Hardware upgrade for Laptop Gateway M-6806m

I'm doing a hardware upgrade to this  old  laptop by upgrading the RAM from 2G to 4G, removing the DVD and adding a caddy to store the original hard drive were the DVD was and a new SDD to install the OS instead of the original HDD.

The caddy I gouth is a PATA IDE to SATA, 12.7mm to connect the original HDD, which you can see over the DVD and the SSD already connected and protected by that metal "cage" to the left.

Now, you can see the original RAM installed and the new 4G protected with the envelops they were sent by the provider:

And now, these are the brand new 4G RAM installed:

 Now, this is how it looks the caddy taking the place and simulating being the DVD (at the bottom):

The old BIOS detects the new RAM installed:

But I had a problem with the BIOS to put the SSD as the primary boot device and the HDD as secondary,  somehow the HDD went to the "bottom" of the options and it was complicate to put it below the SSD.

When I finally got the drives in the boot order as I wanted, there were issues with the RAM while I was doing tests, so I had to use memtest to confirm one of them was defective, I reached the provider who confirmed the memtest results I ran and send the replacement a few days later.

Finally with the new hardware, this is how it looks running:

The laptop came with Windows XP and now it is running Linux Mint, not sure if it will remain installed, maybe I'll reinstall it with Debian, not sure yet but I'm looking to get a graphical environment that does not consume too much resourcers and don't require too much time doing settings.

 

A couple of links I used to research to find the correct caddy:

http://www.2ndhddcaddy.co.uk/gateway-m-6806m-2nd-hdd-hard-drive-caddy.html

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/432038/Gateway-M-6801mt.html?page=123#manual

AdGuard Home instead of pi-hole with a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

In the last days/weeks I'm seeing people talking about "AdGuard" instead of "pi-hole" so I decided to give it a try.

These are the steps I followed to install it using the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B where I have pi-hole running at the moment.

First, stop/disable pi-hole:

pi@localhost:~ $ pihole disable
  [i] Disabling blocking
  [✓] Reloading DNS service
  [✓] Pi-hole Disabled

pi@localhost:~ $ sudo systemctl stop lighttpd
pi@localhost:~ $ sudo systemctl disable lighttpd
Synchronizing state of lighttpd.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install disable lighttpd

pi@localhost:~ $ sudo pihole disable
  [i] Blocking already disabled, nothing to do

pi@localhost:~ $ sudo systemctl stop pihole-FTL
pi@localhost:~ $ sudo systemctl disable pihole-FTL
pihole-FTL.service is not a native service, redirecting to systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install disable pihole-FTL

Now proceed to download/install/configure AdGuard

pi@localhost:~ $ sudo su -
root@localhost:~# cd /usr/local
root@localhost:/usr/local# wget https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_linux_armv5.tar.gz
--2020-04-06 19:34:56--  https://static.adguard.com/adguardhome/release/AdGuardHome_linux_armv5.tar.gz
Resolving static.adguard.com (static.adguard.com)... 104.20.31.130, 104.20.30.130, 2606:4700:10::6814:1e82, ...
Connecting to static.adguard.com (static.adguard.com)|104.20.31.130|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 6202594 (5.9M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘AdGuardHome_linux_armv5.tar.gz’

100%[===================================================================>] 6,202,594   4.62MB/s   in 1.3s  

2020-04-06 19:34:59 (4.62 MB/s) - ‘AdGuardHome_linux_armv5.tar.gz’ saved [6202594/6202594]

root@localhost:/usr/local# logout

pi@localhost:/usr/local $ ls -l
total 12052
-rw-r--r-- 1 root staff 6202594 Apr  6 19:35 AdGuardHome_linux_armv5.tar.gz
pi@localhost:/usr/local $ sudo tar xvf AdGuardHome_linux_armv5.tar.gz
AdGuardHome/
AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome
AdGuardHome/README.md
AdGuardHome/LICENSE.txt

pi@localhost:/usr/local/ $ cd AdGuardHome/
pi@localhost:/usr/local/AdGuardHome $ ls -l
total 12788
-rwxr-xr-x 1 1002 1002 13041664 Mar 13 03:41 AdGuardHome
-rw-r--r-- 1 1002 1002    35149 Mar 13 03:40 LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 1002 1002    12670 Mar 13 03:40 README.md

And I had to open the port 3000 via iptables and connect!

I added the following to the iptables configuration:

-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 3000 -j ACCEPT

pi@localhost:/etc# sudo iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.firewall.rules

Next you install and set your user/password via http

pi@localhost:/usr/local/AdGuardHome $ sudo ./AdGuardHome -s install
2020/04/06 19:57:37 [info] Service control action: install
2020/04/06 19:57:38 [info] Service has been started
2020/04/06 19:57:38 [info] Almost ready!
AdGuard Home is successfully installed and will automatically start on boot.
There are a few more things that must be configured before you can use it.
Click on the link below and follow the Installation Wizard steps to finish setup.
2020/04/06 19:57:38 [info] AdGuard Home is available on the following addresses:
2020/04/06 19:57:38 [info] Go to http://127.0.0.1:3000
2020/04/06 19:57:38 [info] Go to http://192.168.1.2:3000
2020/04/06 19:57:38 [info] Action install has been done successfully on linux-systemd

Here are the other commands you might need to control the service.

    AdGuardHome -s uninstall - uninstalls the AdGuard Home service.
    AdGuardHome -s start - starts the service.
    AdGuardHome -s stop - stops the service.
    AdGuardHome -s restart - restarts the service.
    AdGuardHome -s status - shows the current service status.

pi@localhost:/usr/local/AdGuardHome $ sudo /usr/local/AdGuardHome/AdGuardHome -s status
2020/04/06 19:59:37 [info] Service control action: status
2020/04/06 19:59:37 [info] Service is running
2020/04/06 19:59:37 [info] Action status has been done successfully on linux-systemd

After this open your browser, go to your ip/hostname:3000 set your user/password, finish the configuration and after this, make sure that you are really using AdGuard, that you are not using "resolver" or something similar set by the operating system.

I tried to keep my "how-to" clean and I don't think it has errors so, if you find errors please let me know.