Posts tagged: homelab

💭 DDR5 Prices are Crashing... Kind Of. - YouTube

2026-04-08T08:41:16Z

THIS is the future of homelab, excited to see someone who knows so much more about hardware than I do get excited about this.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 paynepride dot com outage on vacation

2026-03-26T08:20:22Z

paynepride dot com outage on vacation | Nic Payne

The day after I leave for vacation I start getting SSL errors on every homelab service I host for myself and others. The culprit was my Cloudflare API token exp

pype.dev

oof, outage on the homelab during vacation, brutal. I can think of a couple of similar solutions to what @pype has done to tailscale in, but I’m not sure that I could do this remotely. On one hand I’m so glad that cloudflared just takes care of certs on the other hand this really brings a gap in my understanding of what the heck I would do if it were broken.

An untested DR plan is not a DR plan.

An untested backup does not exist.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

The Right Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab

2025-12-10T09:48:14Z

Running kubernetes in your homelab is a fantastic way to learn, explore, express yourself, and run services that you use.

The Right Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab #

There are not many

You want to learn kubernetes
You like kubernetes
You want to learn to scale

There are also The Wrong Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab

You want to learn kubernetes #

Homelabbing is a such a great way to learn new skills, deploy real apps that you use. Create new custom apps for your specific use cases that no one else has. You should absolutely run kubernetes in your homelab if you want to learn it.

I would recommend to start locally, pull up kind, minikube, or k3d and start from your local machine before putting it on a server.

When you decide you are ready for a server, you probably don’t need any crazy hardware. You can probably run on some old retired Dell Optiplex or an old desktop someone is throwing out as it no longer runs windows.

You like kubernetes #

Hell Yeah Brother, 100% no better reason to run kubernetes at home than because you enjoy it. I’m with you. There’s nothing quite like having git ops kick in and deploy new services, updates, watching deployments rollover with zero downtime. Watching your cluster heal itself when a node goes down. Never ssh-ing in to do deployments. Still owning your entire hardware.

You want to learn to scale #

This is probably a stretch reason, maybe not a good one, there are probably better ways, but here we go.

Don’t claim that you need scale in your homelab, you don’t. But it sure is fun to run a cluster of nodes, and load balancing services that run across them. Solving these hard problems to scale across machines is hard. There’s no way around it, there’s a lot to think about. Doing so in a low stakes environment that you have skin in the game is a great way to learn.

I run kubernetes in my homelab #

I run it and I really like it

What flavor of autism did you guys get, I got the kind where I run kubernetes in my basement.

Here are some things I really like about it, and Yes I know you can achieve most of these without kubernetes.

I don’t have to ssh, hardly ever.
I can see everything I’m running, and its defined in a manifest
k9s is amazing, and I use it all the time.
- shell into running pods
- restart deployments
- scale deployments
- trigger cronjobs
- watch logs
- I can scale our minecraft server to 0 in seconds if we are in a different season of life
ArgoCD is amazing
- I ❤️ gitops
Ingress just works
Longhorn
- makes snapshots and backups easy
- makes multi node easy
zero-downtime deployments
self healing health checks

I mostly do very simple things, deployments with a container, a volume and ingress. Probably things that you could easily run on fly.io. Theres nothing really fancy. I just like how easy this setup works for me.

minecraft server memory

2025-12-10T08:46:36Z

I learned to today that setting MEMORY on your minecraft server causes the JVM to egregiously allocate all of that memory. Not setting it causes slow downs and potential crashes, but setting INIT_MEMORY and MAX_MEMORY gives us the best of both worlds. It is allowed to use more, but does not gobble it all up on startup.

In this economy we need to save all the memory we can!

Here is a non-working snippet for a minecraft server deployment in kubernetes.

      containers:
        - name: dungeon
          image: itzg/minecraft-server
          env:
            - name: EULA
              value: "true"
            - name: INIT_MEMORY
              value: "512M"
            - name: MAX_MEMORY
              value: "3G"

and in docker compose

  dungeon:
    image: itzg/minecraft-server
    environment:
      EULA: "true"
      INIT_MEMORY: "512M"
      MAX_MEMORY: "3G"

The Wrong Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab

2025-12-06T09:46:47Z

Running kubernetes in your homelab is complex, time consuming, there are almost no docs to help you (homelab focused docs for things you want to install), and nothing is copy paste. You have to make everything happen yourself.

