Posts tagged Guide
PermalinkShowing 37 posts tagged Guide
- How to migrate AdGuard Home from a GL.iNet Flint 2 router to a Libre Sweet Potato
7 min read
I love the Flint 2 router from GL.iNet, but the built-in AdGuard Home cannot handle the amount of devices, blocklists and custom filter rules I need. It crashes when I try to search the query log or add new custom filters, so I decided to take my config and migrate it to a Sweet Potato, and those issues disappeared.
- How I used Astro-OG-Canvas to dynamically generate opengraph images for blog posts on my Astro site
6 min read
After putting it off for a long time, I finally decided I should dynamically generate OG images for my blog posts, since I don't use typically use a hero image or cover photos. After looking at satori with resvg, I decided that the Astro-OG-Canvas project is a much nicer fit. Here's how I set it up.
- How to setup the Search function in qBittorrent and add Search Plugins
3 min read
I used qBittorrent for literally years before realizing that qBittorrent had a built-in way to search for torrents. If you're as lost as I was, here's how I set it up so I could search for torrents right inside the web UI.
- Set up Plex remote access with a GL.iNet Flint 2 router
9 min read
Plex has built-in remote access that mostly just works, but you still have to configure your router to use it properly. Here is a quick guide on configuring a GL.iNet Flint 2 router, which probably also works with other GL.iNet routers using the same GUI.
- Using a Google TV streaming device with Tailscale to remotely stream my Plex library while on vacation
10 min read
I have a Plex Pass subscription, but unfortunately Plex's built-in remote access won't work behind CGNAT, so I use Tailscale to securely access my Plex library and entire home network when I'm not home. Aside from streaming music or video from my phone or tablet at work, I've also started taking a Google TV stick on vacation with me, and with the Tailscale and Plex apps I can stream my library of movies, TV shows and music from anywhere that has a TV and Wi-Fi.
- How to upgrade from Debian 12 Bookworm to Debian 13 Trixie
4 min read
My old Dell Optiplex has been a great desktop PC for just minimal interneting and coding. I've been running Debian 12 Bookworm on it since it became available. Now that Debian 13 Trixie is available I upgraded to it, and it was a smooth and painless transition. Here's the process.
- How to bypass the Plex Pass and Remote Watch Pass requirements for Plex remote access by using Tailscale
12 min read
Beginning April 29th, 2025 the pricing for Plex Pass increased at the same time that remote access got paywalled behind it. Plex no longer allows streaming your own content outside of your home network without paying for Plex Pass, or the new Remote Watch Pass. You can bypass these paywalls, at least for now, by using Tailscale.
- Setting up a reverse proxy for HTTPS with a custom domain using Nginx Proxy Manager, AdGuard Home and Cloudflare
12 min read
I've used a reverse proxy to access my self-hosted apps and services for years, and used Pi-Hole as my home network DNS for even longer, but recently switched to AdGuard Home. That meant redoing all my DNS records within AdGuard so I could get my reverse proxy back up and running, and I decided to write down the steps I took. When done, we'll be able to access our apps and services through a custom domain, with unique sub-domains for each app or service, with full HTTPS and accessible only locally.
- How to factory restore a ZimaBoard
4 min read
I've recently been playing around with ZimaBoard, a single board server running Debian and CasaOS. It's a cool little machine, but I accidentally broke something and had to factory reset. It's not a simple option in a some settings menu, the process involves flashing an image on the ZimaBoard, so I wrote down the steps I took.
- Setting up a reverse proxy for HTTPS with a custom domain using Nginx Proxy Manager, Pi-Hole and Cloudflare
14 min read
I've used a reverse proxy to access my self-hosted apps and services for years, but I recently re-did everything from scratch and decided to write it down. When done, you'll be able to access your apps and services through a custom domain, with unique sub-domains for each app or service, with full HTTPS and accessible only locally.
