarkably small. Animal Well is only 35 MB. Gloomwood is only 2.07 GB, comparable to the size of its inspiration Thief (1998), though Gloomwood is unfinished at the moment and will probably be bigger once it’s out of early access. Shadows of Doubt is 1.31 GB. Lethal Company weighs in at 1.07 GB and can apparently be made to work over LAN. ADACA at 2.44 GB is actually smaller than its inspirations Half Life 2 and STALKER, probably by dint of having only vertex colors and no textures.
Honestly, its a great way to go. I have a handheld for emulation. 1tb micro SD has a lot of games on it. Even if you’re just looking at PS1/N64 to PS2/GameCube era, you can get enough games to last you years and it won’t cost much.
oh yeah I’m well aware, I have an anbernic SP and I just ordered a retroid flip 2!
fingers crossed it doesn’t get hit by the tariffs but they earned an ounce of trust in me from how they handled the mini screen issue.
that being said, it is only an ounce of trust. I know well enough to not be blindsided by them potentially dropping the ball forcing me to eat the cost.
here’s hoping I don’t have to though!!
-
Open source collaboration will be difficult on mesh, so my contribution would be jailbreaks and cracked versions of softwares. My local government will need it since all their systems run on licensed software 🥲
I’d also get my hands on a bunch of iphone and android jailbreaks, because phone OSes might just stop working in 9 months if they’re left unmodified.
I shall open a pub 🍺🍺🍺
Not an epub, unless you saved a copy of Calibre!
I’ll be at the Winchester, having a nice cold pint and waiting for this all to blow over.
Yeah boiii!
Yeah I was like shiit I’ll just go to the bar while the world burns
Keeping the electricity on long enough to enjoy games or movies is gonna be difficult if you rely on the grid right now.
So maybe archive the electronics stack exchange, and solar/battery installation guides so you can steal it if the neighbors roof.
If internet shuts down you’ll have trouble keeping your life long enough to enjoy this.
I know it’s a fun hypothetical but without internet wed be falling into an immediate collapse which we might recover from but many wouldn’t make it.
I don’t think you’re supposed to tease out this scenario too far. It’s a pretty focused question.
Don’t you like a little apocalypse tease? We’re kinda into that it seems
“I hate fun and having conversations with people”
K
I’m just saying you can answer the question without having to worry about all Nuances and context around it. It’s like saying “what 3 items would you make sure to have in order to survive the zombie apocalypse?“ And someone goes “well without a robust healthcare system I’d likely die of natural causes so it’s moot.”
I have started to do this and I’m using Docker to host Kiwix. I’m currently using it to provide offline versions of Wikipedia, medical guides and tutorials for various programming languages. My plan is to put essential apps and information on an RPi and provide a broadcast hotspot where anyone can access the info.
I also live on top of a hill, so I’m saving up to put together a solar powered Meshtastic repeater that I can mount to my aerial pole.
emulators, keep gaming alive
I keep a raspberry pi dedicated just to have NES/SNES/etc emulators via the “retropie” distro. I have thousands of ROMs that I can plug into any TV with HDMI and SNES/NES USB controllers for it. $100 for a full raspi kit to have full access to anything just by copying some files over to a microsd card. Can’t remember controller cost but that’s kind of a given requirement.
Jellyfin collection and lots of cracked games.
