Category: homelab

  • Netgear GS108E switch problem

    I had a weird issue today that I wouldn’t have known about if I didn’t have an over-engineered home network monitoring system. I’ve got a new GS108E managed switch, purchased in anticipation of connecting a NAS to the homelab – I want to have a solid 1Gb connection between the NAS and the servers, and…

  • Local host names with Pi-hole

    I run an instance of Pi-hole as a network-wide advert and surveillance blocker. It also has a setting to block individual domain which I use to force myself to really consider if 30 minutes of Reddit is a good idea when I should probably just be going to bed. As I’ve increased the number of…

  • ssh key login on VPS

    Due to potential brute force attacks, it’s a good idea to turn off password access via shh and instead rely on ssh keys. In this post, I’ll run through that process. Generating your key On a mac (or actually most *ix systems), your ssh keys live in the .ssh directory inside the users home directory.…

  • Save Proxmox password in Chrome

    When I installed Proxmox, I’d used a secure, and therefore absurdly long and complicated root password. I do use a password manager, but don’t have it integrated into Chrome, so it was buggging me having to find it and paste it in each time – why wasn’t Chrome offering to save it for me? Well,…

  • Saved by the qemu_guest_agent

    Literally an hour after I wrote the post about installing the qemu guest agent in a VM and explaining how it can be used to inject root level commands into a VM, I had use of it due to a mistake. I’d decided to add myself to the sudoers file. Since the last line in…

  • Proxmox – Qemu-guest-agent

    One of the strengths of having virtual machines (VMs) running inside a hypervisor like Proxmox is how they are isolated from each other and their host. This is a strength – if there is a problem with a particular VM nothing else should be affected by it. But this can also be a pain if…

  • SSH & the scary warning

    The first time you connect to a new server with ssh, it asks you something like: Once you’ve said yes, it adds the server ‘fingerprint’ to the known hosts file, then next time you ssh there, it feels safe – we know this server. But…. if you’re playing around with virtual machines. Loading them, booting…

  • Proxmox – Installing a Virtual Machine

    Installing your first virtual machine (VM) in the Proxmox hypervisor is pretty straightforward. This post runs through those steps using Proxmox 7.3. You need an operating system for your virtual machine, I’m going to use Ubuntu server in this example, but it could just as easily be Windows server, or regular windows, or one of…

  • Chinese Hackers Want to steal my Hello World container

    A smart thing to do after setting up a server on the internet, is to set up SSH keys and then turn passwords off for SSH. The reason for this is that scanning for open port 22 on IP addresses, then brute forcing password files on them is pretty much hacker 101. So if you…

  • Your own Aussie server on BinaryLane

    Listening to podcasts, I’ve been jealous of US developers who seem to have masses of $5/month VPS (Virtual Private Server) options. When I looked for similar Australian offerings a few months ago, they all seem to start at around $35 which is outside of my ‘have a play with something’ budget range. I could of…