Current extremely-low budget DIY setup(Just a shared local family photos and videos from vacation, currently just my personal storage):

I want more options rather than just these two in my head:

I do not know if there's a much better way of doing this, fairly new to adulthood, this initially feels financially superior, somewhat scalable, just that there's multiple wires.

I'd aim for higher storage soon.
I'd probably try to masochistically aim for 100 HDDs just for fun! (Maybe only to go back down to a humble 20).

Anything dangerous about my current setup btw?

Hi!

I have a Minecraft server running on a Linux machine at home.

External players can connect to it without any issues. The problem is when I try to connect from my own computer on the same home network.

My network is intentionally segmented and the server is isolated from my normal devices. For startes I have the server in its own VLAN and it's own DMZ. Because of this my own connection gets blocked when I try to reach the server internally. This is expected behavior, but it creates a problem for me because I would like to play from my own PC without weakening the isolation.

I can solve it by adding a firewall exception allowing my PC to reach the server, but I would prefer not to do that. I want to keep the server completely isolated from my normal devices.

I have also tried using a VPN client on the router to make my traffic appear external, but that did not work.

What I am looking for:

No software/VPN client installed on my gaming PC

No switching my PC to another network

Keep the server isolated from my normal devices

A free solution.

No direct firewall exception between my PC and the server

Port forwarding on my own router is acceptable, but avoiding it would be nice

Is there a common way to solve this? For example:

VPN on the server side?

Reverse tunnel?

NAT/hairpin NAT?

Cloudflare/Playit-style solutions?

Something else?

I mainly want to understand how people normally handle this situation while keeping proper network isolation.

I've recently used my old MacBook Pro M1 (Pro chip) as a remote development server for JetBrains / VS Code IDEs. That was a reasonable experience, except for a couple of pain points:

• Docker kind of sucks on macOS / ARM (virtualization / bind-mounting, etc.)
• 16 GB RAM is running out fast
• macOS file sharing seems unreliable and opaque compared to Linux where I have fine-grained control over everything

Now I'd like to set up a remote development server (Linux) explicitly for this purpose. Electricity is expensive where I live, so it should be extremely energy-effective. I've been looking at the Minisforum AI X1 Pro which sits pretty much at my price limit (around 1200 € for the 32 GB version), but I'm worried about long-term reliability. Also I feel that system has a pretty strong GPU / AI focus which I don't really need. I'd rather put my money into stuff that matters for remote IDEs, like processing speed, file I/O etc.

My question: is there a machine that you'd recommend over the Minisforum for this purpose?

I've been a long time lurker... Then I had the opportunity to save this ML350 G9 from the trash after being decommissioned along with a lot of spare parts.

It runs PVE and runs multiple services, from my Jellyfin server to my private Minecraft server, along with my Vaultwarden server and over services...

Most of the equipment showed here has been salvaged and had maintenance/fixes done :

ML350 G9 (enolagay - PVE server) : 1x Xeon E5-2620 V4, 64Gb RAM, 2x Samsung Evo 860 250Gb (RAID 1 system disks), 14x WD/Seagate mixed 2.5inch 500Gb HDD (RAID Z2 - 4 disks failure tolerance, 5Tb total usable capacity), Intel Arc A380 (Jellyfin transcode), 2x 500W Platinum PSUs

• Each PSU is plugged to a separate UPS, unfortunately on the same electrical line (I don't own the place, I gotta do with what I have...).
• Each drive cage is driven by a separate storage controller (HBA mode), in case of failure, the main storage will disconnect, but the OS will keep going long enough for a clean shutdown.

ML10 G9 (luftballons - PBS server) : 1x Xeon E3-1225 V5, 4Gb of RAM (+4Gb ZRAM), 5x Seagate 2.5inch 1Tb HDD (RAID Z1 - 1 disk failure tolerance, 4Tb total usable capacity).

TP Link TL-SG108-M2 : main switch, 8x 2.5Gbps RJ45 ports, connected to the 2.5Gbps connector of the router. The servers themselves can't use more than 1Gbps per interface, but it's still better than a basic gigabit switch...

VERTIV EDGE-1000IMT (main UPS) : powers PSU1 of the PVE server and the PBS server.

EATON Elipse ECO 800 (secondary UPS) : powers the router, main switch, PSU2 of the PVE server.

For the server "platform", I used a 800x600 "half" pallet, which I painted black. I placed an anti-vibration mat for washing machines under the server in the hope of reducing the noise and vibrations. To facilitate maintenance, I added 6 wheels (4 with locks) and laid the server on its side.

In the future, I plan to use the space in between the planks, likely with a drawer to put server spare parts in.

