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. I know just enough to be dangerous, but this should be enough to get you going. ...

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. I’m using Ansible in my homelab to: ...

Introduction Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on pfSense. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2019-08-25 pfSense on the PC Engines APU2 Migrated to a PC Engines APU2D4 2019-07-17 My SG-1100 died Migrated back the the EdgeRouter Lite 2019-06-28 Migrating away from the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite Migrated to a Netgate SG-1100 In the past few weeks, I replaced my EdgeRouter Lite with a Netgate SG-1100. Two weeks later, my SG-1100 died, and I had to put the EdgeRouter Lite back. However, I still wanted to replace the ERL with a pfSense device (albeit, not Netgate hardware). ...

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on pfSense. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2019-08-25 pfSense on the PC Engines APU2 Migrated to a PC Engines APU2D4 2019-07-17 My SG-1100 died Migrated back the the EdgeRouter Lite 2019-06-28 Migrating away from the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite Migrated to a Netgate SG-1100 Introduction I recently wrote about how I was dropping the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite for a Netgate SG-1100 running pfSense. However, on July 9th (about two weeks after installing my SG-1100) I noticed my internet connection died, and I was unable to ping the router. I used a micro-USB cable to view the console and noticed it was not pulling an IP address from my FiOS ONT. ...

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 For years, I’ve been using and loving my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. For about $100, you’re not going to find a router with more features. In fact, most of Ubiquiti’s offerings are a very good value for the money. However, in the past year or so, Ubiquiti has seemed to have some issues with what direction they want to take as a company: ...

TL;DR Skip to the bottom. Introduction I receive a lot of email questions about my resume, specifically asking why I use LaTeX, and also asking for the source (which is at the very bottom). I thought I’d take a few minutes to discuss why I use LaTeX. For the past 10 years, I’ve been writing my resume in Microsoft Word. Over time, it had become a burden to update. More often than not, I ended up fighting with the formatting, instead of focusing on the content. The slightest change to a column, graphic, or font would completely alter the formatting of the entire document. With this frustration in mind, I set out to find a new way to write my resume. ...

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 What is a CNAME record? A canonical name (CNAME) record is a special type of DNS record that points one domain name to another. ...

Introduction WireGuard released their official iOS app today, and I wasted no time jumping on setting up a WireGuard server at home (based mostly on this guide). This is not going to be a tutorial, but instead, I’m going to talk about why WireGuard is a game-changer. OpenVPN drawbacks For years, I’ve used OpenVPN to connect back to my home network. Don’t get me wrong, OpenVPN is great, especially compared to dated, insecure alternatives like PPTP or L2TP/IPSec. But, for all its merits, OpenVPN has some drawbacks: ...

Introduction In March of 2018, Let’s Encrypt (the free Certificate Authority) announced they added support for wildcard certificates through the upgraded ACMEv2 protocol. I’ve been hosting most of my services on subdirectories (e.g., loganmarchione.com/rss) but have been wanting to move them to subdomains (e.g., rss.loganmarchione.com), and thought this was the perfect chance to do just that. What are wildcard certificates? Wildcard certificates cover any subdomain of a specific domain. For example, I own loganmarchione.com. Because of this, I can create services as subdomains of that domain. For example: ...