The Wrong Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab #

I run compose and think kubernetes is the next logical step
Techno Tim runs it
I heard it’s what cool kids do
Kubernetes BTW
Talos Linux looks cool
I found a cool helm chart on GitHub
I need scale

There are also The Right Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab.

I run compose and think kubernetes is the next logical step #

No it’s not. It’s much different than running docker, compose, swarm. It’s meant for scale, it’s complex, it’s made for enterprise, not your local development or your homelab. It can do these things, it can do them quite well, but it’s not the target audience.

Techno Tim runs it #

I heard it’s what cool kids do

You need to rethink who the cool kids are, touch some grass. Tim also does it for his job, he likes it, he knows it, he wants to lean on it and learn more.

Kubernetes BTW #

Kubernetes does not make you look cool, it makes you look like you are trying to over optimize and over engineer your life. It’s not worth it, in fact nothing in life is worth worrying about what everyone else thinks of you.

Talos Linux looks cool #

Talos is an S tier OS wherever you deploy it. It is a secure, minimal, kubernetes first OS. They also have some really great people working there putting Talos in some really cool places like backpack or Apple Power Mac

I found a cool helm chart on GitHub #

No you didn’t. Everything in homelab is compose first. A few things have a k8s option, but almost nothing is k8s first.

I need scale #

No. You’re homelab does not need scale. If you think it does, you have some real shit hardware, some bad optimizations, or somehow you have a startup you need to launch cause you got more users than most.

Don't copy your gitignore to stignore

2025-10-21T18:43:00Z

Today I learned that while .stignore and .gitignore look very similar they are not. My obsidian directory had been locked up for a few weeks and I had no idea why until I logged into the web ui and saw errors. The errors were some confusing regex validator not matching. I don’t know what the exact error was, but I went in and only ignored the files I cared about instead of the entire gitignore. Primarily I was getting conflicts in my .git directory.

tar over ssh

2025-09-13T10:50:42Z

Today I learned how to use tar over ssh to save hours in file transfers. I keep all of my projects in ~/git (very creative I know, I’ve done it for years and haven’t changed). I just swapped out my main desktop from bazzite to hyprland, and wanted to get all of my projects back. Before killing my bazzite install I moved everything over (16GB of many small files), it took over 14 hours, maybe longer. I had started in the morning and just let it churn.

This was not going to happen for re-seeding all of my projects on my new system, I knew there had to be a better way, I looked at rsync, but for seeding I ran into this tar over ssh technique and it only took me 6m51s to pull all of my projects off of my remote server.

ssh user@192.168.1.100 'tar -C /tank/git -cpf - .' \
  | tar -C "$HOME/git" -xpf -

trying forgejo

2025-08-12T11:57:42Z

WIP

networks:
  forgejo:
    external: false
services:
  server:
    image: codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo:11
    container_name: forgejo
    environment:
      - USER_UID=1000
      - USER_GID=1000
    restart: always
    networks:
      - forgejo
    volumes:
      - ./forgejo:/data
    ports:
      - '3000:3000'
      - '2222:22'
  docker-in-docker:
    image: docker:dind
    container_name: docker_dind
    privileged: true
    command: ["dockerd", "-H", "tcp://0.0.0.0:2375", "--tls=false"]
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [forgejo]
  runner:
    image: data.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner:4.0.0
    container_name: forgejo-runner
    user: "1001:1001"
    depends_on:
      - docker-in-docker
    environment:
      DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker-in-docker:2375
    volumes:
      - ./runner-data:/data:Z,U # will hold .runner + cache
    command: /bin/sh -c "while :; do sleep 1; done"
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [forgejo]

💭 GitHub Ensloppification – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)

2025-08-12T02:29:16Z

GitHub Ensloppification

The one where I say goodbye to GitHub

dbushell.com · dbushell.com

David’s got me looking at Forgejo. I’ve seen a lot of GitHub jumpers just this week, and I’ve been tempted for a long time to self host one anyways, so it might be time. I don’t have hard issues with anything, I just like self hosting my own personal stuff.

