~/categories $ cat Homelab
// Homelab
20 posts in this category.
Unattended-Upgrades Was Sending Mail to Gmail for Six Weeks. Gmail Was Silently Dropping All of It.
How a one-line apt config default left every host on my fleet sending email with From: root, why Brevo accepted those messages but Gmail dropped them on DMARC alignment, and the live A/B test that nailed it down to a ...
Automating Nextcloud AIO Updates with Bash and Cron
A small bash script that pulls the latest Nextcloud All-in-One image, recreates the child containers, and triggers the update by calling AIO's internal cron PHP directly — turning AIO's manual UI update flow into some...
How I Fixed SSL Certificate Warnings Across My Entire Proxmox Homelab — With Full Auto-Renewal and Email Alerts
A complete guide to issuing a Let's Encrypt wildcard cert via DNS-01, deploying it to all Proxmox VE and PBS nodes, handling the PBS fingerprint gotcha that will break your backups, and wiring up email alerts on every...
Optimizing Proxmox Backup Server with S3: Regional Migration and Fixing a Glacier Misconfiguration
How I investigated and resolved PBS S3 connection issues, migrated to a closer regional endpoint, and properly optimized backups after a Glacier lifecycle misconfiguration.
I Audited Every VM in My Homelab — Here's What I Found (and Fixed)
A comprehensive audit of 27 VMs across 3 Proxmox hosts revealed critical storage issues, broken monitoring, outdated operating systems, and years of accumulated tech debt. Here's how I fixed it all in one session.
Why I Switched From Gmail to Brevo for All My Homelab Email Alerts
How and why I migrated all my homelab email alerts — Proxmox backups, Zabbix monitoring, and even an ESP32 door sensor — from Gmail App Passwords to Brevo's SMTP relay.
I Completely Overhauled My Discord Music Bot — Slash Commands, Spotify Radio, and 70 Tests
How I took an abandoned MusicBot fork and modernised it with 48 slash commands, a Spotify-powered radio feature, Docker support, systemd hardening, input validation, and a full test suite. 3,640 lines added across 21 ...
Bulletproofing a Remote Raspberry Pi for Maximum Uptime
How I hardened a remote Raspberry Pi 4 running a UniFi controller to survive on 905MB of RAM, an SD card, and zero physical access — 200 miles from home.
I Built a Health Check Script for Evernode Validators — 61 Checks in One Command
Evernode Node Doctor is a bash script that validates everything needed to run an Evernode node on the Xahau blockchain — system requirements, Docker, networking, SSL, port scanning, account balances, and Xahau WSS con...
How to Use S3 as a Backend for Proxmox Backup Server with s3fs
Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) doesn’t natively support S3 storage as a Datastore, but with a little creativity and the help of s3fs-fuse, you can make it work! Here’s a step-by-step guide to mounting S3
How to Use Your Linux PC as a Network Switch
Configuring Proxmox Network Interfaces This guide will help you configure a Proxmox host with a newly added dual-port NIC card, switching the management interface and setting up a bridge for additiona
Proxmox Templates with Cloud Init
Cloud images are operating system templates and every instance starts out as an identical clone of every other instance. It is the user data that gives every cloud instance its personality and cloud-i
Building a Real-Time Temperature and Humidity Monitoring System with Flask, Prometheus, and Grafana
Learn how to build a real-time temperature and humidity monitoring system using a DHT22 sensor, Raspberry Pi, Flask, Prometheus, and Grafana. This project demonstrates data collection, metric exposure
Proxmox: activating LV failed: Activation of logical volume is prohibited while logical volume tmeta is active. (500)
Logical volumes (LVs) in Linux provide a powerful layer of abstraction for managing storage. Their flexibility lets you easily shrink, expand, and manage disk space. However on proxmox sometimes you m
How to format a volume on Ubuntu and mount it to a folder automatically on start-up
This is a guide aimed at new starters that want a step by step guide on how to format a volume on ubuntu 22.04 LTS and mount it to a folder automatically on start-up. I couldn’t find many good guides
Limit UniFi controller memory usage
Unifi controller memory usage adjusted using system.properties.
Extend the life of SD card in your Raspberry Pi
Improve SD card lifespan with backups, free space, swap removal, ZRAM.
Upgrading a Home Network with Ubiquiti UniFi and Secure Remote Access
Mesh Wi-Fi systems promise whole-home coverage, but they can fall short in demanding environments. In this post, I'll walk you through a recent project where I replaced a struggling mesh network with Ubiquiti UniFi.
Homelab Ideas & Why You Should Have A Homelab
A home lab offers IT professionals a dedicated space to enhance skills, troubleshoot, and stay updated with evolving technologies. It provides hands-on experience, exam practice, and a safe environmen
ESP32 Email Notification on State Change to trigger IFS ERP Report
One of the smaller projects which I particularly enjoyed enabled a fire alarm system to interact with the organisations ERP system. This was an integration project where a business stakeholder wanted