Introduction Since I migrated from WordPress to Hugo, I’ve dropped the need to run PHP and MySQL on my server. This means my server is now only running Nginx, serving up static HTML/CSS/JS files. For a simple site like mine, even a VPS running Nginx is overkill. This site doesn’t need to be hosted on a VPS, it could be hosted in the cloud, or completely on a CDN. This will be the first of a small series of posts about my future hosting options for this site....

Introduction If you’ve ever used a Raspberry Pi, you’ve probably used the raspi-config configuration tool. This text-based user interface (TUI) is great for changing 99% of basic settings on the Raspberry Pi, such as the hostname, WiFi country, locale, memory split, etc… However, if you’re managing a fleet of Raspberry Pi devices, or just really like configuration management tools, you’re probably looking for a way to automate setting these items from the command line....

Introduction My hypervisor since 2017 has been an Intel NUC7i3BNH. It has a 2c/4t 15W laptop CPU (Core i3-7100U), with 2x 16GB Crucial DDR4, and a 512GB Samsung 860 Pro. While it served me well over these years, I’ve outgrown the CPU and cooling solution. The search for a new hypervisor Size, noise, and power As outlined in my homelab mini-rack post, my homelab devices (router, switch, AP, NAS, and hypervisor) all sit on the bottom shelf of the entertainment center in my living room....

Introduction When I was running WordPress, I was using Matomo (formerly Piwik) for analytics. This solution worked for me, but was more complicated than I needed, and I didn’t make use of 99% of the features. It also required PHP and MySQL/MariaDB, which were not installed on the new server hosting my Hugo-based blog. Because of this, I wanted to switch to a simpler analytics solution. Self-hosted vs SaaS For a long time, I’ve hosted a Matomo instance on my server and proudly stated in my privacy policy:...

Introduction Hopefully this page is coming at you blazing fast, and with a new look! If so, you’re seeing my static site generated by Hugo. Here’s some high-level thoughts about the migration from WordPress, which I’ve been using since 2014, to Hugo. Why I’m switching You can Google “wordpress to hugo” and read 1000 posts about why people make the switch. Here are my reasons: Security WordPress is written in PHP, which has an unfairly bad reputation....

Update: 2021-01-10 I made the following changes and updated the post below (not the pictures) to reflect those changes: Replaced side vent panels with metal bars Added labels to patch panel One of the RJ45 couplers was stuck in 100Mbps mode and would not transfer full 1Gbps. I switched it around to a device that only has a 100Mbps NIC (IP camera) Introduction I don’t have space in my house for a full-size 19" server rack (but a man can dream)....

Introduction I’m on a quest to SSL all the things on my local network. I work in IT security, and am more than paranoid when it comes to my homelab (shout-out to r/homelab and r/selfhosted). For my web applications, everything is accessed through a Nginx reverse proxy that uses Let’s Encrypt wildcard certificates (using the DNS challenge) for encryption. It provides a single choke-point for all my traffic, all using one wildcard certificate, and all my clients accept it with the green lock....

Introduction I have a small homelab in my home that runs pfSense, Proxmox, Docker, a Synology NAS, UniFi wireless, etc… I already monitor my pfSense firewall logs using Graylog, but I was looking for a solution to monitor hardware (e.g., CPU usage, RAM usage, etc…) as well as software processes (e.g., containers using network, current download/upload speed, etc…). I stumbled upon two separate software stacks for this. First is the TICK stack, which is composed of open-source products from InfluxData:...

Introduction In my last post, I went over linting Ansible playbooks manually. In this post, I’m going to give you a brief introduction on how to lint playbooks automatically, using Drone. I was inspired to post this after watching Jeff Geerling’s (geerlingguy on Github) Ansible 101 YouTube series. In it, he mentions using automated testing/linting of his playbooks. If you haven’t seen it, give it a watch. As with before, I’m not a developer or professional DevOps person....

Introduction What is Ansible? If you’re reading this, you probably already know what Ansible is, so I won’t spend a lot of time here. Ansible is open-source configuration management software. It lets you configure one machine, or 100 machines, in the same way, every time. You can use Ansible to install software, create users, update files, etc… Basically, if it’s a task that can be automated, Ansible can do it....