#Tag
Posts tagged "homelab"
A new model is a new hire, not a new file
A model pulled from the hub is not just weights - it ships tokeniser code, an executable chat template, loaders gated by trust_remote_code, sometimes its own runtime, and the ecosystem's default is to run all of it beside your credentials. So every new model starts on probation: a hardware-isolated microVM with its own guest kernel, a default-deny network, zero credentials, and promotion to the standard serving tier only when the observed record earns it.
Six days of nothing, and nothing noticed
A VPN tunnel died and downloads stopped for six days. Every container stayed running, every check passed, and the platform was entirely satisfied, because nothing was watching the thing that had actually failed.
The workbench gets a clone of the brain, never the keys
A browser IDE you can reach from the couch or a phone is a legitimate want, and the obvious build, hosting it where the keys already live, quietly parks the whole estate behind a browser tab. Price the stolen session first, then hand the new surface copies of everything and originals of nothing, so the worst case is a git revert instead of a lost fleet.
The best migrations delete more than they install
Nobody chose our network stack - it accreted one default at a time, and every component was one more thing to version, patch, debug and alert on. Landing on Cilium wasn't an adoption; it was a demolition schedule, and the stack left standing is smaller than the one we started with.
SSO is for people, not for machines
When an app grows a human face on an interface machines also depend on, one auth layer over everything either breaks the machines or quietly weakens the human door to let them through. The pattern that holds: a single identity-provider proxy in front of every human door, while machine paths keep their own scoped credentials - route by audience, not by app.
Powered off is a state, not an incident
Three of this fleet's six machines were upgraded, verified healthy, and then deliberately shut down the same night, and the books record a state, not a failure. When a node's entire existence is a rebuildable document, powered off becomes something you schedule, not something you fear.
Stage every lock before you turn one
Turning off anonymous pulls on the registry a fleet boots from is a change that only fails at the next boot, and a node that can't pull at boot may not come back to tell you. So the flip is split in time: the credential staged inert in every node's config, each node rebooted and proven with a real pull, and the door closed only when the last key has turned.
My servers don't have SSH, and that's the feature
Every box in this fleet runs an OS with no shell, no package manager, and no SSH daemon - the entire machine is an API with a declarative config. It sounds like giving up control. It's the opposite: you can't drift what you can't touch.
The bastion is a pattern, not a box
Admin credentials accumulate on whatever machine you happen to work from, until your daily driver is the real control plane of the fleet. A bastion fixes that, not by being special hardware, but by being the one place the keys live and the discipline that they never leave it.
An agent should never hold the key it's using
You want an AI agent that can actually do things - call APIs, touch real data. You also don't fully trust it. The resolution isn't a better sandbox; it's making sure the agent never possesses a credential at all. A broker holds the keys, mints short-lived capabilities, and gates every write behind a human. Here's the pattern.
A backup you haven't restored is a rumour
Backup jobs report success every night for years, and none of those green ticks proves the one thing backups exist for. The only receipt is a restore drill: files pulled from the repository, checked, and running. Here's the discipline, and the failure it caught.
Shipping this site: GitOps from a homelab to the public internet
How this portfolio is built and served - Astro to a container image, a self-hosted Gitea registry, Argo CD, and a Cloudflare Tunnel - with security as acceptance criteria, not polish.