My spring 2025 update ended with a to-do list, apparently. I totally forgot but I happened to complete the tasks anyway. Then disaster struck!
Quick recap before the disaster.
To-dones
GitHub’s death spiral led me to finally self-host
It wasn’t long into the year before I was able to replace Home Assistant with an extremely reliable home-cooked Zig daemon for my smart lights.
My final task to improve backups was a half success. I found a solution with Rclone and Proton Drive. I ended this because I was not comfortable with the insecurity required to store credentials. I automated NAS backups instead.
Disaster!
My Beelink EQ12 OPNsense router started quacking like a duck and died. I used my Sherlock powers to reason the noise was fan-related. (The only moving part capable of noise.) The thermal sensors were reporting in excess of 80°C at idle.
A quick search suggested the same conclusion and a £20 replacement. Or a £300 upgrade to an EQ14 — NO! Stop looking. The machine is 30 months into a 3 year warranty so I emailed Beelink. They replied within 10 minutes.
I dismantled the EQ12 to photograph the fan as requested by Beelink support. In doing so I broke the second fan header. Now the pins are loose and careful assembly is required to keep contact. The second fan isn’t critical but I’m annoyed at my clumsiness. Beelink support agreed to replace the noisy fan under warranty. I wasn’t cheeky enough to ask for both.
Before reassembling the EQ12 I cleared a significant amount of dust from the exhaust vents (looked like a vacuum cleaner). It’s possible this was the problem because it runs again now. We’ll see if it holds up before the new fan arrives.
Failover?
I considered moving the OPNsense VM to my Mini-ITX server. Yeah, I’m virtualising the router and firewall in Proxmox — it works! Running that VM on my server would be asking for trouble, but it’d be a nice temporary failover if the EQ12 breaks again.
For that I need a multi-port NIC. I found one on Amazon UK for £52 and on AliExpress for £28. I checked YouTube for reviews but found only spam of a one minute robot voice.
Well whatever, I’m sure it’s legit! I ordered it.
I am praying that when I add the PCIe card the onboard ethernet port does not vanish. I had a similar issue where a graphics card disables the iGPU.
With only 2 ports that means WAN-in and LAN-out to my cheap 16 port switch. The host Proxmox machine gets network access via a virtual bridge.
That’s how my Beelink EQ12 runs Proxmox & OPNsense with only 2 ports. The configuration is a headache though. When the physical machine boots it is offline until the virtual machine boots. If the VM fails I have to hook up a keyboard, mouse, monitor etc to diagnose.
With 3 ports (2 + onboard) I can pass the NIC directly to the OPNsense VM to reduce overhead. The onboard port can connect to the switch, or crucially, a temporary router if I’m desperate. It’s more convenient in an emergency. If the EQ12 dies it’ll be quicker to replace.
With a 4+ port NIC I could use a tiny ethernet cable to loop the onboard host port back to the router, meaning one less cable to the switch.
Waiting…
So anyway, the Beelink EQ12 is alive and kicking for now. Panic over! I’ve got a replacement fan on the way, I’m told. And I’ve got the network card coming that should allow me to build a failover. I suspect that will be a weekend project where I’m up until 3am Monday.
Disaster averted and lessons learned.
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