I had a RasbPi 3 I used as a homelab server/seedbox. Been mounted next to my router for around 8 years or so. It was having issues, so needed to fix the software on it. Eventually replaced it. The following is that almost 4 month adventure.

Noticed my seed box wasn't working correctly. Ports where showing closed, unconnectable. Had a weekened free so took a crack at it. It ended up opening a whole can of worms for me. What I learned was... not the best.

I am currently in the middle of what can only be described as a live excavation of my own past stupidity and maybe someone out there might understand the specific spiritual damage caused by old Linux boxes.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 that I apparently set up around 6 to 8 years ago to run Deluge headless, plus PIA over OpenVPN, plus god knows what else. I say “apparently” because at this point I no longer remember configuring any of this. Every time I touch it, I find another layer of nonsense and think, “what kind of idiot did this?” and then unfortunately the answer is me. I did this. I built this haunted little nightmare box with my own hands.

My original goal was simple, or so I foolishly believed:

Instead, I have fallen down a staircase made entirely of more staircases to fall down.

Step 1: Figure out what this thing even is
First I checked the Pi model:
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2

Okay. Ancient, but not fossilized beyond recognition.

Then I checked the architecture:
armv7l

So this thing is running 32-bit ARM, because of course it is. Why would anything be easy.

Step 2: At least the VPN is alive, somehow

I confirmed the VPN itself is still connecting. The Pi is using OpenVPN, and an IP check showed it was exiting through Montreal. The config in use was:
/etc/openvpn/ca_montreal.conf

And looking through that config was an incredible experience because it was just a normal boring OpenVPN config. No obvious magic. No obvious port-forwarding helper. No obvious explanation for how Past Me expected this all to work. Just a blank stare from six years ago.

At this point I started to suspect one of two things:

Step 3: Websites say the port is closed, so clearly it’s time to make everything worse

Since sites were reporting the torrent port as closed, I decided that instead of tracing through my ancient OpenVPN spaghetti, it would be smarter to install the official PIA app and clean this up.

This was the moment I stepped off the cliff.

At first I installed the wrong Linux version, because apparently I enjoy self-harm as a hobby. Then I found the armhf version, which seemed more correct for my armv7l setup.

Step 4: The app was installed, but reality itself was too old

Tthat’s when the real answer finally came shambling out of the dark:
GLIBC_2.28 not found

And also complaints about libstdc++ being too old.

At this point I achieved a kind of horrible clarity.

The problem was not:

The actual problem was that my OS is so old it might qualify for carbon dating.

Step 5: Confirm the operating system is, in fact, from the Mesozoic era

Checking the OS showed I am running Raspbian Stretch.

Stretch.

Stretch.

I have apparently been trusting important network functions to an operating system old enough to have memories of the Roman empire.

This also explained why the installer initially started screaming about APT errors and 404s. The repos were busted because, shockingly, the modern internet has moved on from my antique nonsense.

So now I know:

Step 6: I considered backing up configs, then remembered I no longer trust myself

At first I thought about manually backing up Deluge configs and OpenVPN configs and whatever else is living in this cursed shitbox.
Then I realized that would require me to know where everything is, and that confidence would be misplaced.

So I decided the safest thing was to make a full image backup of the SD card on Windows using Win32 Disk Imager, because at this point if I brick the thing I want a full snapshot of the crime scene before I continue.

Of course the Pi runs off a 1tb SD card, so it'll take about a day to make an image of the card.

So now I have three possible directions while this backs up:

Naturally, because I am incapable of choosing peace, I am strongly considering Option 2: Pain.

Lessons learned from this nightmare

Questions for anyone who has also ruined their own life this way

I am going to go stare at this SD card image progress bar and reflect on my sins and hope God forgives me.

After sweating in the Linux mines for 5 days, I got it all working.
This turned into the exact sort of train wreck I was expecting.

Finished the backup of the SD card

Fixed the dead Stretch repos
The Pi was so old the normal package mirrors were gone, so the repo URLs had to be changed just to make updates work.

Tried the PIA app and immediately hit a wall
Found out Stretch was way too old for the current PIA app because the system libraries were ancient.

Upgraded Stretch to Buster
Changed the repos to Buster, ran the upgrade, and started the long chain of broken stuff.

Networking immediately became borked
After rebooting, the Pi kept losing network and only came back if dhcpcd was restarted manually. Fixed this in a super hacky way, editing cron to restart dhcpcd after a reboot. @reboot sleep 30 && systemctl restart dhcpcd

Kept pushing to Bullseye anyway
Did the same repo swap again and forced the Pi through another round of package conflicts and mirror nonsense.

Bullseye broke Deluge
Found out Bullseye’s Deluge package was busted, so Deluge stopped working properly even though the rest of the box was limping along.

Upgraded Bullseye to Bookworm
Went for the next jump too, because at that point there was no turning back.

Hit the boot partition mess
The upgrade expected /boot/firmware, but the Pi was still set up the old way, so firmware packages failed until fstab was fixed.

