I’ve set up Uptime Kuma this weekend, monitoring everything from Docker containers, network devices (like IPcams, switches, printers, …), wireguard tunnels, etc etc. (I have 65 monitors set up so far) and a Signal rest api for notifications.

Furthermore, I integrated multiple new ESPHome switches into my Home Assistant setup for cable model reset, alarm system controller reset, etc.

Once I have Uptime Kuma finetuned I will automated som resets.

Uptime Kuma is amazing so far.

Building out ansible.

Now it's creating roles and groups, adding a few items to the hardening playbook, and I've been playing with tuning the output as playbooks run.

I actually just wrote about today's fun experience! https://gotosocial.michaeldileo.org/@mdileo/statuses/01K7YKQ9584YBY1QTYQ8RMW7SS

I actually did something for quite a while. Finished long overdue wiring for outdoor access point and one more camera, replaced a main switch since the old one started to behave unreliably, installed frigate (which still needs some work), cleaned up some wiring while messing around, updated a bunch of firmwares, replaced switch in garage to managed one and made some changes on my workstation and some other minor stuff.

Next would be to move cameras into their own VLAN and harden that setup a bit. And I really should get around on better backups for my VPS. But it's a new week coming up, if the work isn't too busy I might get something more done.

I've set up Kavita for my e-books. Nice UI, looks promising, and I've added some books. I haven't really used it yet, because half of this was just an excuse to try podman (instead of docker). I wanted to set it up to run as unprivileged user, without the docker daemon running as root. That wasn't too hard, but it was definitely a few extra steps.

But something about Kavita didn't sit well with me. Maybe I don't self-host enough stuff to know what's normal, but there is a donate button, which I don't mind, but its tooltip says: "You can remove this button by subscribing to Kavita+."

I'm donating to a few software projects already, and I have developed a substantial amount of free software myself. There is nothing wrong with asking for money. But what I cannot stand is when software running on my own device is intentionally acting against my interests. And this tooltip was very clear about not letting me do something that I might want to do.

So I checked the source code for more. I found another anti-pattern: telemetry is opt-out instead of opt-in. But that seems to be it, I didn't find anything worse than that. So... fair I guess, if the author wants it that way. It's still free software. It looks like I could delete all the Kavita+ stuff myself and re-build. Which I'm going to do if I keep using it. But this is now an extra step that prevents me from just using it, because I need to feel in control of what I run. Kind of self-inflicted, I guess...

I finally got my ISP to enable bridge mode on my modem.

I also learned that I didn't lose port forwarding and related services because I had been moved behind CGNAT or transitioned to IPv6 -- they simply no longer offer port forwarding to residential customers. Ruminate on the implications of that statement so I'm not the only one with blood pressure in the high hundreds.

I've had immich but went to homegalley instead. Mostly because I want to keep MY directory structure in case I'm abandoning the choosen platform. Have not regretted my choice (so far ... 8 months)

I’ve learned a hard lesson this week. Jellyfin server OS partition run out of free space and corrupted the database. Nothing to do but reinstall. I guess this week I’ll be reviewing backups! 🤣🤣🤣

I am playing around with Podman Quadlet and that's one hell of a rabbit hole. I have everything up and running, and now I need to configure the containers, and probably will deal with other pain points, etc.

The good thing is that I have documented the whole process so it is reproducible but it took me quite some time to figure out everything.

I installed gitlab on mine. Time to organize my projects!

I got tailscale cert to work but I feel kind of bad about learning tailscale instead of headscale

I've been trying to convince a VPS to run two instances of mariadb - one for local databases, one to replicate the homelab. Got mariadb@server and mariadb@replica sorted out through systemd, but now stuck on replication from mysql to mariadb. Looks like I'll be ripping out mariadb and putting everything on mysql.