SmokePing for Internet Connection Sanity
SmokePing turns your ISP no-issue-detected excuse into a documented lie. Set it up in Docker and get clear visual proof of latency spikes and packet loss.
Tag: self-hosting
All the articles with the tag "self-hosting".
Riemann: The Forgotten Event-Stream Monitor for Home Labs
Riemann processes events as streams, not time-series. Here is why that distinction matters and when Clojure-based stream alerting still beats Prometheus rules.
Glances vs Netdata: Two Free-Tier Monitors Compared
Glances vs Netdata: which free monitor wins for your home lab? We compare install effort, UI quality, alerting, and when to ditch both for Prometheus.
Sentry Self-Hosted for Application Errors
Run Sentry on your own hardware to catch real application errors — stack traces, source maps, release tracking, alerts, and when you should just pay for SaaS.
Heimdall vs Homepage vs Homer: Status Dashboards
Heimdall, Homepage, or Homer? Pick the right self-hosted dashboard for your homelab — real configs, Docker auto-discovery, and live API status widgets included.
cAdvisor + Prometheus: Per-Container Metrics Done Right
Stop guessing which container is eating your RAM. Set up cAdvisor + Prometheus to get real per-container CPU, memory, and network metrics in your homelab.
RustDesk vs MeshCentral: Self-Hosted Remote Desktop
TeamViewer costs a fortune, AnyDesk wants a subscription, and Chrome Remote Desktop routes everything through Google. Here's how RustDesk and MeshCentral stack up as self-hosted alternatives — and which one fits your use case.
Grafana Alloy: Replacing the Agent After Deprecation
Grafana Agent hit EOL in November 2025. Here is how to migrate all your monitoring nodes to Alloy without losing your mind, your metrics, or your dashboards.
OpenTelemetry Collector: One Pipeline to Rule Them All
Replace five scattered agents with one OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline — metrics, logs, and traces unified with real config you can drop into a home server.
Why I Built Garrul
I looked at a lot of self-hosted comment systems. None of the ones I wanted ran on Cloudflare Workers. So I wrote one. Here's the story and the deploy.
Backblaze B2 + rclone: Tiered Backup at Real-World Costs
Stop burning money on AWS egress fees. Here is how to build a real tiered backup strategy using Backblaze B2 plus rclone for your home lab setup in 2026.
Beyond Akismet: Spam Protection for 2026
Akismet's licensing terms are increasingly hostile to small sites. Here are 11 spam-protection options — hosted APIs, CAPTCHA widgets, and DIY honeypots — that actually work in 2026.