On the flipside, I hope this does not turn yet another thing to shit. I lived through the download software from sourceforge and hope you get the right download now button and not the one from the virus ad. I’m not putting my really public/useful projects on a self hosted platform… well not as the only source, I see how that comes off edgy. I like having some trust in the platform. Currently theres a lot of issues with M$ and GitHub using you for your data, but I don’t think injecting virus, malware, bitcoin miners is a worry I have coming from a GitHub release, unless it was put there by the author.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

Should I kubernetes My Homelab

2025-08-11T09:28:16Z

Yes

Ok we should probably dive deeper into this, but good chance if you are here and have made it this far you it would probably be a fine choice. The choice is quite time and skill dependant.

Time #

First thing up, if you like copy pasting thing into your homelab, changing a few config options, but mostly running it as the docs instructed, kubernetes is not for you. The homelab/self hosting space is heavily reliant on docker compose, 90% of the things you want to run will likely have a docker command, and likely a docker compose example that you can copy paste and get running right away. Maybe 5% of projects have something for kubernetes, you Will have to do it yourself.

Kubernetes is very DIY in the self hosting space, and not very plug and play.

Skill #

💭 csi-driver-smb/deploy/example/smb-provisioner at master · kube...

2025-08-01T19:50:39Z

csi-driver-smb/deploy/example/smb-provisioner at master · kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb

This driver allows Kubernetes to access SMB Server on both Linux and Windows nodes. - kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb

GitHub · github.com

Great guide to setting up a samba server right in kubernetes. I tried it out after too long of playing with trying to get connected to a samba share on ucore, no idea what was wrong, but this just works, and will live in my homelab no matter what distro I’m on, no playbook required to set it up, just good ol k8s manifest. TBH I cheated and haven’t set up the secrets yet, so its not quite in argocd or in my github repo, but POC is there and it works as advertised without issue.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

Homelab Update Jul 2025

2025-07-28T08:19:37Z

Basement shelf with 3 computers, a network switch, an uninterubptable power supply, one monitor underneath, and a wifi access point to the right.

💭 Lab Update | Cloudy with a Chance of Tech

2025-07-12T02:16:40Z

Lab Update

Update on the lab setup and what I’ve been working on recently.

Cloudy with a Chance of Tech · blog.thomaswimprine.com

Always enjoy a good read through someone elses setup. I appreciate the desire for pi clusters they are cute, they seem cheap, but feel a bit overrated (at least for those of us with relatively cheap electricity). I love seeing the refurb “tiny desktops” getting a second useful life in a homelab after they have serve their useful life in the corporate world sitting behind the monitor of some reception desk. These things rock, they are underrated, x86_64, not ARM, so they just work. Until ARM becomes more normalized in the datacenter this is where its at.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Backups interrupted by full disk usage

2025-06-06T15:53:41Z

Backups interrupted by full disk usage | Nic Payne

I just got a message from HCIO that my primary backup script is late... This happens every now and then but I decided to check on it... Quickly `ssh` in and I n

pype.dev

I’m way behind on my notification game and need to pick it up. maybe I’ll look into hcio as well. maybe I’ll look into something that goes straight to signal or just get things working on ntfy. An 80GB log file is massive and the kind of thing id like to see notifications more.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Helm - Postiz Docs

2025-04-30T21:44:17Z

Helm - Postiz Documentation

Install Postiz using Kubernetes and Helm

Postiz Documentation · docs.postiz.com

I didn’t realize that postiz had a helm chart, I just hand rolled mine based on the compose file they provide. I went from running the compose stack locally to running in my homelab with kubernetes. I am using cnpg rather than a postgres container which I really like the workflow of as far as backup and restore. The one hiccup I ran into was changing the domain from localhost to my homelab domain killed all of my integrations and they needed the redirect url updated.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Self-Hosted 29: Perils of Self-Hosting

2025-04-15T13:18:51Z

Perils of Self-Hosting

We speak to Kevin and Patricia from Traefik, discuss Alex's recent ZFS snafu and we wonder if the new Chromecasts can match up to the Nvidia Shield.

