AJ's Blog

This is a personal blog focused on computer software and hardware. Most projects are implementing software and hardware for a homelab. What is a homelab? I would say a homelab could be a single computer or dozens of computers connected in a network. You can also integrate with computers in the Cloud.

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Recent Posts

Homelab prometheus & grafana dashboard

02-27-2022

last_updated: 2023-10-01 : updated container image tags, updated proxmox exporter, replaced deprecated ansible role for node_exporter Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting software. Prometheus collects and stores metrics as time series data, so one dimension of the data is always based on the time that the metric was recorded. Metrics are pulled over HTTP into the prometheus system. Each data monitoring source will need a data exporter that presents the metrics on a http server that prometheus can pull from.

ReaR linux backup and recover

02-24-2022

Relax-and-Recover is an open-source tool to create computer backup archives and bootable ISO images of a Linux system. ReaR creates a bootable image consisting of the latest state of the system to be backed up. This image can be used for disaster recovery. ReaR was designed to be easy to setup and can be run through a cron job with minimal effort if you have storage somewhere for storing backup images.

Setting up a Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu Linux

02-18-2022

A Raspberry Pi (not pie) is a single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi foundation and Broadcom. The Pi was designed to promote basic computer science education around the world with a low cost computer that is accessible to developing nations. The Pi has been very popular world wide far beyond the original scope of the first product released. The newest single-board unit as of this post is the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B which contains a 64 bit processor, 1,2,4,or 8 GB of memory, 1 Gigabit Ethernet network interface, 2x USB 2 type A ports, 2x USB 3 type A ports, 2x micro HDMI ports, USB type C for power, 3.

Factorio container game server

02-11-2022

updated: 2024-02-03 Factorio is a game where you crash land on an alien planet and build a factory to create a space ship and escape the dangerous world you landed on. factorio_logo Configuring the server Someone has already created an amazing container image that will start the game server as a non-root user and supports mods out of the box. Only one volume/directory is needed to store the persistent data of the game server.

cockpit

02-05-2022

Cockpit is an open-source and easy to use web-based interface to manage a Linux system. It has features for users who may be new to Linux administration and provides information helpful to experienced administrators. By default, Cockpit will use the same user accounts that are present on the system. If the system is configured to use a directory service, Cockpit will forward the authorization to the directory service. There are also other software packages supported to integrate with cockpit.

TrueNAS for homelab storage

01-29-2022

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. A popular operating system for creating a network storage server is called TrueNAS which is based on FreeBSD and Linux and uses the OpenZFS file system. For a home lab, the BSD licensed free and public TrueNAS Core can be used in a homelab.