system-configuration

I use XMPP for this purpose: https://github.com/majewsky/xmpp-bridge Service units then look like this: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... (the "with-xmpp-bridge" helper script is near the top of the same file) The advantage of XMPP is that it can interactively ask me for confirmation, e.g. when installing upgrades, and that an XMPP server like Prosody is vastly simpler to set up than a mail server.

> So, this is an honest question, not an attempt to be cruel: How exactly do you get that to happen? The other answer is way better than mine, but I will add what I also said elsewhere in this thread: In 99% of cases, Pulse just works. In 1% of cases, it fails in catastrophic, bizarre and utterly undebuggable ways. I have the luck of being in the 99%. I just installed and started Avahi and selected "Make network sound devices available locally" (or whatever the option is called) in paprefs. That's for the client part. For the server part, see https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... (that's for Arch Linux, package names etc. might differ between distributions).

You can just as well do the same in systemd. In fact, I'm shipping these symlinks in my configuration packages to enable services, e.g. https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/f1326a...

> Set authoritative on your dhcpd.conf! Done: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/commit/f917... :) Will see if it helps once I get home.

Here's the recipe: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... Everything should be pretty self a explanatory. The "holoscript" part gets executed by my configuration management tool, but it basically means that the two LoadModule lines are appended to the stock /etc/pulse/default.pa Also, if you have a firewall, open port 6600 to LAN if desired.

For the "you have to update it every once in a while" problem, I built a small cronjob that automates the updates, but allows me to intervene. Source is at [1], and it talks to me via XMPP. [2] [1] https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/master... [2] https://github.com/majewsky/xmpp-bridge

If you're willing to learn, then definitely. When doing it for the first time, you should be prepared to take your time and go through the installation guide paragraph for paragraph to make sure you're not skipping some obscure, yet important step. Also, since there are a lot of standard steps involved, I recommend that you document what you're doing, either as a plain text file of notes, or as some sort of configuration management playbook/recipe/template. I started doing that two years ago and it really took the pain out of bringing up new Arch systems, or reinstalling existing ones: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration

Most definitely, although it of course depends on what else you're running on that VM. I have a home server running, among other things, a very similar setup [1] based on dnsmasq and a simple shell script cronjob, and the dnsmasq weighs in at ~12 MB memory usage (RSS). [1] https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/bf0f2b...