Self-Hosted · selfhosted.show

Interesting takes on Diun here. I agree that I like to be in control of updates and pinning not to latest. both seemed like they weren’t going to run it because they can look up the latest version. Maybe I need to be less aggressive on keeping things up to date and its a me problem. I just got diun setup and hooked into ntfy, and I kinda like the automated checklist of new images that I can review and update.

To be a bit more clear, having control over changes coming in from others, even if I dont care to see the changelog, it is nice to roll out an update, have it in your git history, watch it deploy and work like before, if not roll back and read the changelog. For internal applications I’m down for automated releases like argo image updater give you, this thing has already gone through review, launch the damn thing at least to a dev space.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

Changing k8s Storage Class - Migration Job

2025-04-04T09:57:50Z

I’m setting up longhorn in my homelab, and I ran into an issue where I initially setup some pvcs under longhorn, and later realized that to get longhorn to snapshot and backup I needed to hand edit volumes after the fact or change storage class. I’m all in on gitops so option 1 was not an option. So changing storageclass it is.

Now the issue is that you CANNOT mutate storageclass on a provisioned pvc, it is an immutable attribute.

Migration Job #

This migration job will create a new pvc with the new storageclass and move the data from the old pvc to the new pvc.

Existing Pods

 This migration job will not work if you have a pod using the old pvc.  You

will need to shutdown the pod and delete it.

# old pvc with longhorn storageclass
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: site-pvc-longhorn
  namespace: waylonwalker-com
spec:
  storageClassName: longhorn-backup
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 5Gi
# new pvc with longhorn-backup storageclass
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: site-pvc-longhorn-backup
  namespace: waylonwalker-com
spec:
  storageClassName: longhorn-backup
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 5Gi
---
# migration job to move the data to the new pvc
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: pvc-migration
  namespace: waylonwalker-com
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: pvc-migration
        image: ubuntu:22.04
        command: ["/bin/bash", "-c"]
        args:
          - |
            echo "Starting migration..."
            cd /data
            cp -av source/. destination/
            echo "Migration complete!"
        volumeMounts:
        - name: source-vol
          mountPath: /data/source
        - name: dest-vol
          mountPath: /data/destination
      restartPolicy: Never
      volumes:
      - name: source-vol
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: site-pvc-longhorn
      - name: dest-vol
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: site-pvc-longhorn-backup

Apply the manifests and wait for the job to complete.

kubectl apply -f pvc-migration.yaml

Cleanup #

I had chatgpt create me a script to help me find what is using the pvc so that it can be deleted.

#!/bin/bash

NAMESPACE="waylonwalker-com"
PVC_NAME="site-pvc-longhorn-new"

echo "⏳ Checking if PVC exists..."
kubectl get pvc "$PVC_NAME" -n "$NAMESPACE" || {
  echo "✅ PVC already deleted."
  exit 0
}

echo "🔍 Describe PVC..."
kubectl describe pvc "$PVC_NAME" -n "$NAMESPACE"

echo -e "\n🔗 Checking if any pod is using this PVC..."
kubectl get pods -n "$NAMESPACE" -o json | jq -r \
  --arg PVC "$PVC_NAME" \
  '.items[] | select(.spec.volumes[].persistentVolumeClaim.claimName == $PVC) | .metadata.name'

echo -e "\n🧹 Checking finalizers..."
kubectl get pvc "$PVC_NAME" -n "$NAMESPACE" -o json | jq '.metadata.finalizers'

echo -e "\n🔎 Checking associated VolumeAttachment..."
PV_NAME=$(kubectl get pvc "$PVC_NAME" -n "$NAMESPACE" -o jsonpath='{.spec.volumeName}')
echo "🔗 PVC is bound to PV: $PV_NAME"

kubectl get volumeattachment -A -o json | jq \
  --arg PV "$PV_NAME" \
  '.items[] | select(.spec.source.persistentVolumeName == $PV) | {name: .metadata.name, node: .spec.nodeName, attached: .status.attached}'

echo -e "\n🚀 Done."

