Dead Container Took Down Prod
A real postmortem: how a forgotten survey-tool container, an uncapped Docker log driver, and rootless networking combined to kill prod for a Monday morning.
Tag: self-hosting
All the articles with the tag "self-hosting".
Mikrotik RouterOS for Home Lab
Mikrotik routers cost $50, run a real OS, and humiliate prosumer gear. RouterOS basics, VLANs, firewalling, and why your homelab probably needs one of these.
pfSense vs OPNsense in 2026
Two FreeBSD firewall distros, one bitter fork. pfSense vs OPNsense in 2026 — which one to pick for your home lab, and why the licensing drama still matters.
Zeek for Home Lab Forensics
Zeek (formerly Bro) turns network traffic into structured logs you can actually query. The IDS that doesn't shout — it documents. Setup and use in a home lab.
Neo4j vs ArangoDB: Graph DB Showdown
Neo4j is the household graph DB with Cypher. ArangoDB is multi-model with AQL and free clustering. Here's which one fits your homelab graph use case.
ModSecurity vs Coraza WAF
ModSecurity 3 is end-of-life and Coraza is the open-source successor — Go-native, faster, and friendlier. Here's the migration story and what actually changes.
Postgres vs SQLite for Home Lab Apps
SQLite is brilliant until you need concurrent writes, replication, or online migrations. Here's the actual line where Postgres earns its keep.
SOPS + age: Secrets in Git
Stop the .env-in-1Password dance. SOPS encrypts secrets per-key, age provides modern crypto, and git stores them safely. Here's how to ship it without footguns.
Self-Host a Local AI Coding Workhorse
Run Gemma 4 or Qwen3-Coder locally via Ollama or llama.cpp in Docker, then delegate mechanical coding tasks to it while Claude handles the thinking. Free tokens, zero leakage.
WebAuthn & Passkeys for Sysadmins
Passkeys finally killed passwords for real users. Here's what WebAuthn actually is under the hood, and how to roll passkeys out on your self-hosted services.
Give Your AI Agent a Cheap Intern
Stop burning expensive AI tokens on boring grunt work. The overseer/workhorse pattern routes mechanical tasks to a cheap model and saves more than you'd think.
Borg vs Duplicacy: Dedup Backup Wars
Borg is open-source classic with SSH targets. Duplicacy has lock-free multi-source magic but commercial GUI. Here's which backup tool to pick.