It’s been a few months since my last update as per usual! I try not to blog for the sake of it so I wait until I have a few things of value to update on.
External Backups#
I’ve been using Restic on my remote server to backup Forgejo repos for a while now so finally decided to roll it out to my homelab for Immich backups. Immich has some really nice backup and restore documentation and everything you need to backup its nicely stored in one folder (if you have a fairly default installation). Instead of using Restic cli I decided to look into a GUI solution in the form of Backrest, after a few days of testing it out I’m really impressed with it, it takes a lot of the hassle out of configure restic through the CLI. I like how to UI is set up into two distinct areas - plans and repos. I’d assumed in Restic you had one “plan” per repo but this makes it a lot clearer that you can backup multiple “things” to one repo which is awesome. For storage I’m using Backblaze B2, another service I’m not super familiar with but their storage seems pretty cheap and my 45gb Immich instance shouldn’t cost me too much per month and gives me a sense of security.
My next task is to actually test what a restore looks like. This will most likely be a migration to an external server which I’m then going to open up to the rest of my family.
Resound#
If you’ve come from my mastodon feed then you saw the post being automatically posted by my new CLI tool called Resound. It’s a go app that takes an RSS feed and Mastodon client and posts the last item to your feed. It does duplication checking and has a template that you can configure the content of the toot with. It was a really nice little project which I’m still building on. None of it was vibe coded either which was really nice, I love writing code and being able to do it without the assistance of AI.
This is the first thing I’ve built from scratch in a long while and it also uses 100% self hosted CI/CD pipelines.
ForgeJo Mobile Web UI#
Shout out the mobile web ui in ForgeJo, I’ve been using it on the go to review automated PRs and merge them in when I’m satisfied with the build output. It’s been really good to have a tool that works as you expect it and allows you to do stuff like this on the go.
Hetzner Price Increases#
Hetzner have upped their prices by 30-40% which sucks. My external server bill is pretty small (<20 Euros a month) but I have plans to increase the number of servers and existing servers power in the future.
My forgejo server needs more power, well the runners do. Building containers is taking longer than I would like. If I don’t up the server specs I could run the runners on other hardware I own but there’s networking issues with that (see Tailscale).
I need a new isolated server for a family Immich instance. I’m not sure what this will look like at the moment but it’s likely to cost a fair bit in storage space.
Tailscale#
I’ve been holding off using Tailscale for a while now, I like all my tools to be self hosted where possible but Tailscale solves a problem I’ve had for a long while now and I should probably spend a bit of time with it. I’ve also looked at Headscale which I’d be happy to selfhost but not until I’m comfortable with how Tailscale works, networking has never been one of my strengths.
That’s about it for this months/quarters homelab update. If your interested in more of these types of posts I have a category with all my updates in here.
I’m also on the look out for new monitors, my LG Ultragear Piece of Shit (tm) is finally getting on my nerves (burn in and random turn offs). I need 2 hybrid gaming/office monitors so if you have any suggestions please get in touch.