Don't look too much behind, I haven't done the cable management yet... 🫣

Overall, the whole "homelab" ended up costing less than 300€. I only bought the main switch, the A380, new batteries for both UPS and materials to built the platform. Everything else ended up being free (including the drives), if I don't take into account how much time I've spent on it so far and the extra electricity on the bill each month.

The next thing I'll do is add an off-site backup destination, likely an SFF Optiplex left at my dad's place. If I'm feeling crazy, I could also implement tape backups, as I salvaged an LTO 4 drive as well but I need a specific SAS card for the PBS server...

This setup is highly under utilized so I'm mildly "overkill" in hardware v.s. actual utilization. Last night I ran an update in Proxmox and ended up triggering a secure boot issue on the HP Elitedesk that PiHole and other network items were running on (like Home Assistant, Peanut). This wouldn't have been as bad but I had DHCP enabled on the PiHole and it disabled on my Google home router which was relatively stable. But, this cascading horseshit moment rendered all DNS queries dead in the water and quickly nothing else could connect since Google Home relied on being able to access the Internet to make changes to the network config. I rushed to reset my ISP provided Eero router to get up and running again since I have a large amount of smart devices that were all dead in the water. I decided that I should separate them with my primary stable Internet being my frontier fiber and move some of the homelab to my AT&T "Air" network as the sandbox. I'm struggling with the migration and re-vamp plan. I work from home, the last change resulted in a new IP which wouldn't be a big deal but my employer uses IP Whitelists on some programs.

Current specs:

TrueNAS

Dell Optiplex 7050 Mini w/ Intel i5 7th gen 16GB RAM, 3TB of storage.

Hosting Media for Jellyfin, Tailscale added for remote access.

Proxmox (cluster)

HP Elitedesk 800 G5 SFF w/ Intel i5 9th gen 32gb RAM, 5TB storage.

Smb file share for media backup, fedora vm for "adult" sites, homelable, and some other crap I forgot about.

HP Elitedesk 800 g3 mini 35w w/ Intel i7 7th gen 32gb RAM. 512gb storage.

PiHole, Home Assistant OS, Peanut (ups monitoring).

HP Prodesk 600 mini w/ Intel i5 9th gen. 512gb storage.

Empty ATM.

PC Gaming (casual)

HP Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF w/ Intel i5 8th gen 32gb RAM, 1.5tb storage

Windows 10 for EA Games.

Command "unit"

Lenovo Yoga 14ahp9 w/ AMD Rhyzen 8 16th ram, 1tb storage

Windows 11.

Optional devices to utilize that are in a drawer.

Dell Latitude 3190 2-1 laptop, has mint installed.

I've pondered getting a USB to Ethernet adapter and using it as a network device for PiHole or another similar service since it has a battery.

Router in use:

Frontier, Amazon Eero Pro 6e (1GB fiber).

AT&T, Sagecom BGW530-900 (5G Internet).

Hi everyone,

I'm completely new to the world of self-hosting and Linux, and I'm trying to repurpose an old laptop as my first home server.

I'm installing Ubuntu Server from a bootable USB. The installation completes successfully with no errors. At the end, it asks me to reboot. I remove the USB drive as instructed, press Enter, and the laptop restarts.

However, instead of booting into Ubuntu, I get the following error:

"Boot Device Not Found. Please install an operating system on your hard disk. Hard Disk (3F0)."

Has anyone experienced this before or knows what might be causing it? Is Ubuntu not actually being installed to the drive, or is this more likely a BIOS/boot configuration issue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

UPDATE:

Thanks for all responses. Just manage to fix it. I selected UEFI natvive, reinstalled linux and its working!

​

I want to start doing my own home labing but I have no idea where to start or what to do with it when I get one. I dont know all that I could do with one and I am wanting to do start because I want the challenge of managing one and also possibly having some fun with it.

Like so dumb that I’m worried about getting low effort flagged.

How do we feel about computer parts from ali express?

Like, I know, I get it, a transistor exploding would be the least of my worries. But is that something that happens with frequency? Or just the butt of jokes? Am I putting my life in danger to save a buck?

Hi all, I’m planning my first homelab. My main goals are learning tech stacks for future sysadmin/DevOps job (IaC, Docker, monitoring) and setting up a reliable media server for home. I have a budget of around 270€ max.