- How to use Pi-hole from anywhere with Tailscale
7 min read
Tailscale is my new homelab toy. I've been using it to access my media on the go, to connect to a VPS for sharing my Plex library with family, and now for on-the-go adblocking on my phone, tablet and laptop -- here's how.
- How to expose Plex to share your library with others from behind CGNAT using Tailscale and a free Oracle Cloud instance
23 min read
I wrote before about sharing my Plex library via Cloudflare Tunnel, but that is technically against their TOS and liable to get your account in trouble. So I switched to using a free-tier Oracle VM, securely connecting it to my home network via Tailscale, and exposing Plex via reverse proxy on the VM. It works like a charm!
- How to expose Plex to share your library with others from behind CGNAT with Cloudflare Tunnel
14 min read
Exposing Plex to share your library with other users normally involves port forwarding from the router, which is very insecure and not recommended. If your home network is behind CGNAT - very common with most ISPs nowadays -- you can't even port forward if you wanted to. Here's how I did it in a fairly secure way that limits access by using Cloudflare.
- Comprehensive guide to setting up Tailscale to securely access your home network from anywhere
16 min read
Accessing self-hosted services from outside the home can be a challenge, especially when dealing with CGNAT and having to forward ports from the router. It can be complex to manage and potentially dangerous to your home network's privacy and security if not done right, but Tailscale makes it easy to set up encrypted peer-to-peer connections between devices across different networks. In this guide I will explain how I use Tailscale as a VPN for secure remote access to my home network.
- Setup Watchtower to auto-update Docker containers with notifications
7 min read
I'm running almost 30 containers on my home server at this point, and I'm extremely lazy when it comes to updating them. Watchtower is a lightweight set-it-and-forget-it solution to auto-updating containers, and it even has built-in notifications. Here's how to set it up using either Pushover or Discord.
- Setup X-plore File Manager on Android to transfer files to an SMB share
4 min read
I've wrote before about file managers for Android before, recently I found X-plore which makes it very easy to transfer files back and forth between Android and SMB network shares, once you understand how the UI works. Here's to connect X-plore to an SMB network share so you can transfer files between devices.
- Using MergerFS to combine multiple hard drives into one unified media storage
5 min read
My situation was simple -- my server's media storage was filling up and I wanted to add more drives, but without having to keep track of which drive specific files were for Plex. How to pool multiple hard drives together when they're all different brands, models and capacities? Enter mergerfs, an open source union filesystem that essentially merges multiple drives into one mount point.
- Set up Home Assistant Supervised on a Libre Computer Sweet Potato SBC
4 min read
Home Assistant is an open source home automation solution that gives you local control over your smart home. It can also be run on Libre Computer's boards, but I ran into some issues following the official instructions from Libre, so here's how I got it working.
- Complete guide to self-hosting a website through Cloudflare Tunnel
11 min read
Self-hosting a static web blog has never been easier thanks to Cloudflare Tunnel. In this guide I explain how to expose a static website self-hosted on a Linux server inside my home network to the internet using Nginx and Cloudflare Tunnel, and securing it with various other free Cloudflare services.
- Quick guide to setting up SMB shares
3 min read
Setting up SMB shares is fairly easy, but I do it so infrequently I often forget the steps and need to look them up anyway. So I made myself two sets of smb config files for quickly setting up shares, either public or with a login required.
- Setup a Cloudflare Tunnel to securely access self-hosted apps with a domain from outside the home network
10 min read
Cloudflare Tunnels have been around for a few years and are well regarded alternatives for VPNs or port-forwarding on a router. They are often used to expose access to self-hosted apps from outside the local network with minimal config or hassle. Here's how it's done.
- Set up a reverse proxy for OpenMediaVault, Plex and Navidrome using Nginx Proxy Manager and Pi-Hole
7 min read
My scenario was simple: I wanted to access the web GUIs of OpenMediaVault, Plex and Navidrome via a URL like plex.home.arpa without having to remember IPs and ports, inside my home network only and without the need for SSL/HTTPS. Nothing fancy, nothing accessible from outside my house. Here's how I did that with Nginx Proxy Manager as the reverse proxy and Pi-Hole as the DNS.
