AJ's Blog

Monitor Debian Linux with Grafana Alloy

I have most systems using grafana alloy for logs that send to a loki server. It can also collect metrics and eliminate the prometheus node exporter as a separate install. In a previous post I migrated my systems that used Grafana Promtail -> Grafana Alloy. I have used those projects to collect log events from my Linux servers at home. They can also collect logs from Docker containers and forward log events to another server which in an older post I set up Grafana Loki to store log events from all of my servers, containers, and applications that could support this system.

Fedora 43 upgrade

Today is a spooky day and Fedora 43 has been released as of October 29, 2025. This release is a bit spooky with the default desktop environment only supporting Wayland. Typically there are 2 Fedora releases per year. I upgraded to 42 earlier this year in a previous post and this process is going to be the same.

There are a few notable user visible changes in this release. When installing from the ISO installation image there is a new Anaconda WebUI. This was the default installer interface for Fedora Workstation 42, and now it’s the default installer UI for the Spins as well. If you are a GNOME desktop user, you’ll also notice that the GNOME is now Wayland-only in Fedora Linux 43. GNOME upstream has deprecated X11 support, and has disabled it as a compile time default in GNOME 49. Upstream GNOME plans to fully remove X11 support in GNOME 50.

Zen Browser

The web browser is arguably the most important application on any modern computer. For most of us, it’s the gateway to everything we do online. This includes work, entertainment, communication, and research. I do not think I have posted about web browsers before but the truth is a browser is the application I have used the most in my time on a computer for decades now. Over the past two decades, I’ve navigated through several different browsers. Each one represented a different era of the web. Here’s my journey through the evolution of web browsers. It culminates in my latest discovery: Zen Browser.

Auditing Unix-based systems with Lynis

Linux systems power everything from personal workstations to enterprise servers, IoT devices to cloud infrastructure. Regardless of where your Linux machine lives or what it does, security vulnerabilities can turn a trusted system into a liability. Whether your system is exposed to the internet or tucked away on your local network, regular security audits are essential. You can also run it on a macOS system.

What is Lynis and Why Should You Care?

Lynis is an open-source security auditing tool that performs in-depth security scans on Unix-based systems like Linux, helping with system hardening, compliance testing, and vulnerability detection. It examines file permissions, service configurations, kernel settings, and hundreds of other security parameters. The tool runs on almost all Unix-based systems, including Raspberry Pi and IoT devices. It only tests the components it can find on your system, requiring no additional tool installations.

Netbox

If you’re like me, your home network probably started simple. Maybe it was just a router and a few devices. Fast forward a few years, and suddenly you’re managing VLANs, static IP assignments, multiple Raspberry Pis, and trying to remember which port on which switch connects to what. Sound familiar?

Enter NetBox: an open-source infrastructure resource modeling (IRM) application that’s like having a living blueprint of your entire network. Originally developed by the network engineering team at DigitalOcean, NetBox was designed to solve a problem we can all relate to: keeping track of everything in your infrastructure before the chaos takes over.

Proxmox NAS VM

One of the most useful systems to set up in a homelab is shared storage. Making storage available over the network makes it easier to share files and make system backups. I have tried various setups for shared storage in my homelab and my latest iteration is setting up the same system I have in the past.

Why use a VM for a NAS? Well I am writing this post today because the SSD failed that had the proxmox installation and the virtual disk for my previous NAS VM. This is not really an issue since I am the only user and I can rebuild it with the few steps in this post. The important thing is if the actual data drives are intact and I am leveraging ZFS which is a filesystem with some unique features including mirroring data from one drive to another and taking snapshots of the entire filesystem.