Ended up with no proper GUI
After Bookworm, the system would boot to a black screen with a blinking cursor instead of the desktop, so the GUI was effectively dead.

Had to force text-mode boot just to work on it
Edited cmdline.txt to boot into multi-user.target so the Pi would stop trying to launch the broken desktop and become usable again.

Chased the GUI failure through logs and dead ends
LightDM looked fine at first, but X kept crashing with no screen, so this turned into a full display-stack autopsy.

Found the kernel/userspace mismatch
The Pi was on Bookworm userspace but still booting an old Bullseye-era kernel, which explained why graphics and /dev/dri were broken.

Installed the correct newer kernel
Got the Bookworm kernel package in place so the Pi would finally boot the right kernel instead of the ancient leftover one.

Still no GUI because graphics config was wrong too
Even after the kernel was fixed, the desktop still failed until the proper vc4-kms-v3d ovrlay was added back into config.txt.

Finally got the GUI back
After the overlay fix, the desktop actually came back instead of dumping to the blinking cursor again.

Restored Samba
Samba had ended up masked/disabled during the chaos, so it had to be unmasked and started again for Windows shares to work.

Restored Deluge seeding
Got Deluge back up and all my torrents started seeding again.

Found the Deluge config split
Realized the service daemon and the desktop/manual side were using different config paths, which is why thin client access and UI changes weren’t matching up.

Started untangling the daemon access issue
Tracked the service-managed daemon to /var/lib/deluged/config and started fixing remote access there.

PIA GUI was still a mess
Even after the OS upgrade, the PIA app went from graphical corruption to a black box, so it still wasn’t really usable.

VNC/display backend got weird too
Switching the display mode/backend to troubleshoot the PIA app ended up breaking VNC access, so remote GUI access became its own side quest.

Nuked PIA and Deluge after backing up my Deluge state, because at that point I had fully accepted that the only way out was through.

Honestly, I should have just reimaged the thing from the start. But then what's the fun in that?

So after all the OS upgrade misery, I started over clean with the actual apps.

That turned out to be its own little side quest, because Deluge had apparently developed split personalities over the years. The daemon service was using one config path, while the config I actually cared about, the one with all my real torrent state in it, lived somewhere else entirely. So naturally the thin client, the service, and the UI were all behaving like they had never met each other before.

I backed up the Deluge state, wiped Deluge and PIA, reinstalled both, then restored the correct Deluge config. That at least brought all my torrents back, which was the first moment in this saga where I experienced something close to joy.

Then Deluge immediately started trying to ruin my life again because I restored plug-ins deployed during the Obama administration. Disabled the old plugin junk, got the daemon behaving again, and got the thin client talking to it properly.

At that point I finally accepted that the PIA GUI app was never going to stop being cursed on this box. Even after the OS upgrade, it was still doing weird graphical nonsense, black-screen nonsense, and VNC-breaking nonsense. So I gave up on the desktop app and switched to the manual PIA/WireGuard scripts instead.

That was actually the right move.

So the end result now is:

Which is a very funny amount of reconstruction work for what started as “hey, is port forwarding still working?”

So the full adventure ended up being:

Time to never touch this box for the next 8 years again.

(Foreshadow, I replace the device in less then 2 weeks)

A rundown of what it took to move my seedbox from a Raspberry Pi 3B to a proper x86 mini PC and turn it into a full media server. Spoiler:

Hopefully I'll never have to do this again. Upgrading in the future should be a lot easier though.

Dell Optiplex had a very high pitched whiney fan, so replaced it, but had to create a new cover since the new fan was bigger.

Ran out of room. Needed to add more hard drives. Bought a 3.5 16tb HDD, modeling an enclosure for it.

v1 was awful, way to clunky for wall mounting.

v2 much less bulky.

creating a custom mount for two 2.5 ssds and a 3.5 platter HDD. swapped the bluetooth/wifi card in the micro pc for two more sata connections with a m.2 to sata chip. Current issue is the micro pc was never meant to power a 3.5 hdd, and its not supplying enough power, so working on that. got plenty of air flow. used rubber grommets to help dampen noise/vibration. the exposed screws where the 3.5 goes I covered in felt to not short anything out.

Started to work on an enclosure for the PicoPSU to power the hard drives.

Got it all wall mounted and working and.... I hate it. Looks messy.

Started to plan out the replacement.

Got it built and just need to wall mount it now. Hot glue is mostly just to seal the box. Wood glue and super glue is the actual structural support. Used furniture threaded inserts and melted them into the plastic posts to screw in the cover.

These feet actually turned out to be a pain. Originally designed to use them to wall mount, in the end they just got very much in the way.

Big honking slide mount

MORE SCREWS!

I love it. Though it is a tiny bit too loud. Only bothers me if my main PC is off though, so gonna just pretend I don't hear it.

New case is made of copper, brass, bronze for metals, and red maple, oak, poplar, and pine for the wood. Mostly used Danish oil, a tiny bit of shellac in the upper right triangle part.