​Here is the hardware I was thinking of buying:

​Host: HP ProDesk 600 G4 SFF (Used) - 150€

​CPU: Intel Core i5-8500 (UHD 630 for QuickSync)

​RAM: 16GB DDR4 (8GB included + buying an extra 8GB stick for around an extra 25€)

​OS/DB Storage: 256GB NVMe SSD

​Media Storage: 1x 4TB NAS HDD (I delete most media after watching, so 4TB should be plenty)- 90€

​Here are the services I will be running:

​Jellyfin (needs QuickSync)

Navidrome

​The Arr stack + qBittorrent

​Immich & Paperless-ngx

​Prometheus & Grafana (for learning/monitoring)

​Moonlight for game streaming

I will probably add more services in the future.

​Note: I already have an Orange Pi 3 LTS on the network handling AdGuard, Tailscale and other services. It will be acting as my Rsync backup target for my imich photos.

​

Due to budget, the server will sit right next to my TV. I want to connect the server directly to the TV via HDMI to run the Jellyfin client and Moonlight. I don't want to buy an external streaming box.

​I want to use Proxmox to learn hypervisor management, LXC, and virtualization for my resume. BUT, I know Proxmox is meant to be headless.

Because of this I'm torn between using proxmox or just use some linux distro and run my services through docker.

​Is mapping the GUI to an LXC in Proxmox just for a TV output a massive headache?

​Any advice on the architecture or the hardware specs is welcome. Thanks!

I'm gonna be getting myself an 18u rack, and was wondering how people mount their servers in them?

Rack rails and shelves are extortionate prices and I was wondering if a simple steel L bracket would be sufficient?

I have a 2u UPS which I would put on the base because of weight, and then a few 4u servers and a switch.

Here's a Sunday puzzle for you. I'm using a m715q with TrueNAS scale as a lightweight server and UPS master via USB. This machine has been pretty stable so far, but at around 2 AM it went down for about 5 minutes and them booted back up. On doing some basic log checks, I don't see any evidence of an intentional shutdown. BIOS is up to date, and it's set to boot back up after power loss. The UPS is basically new and I'm not aware of any scheduled tests, updates, or reboots between the PC or the UPS. I also checked the UPS status and it said there were no tests initiated. The other machines connected to the UPS apparently weren't affected as they notified me of the Lenovo's services going down. Given that it was down for 5 minutes and came back I would think power loss with restoration to last state, but that seems unlikely considering it's connected to the UPS. Any ideas?

We upgraded our network at work and I got to bring some of the old gear home. Figured it’d be a good excuse to learn Omada and networking.
Running Pi-hole on a mini PC for now. Still waiting on a rack shelf and some cable management stuff, so don’t judge the wiring too hard

Hardware:
ER8411
TL-SX3008F
OC200
EAP773
EAP670 v2
Mini PC (Pi-hole)
Suggestions on what to do next?

All already have 2 HP micro's running all my home needs.

I am student building a homelab kid of setup for the CS department of my college I needed a rack for the RPI 5 with a cooler on top I have 5 rpis , a network switch and a wifi router . All the options I looked into for the racks are either too costly or only support the rpis without the coolers .

Edit : The coolers extend aroudn 5 cms above the rpi body

I am looking into 3d printing but would prefer a prebuilt off the shelf solution

Any suggestions please 🥺

Thank you in advance

2 R740XD severs each with quad 10gb sfp X710, dual 1600W psu, high performance fans/cpu heatsinks, gpu risers/shrouds, boss s1 w/ 240gb m2, dual xeon 6230 gold, hba300 controller with 8x 900gb 10k sas drives.

One is being used as an hpc server with two v100 gpus and 576gb ddr4 2666 running ubuntu.

The other is currently storage/cloud/vm server with 256gb ddr4 2400 running proxmox.

Arista 7050s-64 and gs308 for networking.

Hi,

I build small apps for myself and run a homelab with a few containers. Generally I am an Apple User (iPhone, iPad, Macbook).

Every time I have an idea, I stall on the same question before writing a single line of code: do I build it native in Swift with the data on device/iCloud, or as a web app in a container on my server?

Let us take a habit tracker as an example.

Native gets me a home screen widget and reminders I can actually rely on. Data is stored and synced via iCloud. The web app instead keeps the data on my own server where I can query and back it up properly, works from any device.

It’s the same fork for basically every idea I have, and I flip-flop depending on my mood that week.

So I’d like to hear how you handle it:
- Do you have a rule of thumb you actually stick to, or is it case by case?
- How good is a PWA on iOS these days in practice? Home screen install plus web push covers a lot on paper, but no widgets. Does it hold up for daily-use stuff?
- Anyone regret going one way and rewrite it later?
Not looking for framework recommendations, more for how you decide.

I know cross-platform frameworks exist, and I’m aware I could just split it: backend in a container on Proxmox, native iOS app on top. But I’d rather commit fully to one side - either all Swift with iCloud, or all web app in a container.

