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Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on 10" mini-racks. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2022-09-16 Homelab 10" mini-rack shelves Comparison of 10" shelves 2021-01-05 Homelab 10" mini-rack Initial post about mini-rack Introduction ⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ This is an image-heavy post (I have lazy-loading enabled, so images should only load as you scroll) I know that the imperial system of units is inferior to the metric system, but these are 10-inch racks, not 254mm racks 🤷‍♂️ For my measurements, I’ve converted fractions (8-11/16) to decimals (8.6875) For the past year-and-a-half, my network stack has lived in my 10-inch mini-rack (not on my countertop, obviously). ...

TL;DR I’m frustrated by Mozilla, but don’t see many alternative browsers that have such noble goals as Firefox. Introduction I have a confession: I tried really hard to quit Firefox, but I can’t. I’ve been using Firefox since the single-digit release days, and I’ve been publishing my Firefox config for five years now. In a recent experiment, I used Brave Browser exclusively for three months, but ended up moving back to Firefox. Here are my thoughts (i.e., a rant) on why I moved, why I moved back, and why I might not be done moving. ...

TL;DR In my opinion, these self-hosted, open-source applications are the best of what open-source can be. Home Assistant Jellyfin Pi-hole Nextcloud WordPress Introduction My hot water tank recently leaked, but (luckily for me) there was a floor drain right next to it. The next day (after having the tank fixed), I purchased a water leak sensor, added it to Home Assistant in under 2 minutes, and was able to get push notifications of future detected leaks. ...

Update: 2022-04-15 I typically average around 100 unique visitors to this site per day. Below is a screenshot from my Plausible analytics setup showing the traffic spike up to almost 14k unique visitors from HackerNews (and other sources). Update: 2022-04-12 I posted this article to that orange site and it blew up more than I expected. I reached #3 of the front page (screenshot below) and am officially on the top 10 list for 2022-04-11. When I migrated from WordPress to Hugo, I lost comments on this blog, but the HackerNews post has some really good discussion and recommendations that I highly encourage you to check out. ...

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. I’m not sure how I’ve never come across this, but I just learned that raspi-config has a mostly undocumented non-interactive mode that will do precisely that. ...

Introduction Recently, I’ve been thinking more and more about backups for my small (but growing) homelab. The golden rule is to follow the 3-2-1 method for backups: 3 backups 2 different types of media 1 backup offsite Current setup Currently, I keep an encrypted external HDD at home and another at work. Every couple weeks, I perform a backup to both and rotate the drives (this covers a 2-1-1 backup). ...

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2019-06-28 Migrating away from the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite Migrated to a Netgate SG-1100 2019-02-03 EdgeRouter CNAME records Setup CNAME records 2017-10-03 Dyn DDNS on EdgeRouter Setup DynDNS 2017-04-25 DuckDNS on EdgeRouter Setup DuckDNS 2017-01-08 Ubiquiti EdgeRouter serial console settings Serial console settings 2016-11-29 Ubiquiti UniFi controller setup on Raspberry Pi 3 Install UniFi Controller 2016-08-30 EdgeRouter Lite Dnsmasq setup Setup dnsmasq 2016-06-13 EdgeRouter Lite software upgrade Firmware upgrade 2016-05-12 EdgeRouter Lite OpenVPN setup OpenVPN server setup 2016-04-29 Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite setup Initial setup Introduction I’ve been using Dyn for my dynamic DNS for years. However, after the 2016 Dyn DDoS, I’ve decided to add a second dynamic DNS service provider, in case Dyn goes down again. ...

Introduction Put on your tinfoil hats, boys and girls! Today, we’re talking about security, encryption, and GPG! PGP vs OpenPGP vs GPG PGP Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) was a program created to encrypt/decrypt data in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann. Zimmermann formed PGP Incorporated, which was acquired serveral times and is now owned by Symantec. Fun fact - in 1993 the US government charged Zimmerman with “munitions export without a license”. At the time, cryptography systems with keys over 40 bits were considered a weapon, and since PGP used 128 bit keys, Zimmerman was in violation of the law. However, Zimmerman was able to circumvent this by publishing the entire source code of PGP in a physical book (that could be scanned with OCR and recompiled into source code), since the export of books was protected by the First Amendment. Today, PGP is no longer considered a weapon, but still cannot be exported to a specific list of individuals/countries. ...

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on using your own router with Verizon FiOS. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2016-08-22 Verizon FiOS Router Maintenance Charge Maintenance Charges 2015-07-11 Use your own router with Verizon FiOS Initial Post Introduction At the new house, we have Verizon FiOS. If you’re not familiar, FiOS is a FTTP (Fiber-to-the-Premises) multimedia service that offers phone service, internet, and TV. If fiber is strung in your area, Verizon taps into the fiber line on the telephone pole and runs it to your house. Verizon will then install a box on your property called the Optical Network Terminal (ONT), that converts the fiber signal into a copper signal. ...