Posts

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 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). My fiber internet service comes into the basement and terminates at the ONT. A Cat6 cable runs from the ONT in the basement, up through the ceiling directly above it where it plugs into my router. The hole drilled through the first floor is hidden by the entertainment center that houses all the equipment. My entire homelab lives on the bottom shelf of that piece of furniture and is designed to be low-power and quiet (since it’s in my living room): ...

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. 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: ...

Hey! Listen! This post is part of a series on pfSense. Check them all out! Date URL Part 2025-03-01 pfSense on the OPNsense DEC740 Migrated to the OPNsense DEC740 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 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 2025-03-01 pfSense on the OPNsense DEC740 Migrated to the OPNsense DEC740 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. ...