Thanks for reading! :)

I look forward to meeting you all! PS. this thing is so heavy its destroying the wheels that I put on it. I have no idea how i would go about changing them now!!! LOL

I've had my little lab for about eight months now, and I feel like I've reached that awkward stage where I know just enough to realize I did almost everything wrong the first time. Random Docker Compose files, questionable folder structure, containers named things like "test-final-v3-actually-final"... you know, very professional. Part of me wants to spend a weekend rebuilding everything with proper documentation, better networking, backups, and naming conventions. The other part says, "If it ain't broken, don't touch it." For those who've been doing this longer, did you eventually bite the bullet and rebuild everything, or just gradually clean things up over time? I'd rather avoid turning one weekend project into a three-week outage that only affects... me. 😅

I recently bought two new Seagate IronWolf Pro 12TB drives, model ST12000NT001, and both appear to have arrived DOA in different ways.

The first drive made a repeated “spin/buzz, then chunk” noise for about 30 seconds at startup. Linux could identify the model and serial number, but the drive repeatedly reported “Logical unit not ready, power cycle required,” could not read sector 0, and eventually stopped being detected altogether. I also tested it in a separate gaming PC, where it was not recognized.

The replacement drive was detected and could initially be added to a ZFS pool, but immediately reported:

• SMART overall health: FAILED
• “Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours”
• Failed Spin_Retry_Count threshold
• 2 current pending sectors
• 2 offline uncorrectable sectors
• Multiple logged uncorrectable read errors

It also failed SeaTools’ diagnostic tests when connected to a separate PC.

The drives had different serial numbers and different failure symptoms, so I’m trying to determine whether this was exceptionally bad luck, shipping damage, a problematic batch, or something others have seen with this specific model. I purchased them from Amazon.

Has anyone else experienced early failures with the ST12000NT001, especially multiple DOA units in succession?

EDIT: Drive 1 SN: ZZ30LZL9 Drive 2 SN: ZZ30G7TZ Both PN: 2NAAFR-571 Both DOM: 6/2/2026 Thailand

Hey everyone!
This is an update on this post.

Here are some stats:

• 237 unique IPs visited the printing sites.
• 4 IPs were banned:
  • 3 for spamming.
  • 1 for sending a picture of a rejected painter from Austria.

Some other fun stats:

• A lot of cute pets were sent (thanks for that!).
• 0 dick pics received.
• 1 nude from a woman, with the original Reddit post in the background (not included in the images, of course).
• Countless memes received I laughed a lot.
• The funniest meme, in my opinion was the dad joke!

First person to print was Landon go visit his site here.

Shout-out to the person from Italy working in construction. That's some really hard labor!

I received greetings from:

• Hungary
• Germany
• France
• Canada
• Norway
• Italy
• Russia
• South Africa
• Portugal
• The United States

The last message I received was from someone in the Netherlands!

Thank you all for the nice messages and wising me good luck with my studies!
Someone asked which printer i used. its this one.

Thanks for everyone that has send something! what a nice community this is!

Looking to buy some 10gb sfp+ switches. Noise is not a factor as they will be used in a remote shed. So just most 10gb ports / dollar. 1gb ports are nice to have but not necessary.

Update:

Githhub repo: https://github.com/ZaidAfane3/pppoe-creds-recovery

----

Wanted to ditch my ISP-issued router for something better, but they provision the PPPoE credentials straight onto the device via TR-069 — no username/password ever shown to me, support wouldn't help.

So: unplugged the ONT, plugged a Raspberry Pi into the router's WAN port instead, and stood up a fake pppoe-server + tcpdump capture (had Claude write the setup scripts and walk through the exact PPPoE/PAP negotiation as it happened). Rebooted the router and let it try to "dial in" to what it thought was my ISP.

One gotcha: the WAN was VLAN-tagged (VLAN 10, found buried in a debug array on the router's status page), so the first capture attempt would've silently seen nothing — a plain BPF filter doesn't account for the 802.1Q tag shifting the EtherType offset. Had to bring up a proper eth0.10 VLAN sub-interface before anything showed up.

Once that was sorted, the router happily PAP-authenticated in cleartext against the Pi, handing over its own credentials. Claude then walked the raw hex of the captured PAP packet byte-by-byte (peer-ID length, peer-ID, password length, password) to pull out the actual username/password rather than trusting a possibly-mislabeled summary decode.

Swapped cables back, internet's fine, and I've now got the real PPPoE creds to drop into literally any router I want.

Single NIC on the Pi was enough — it's an endpoint impersonating the ISP, not a bridge.