I had still had cronjob pods completed, so I had to delete them first.

🔗 Checking if any pod is using this PVC...
pvc-migration-ndv92
waylonwalker-com-cronjob-29057840-8s92p
waylonwalker-com-cronjob-29057850-4rvm9
waylonwalker-com-cronjob-29057860-6g89j

kubectl delete pod pvc-migration-ndv92 -n waylonwalker-com
kubectl delete pod waylonwalker-com-cronjob-29057840-8s92p -n waylonwalker-com
kubectl delete pod waylonwalker-com-cronjob-29057850-4rvm9 -n waylonwalker-com
kubectl delete pod waylonwalker-com-cronjob-29057860-6g89j -n waylonwalker-com

homelab drive ids

2025-03-26T11:22:07Z

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/

Drive Bay 1 ata-ST4000VN008-2DR166_ZDHBZSWZ

+————————————————————————-+ | [ Power] [ Reset ] | +————————————————————————-+ | [ BAY 5 ] 3TB WD30EFRX WMC4N0D3J9R7 ext4 /mnt/sdf4 | +————————————————————————-+ | [ BAY 4 ] 14TB EXOS ZTM09R9N zfs main pool mirror /mnt/main | +————————————————————————-+ | [ BAY 3 ] 14TB EXOS ZTM0AALS zfs main pool mirror /mnt/main | +——————————————-+ | [ BAY 2 ] 4TB IRONWOLF ZDHBZV3N zfs tank pool mirror /mnt/tank | +————————————————————————-+ | [ BAY 1 ] 4TB IRONWOLF ZDHBZSWZ zfs tank pool mirror /mnt/tank | +————————————————————————-+

💭 Resetting a lost admin password — Nextcloud latest Administrat...

2025-03-24T00:26:45Z

This is a handy line to reset your admin password in nextcloud.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

2025-nas

2025-03-04T15:13:06Z

Current inventory #

Silverstone micro-atx case
- 5 3.5" hot swap drive drive bays
- 2 3.5" 3.5" drive bays
2 Seagate 4TB 3.5" drive (trust worthy drives)
1 WD 3TB 3.5" (could be a trash drive for stuff that does not matter)
ryzen 3300G
16gb Gskill Trident Z rgb ram
500GB nvme ssd - I have this installed in a machine I would like to keep there, but not hurt if I pulled it

Dream Build #

$169 seagate exos x16
$79 motherboard ASUS Prime B450M-A II - has 6 sata ports
~~$79 motherboard ASROCK B450M PRO4 R2.0~~ only has 4 sata ports
$85 power supply CORSAIR RM650
$89 Crucial 64GB ram
$89 2TB nvme

4 16TB drive option #

169*4 + 79 + 85 + 89 + 89 = $1018

2 16TB drive option #

169*2 + 79 + 85 + 89 + 89 = $680

only 2 4TB drive #

79 + 85 + 89 + 89 = $342

2 16TB drive - 16GB RAM #

I think this is my option I’m leaning towards, good modular power supply, 500GB nvme from budget list.

169*2 + 79 + 85 + 30 = $532

using my existing 500Gb nvme drive

169*2 + 79 + 85 = $502

using only existing 4TB drives

79 + 85 = $164

Budget friendly build #

$169 seagate exos x16
$79 motherboard ASUS Prime B450M-A II - has 6 sata ports
~~$79 motherboard ASROCK B450M PRO4 R2.0~~ only has 4 sata ports
$60 power supply CORSAIR CX550 - non modular
$50 Crucial 32GB ram
$30 512GB nvme
$29 cooler master 212 Black

2 16TB drive option #

169*2 + 79 + 60 + 30 + 50 + 29 = $586

only 2 4TB drive #

79 + 60 + 30 + 50 + 29 = $248