- Set up PhotoSync app to backup photos from your phone to an SMB share on your home server
3 min read
Google Photos began limiting free storage back in 2021, limiting you to 15 GB of storage when uploading photos in their original size uncompressed. Rather than wait and see if I hit the cap, I decided to try replacing Google Photos with a self-hosted solution. Here's how I did it.
- How to use Solid Explorer app to access SMB network shares from an Android device
5 min read
There are many File Managers/File Explorers on the Google Play Store, but I wanted to easily access the Samba share on my server while on my home network. Solid Explorer is the solution I went with and it works well, so here is a quick guide to setting it up.
- How to run self-hosted FileBrowser in Docker
2 min read
FileBrowser is a self-hosted file manager for a specified directory in a Linux machine that lets you upload, download, move, copy, create, delete, rename, and edit your files in a nice web interface through your browser. Here's a quick guide to setting it up in Docker.
- How to generate a GPG key and use it to sign git commits
3 min read
Generating and using a GPG key is not difficult, but every time I need to remember how to do it to sign my commits from a new machine, I need to go through several pages of explanation on GitHub. So I made myself a terse and concise one-page quick guide, here it is.
- Setup self-hosted Jellyfin Media Server in Docker
5 min read
Plex is a popular media server for self-hosting, but it's not open source and recently locked the ability to remotely stream your own content behind a paywall, so one cannot be blamed for seeking an alternative to Plex. Jellyfin is a free and open source self-hosted media server that just might be what you're looking for.
- Setup self-hosted Plex Media Server in Docker
3 min read
Plex Media Server is one of the most popular services to self-host since serves your personal media library -- videos, music and even photos -- with a nice Netflix-like UI. Though you can install and run it bare-metal, the most common and easiest way is in a Docker container. Here's how.
- How to format and/or partition disks in Linux
2 min read
Just a quick guide to format and partition hard drives in Linux command line that I wrote for myself a long time ago, and recently had to reference again.
- Set up Pi-Hole for network-wide ad blocking and Unbound for recursive DNS (Updated for Pi-Hole v6)
20 min read
Besides just using a browser extension for ad blocking, I've been using Pi-Hole for years to prevent all devices on my network from getting ads, and stopping smart home devices from phoning home for telemetry and tracking. Pi-Hole will run on almost anything that can run Linux, is very easy to set up, and super effective with the right blocklists.
- Customizing the Windows Terminal command prompt with Oh-My-Posh
3 min read
While I use Zsh with Oh-My-Zsh for making my Linux terminal pretty, it's not available for Windows. Luckily it's brother from another mother Oh-My-Posh basically does the same thing for Windows Terminal and PowerShell.
- Setting up a Docker container stack with Docker Compose
2 min read
I've been running a bunch of services on my home server in docker containers for a few years now. It's quick and easy to set up once you get used to it. Here's a quick and dirty guide to installing Docker and Docker Compose, and getting several containers up and running.
- Quick guide to set up Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh with essential plugins and a theme
3 min read
I've been getting more and more comfortable working on the command line in Linux, and looked into ways to pretty it up and make it more user friendly. Enter Zsh, an alternative to Bash shell, and the Oh-My-Zsh framework used to customize the terminal experience to your heart's content. Here's my basic set up.
- Setup SSH authentication to push to Github
5 min read
Setting up SSH keys and pushing to GitHub without needing to enter a username and password has always been a good practice, but now that GitHub is deprecating basic username and password authentication, it's past time to get this set up if you haven't already. It's pretty simple and only takes a few minutes, here's the quick and dirty instructions.
- Rsync - A Quick Guide
5 min read
Rsync is a very handy tool for doing high-speed file transfers between Linux hosts over a local network or remote hosts on the internet, such as EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services. You can pass options to Rsync to do things like recursive transfer (all files and sub-directories within the source directory are also transferred), ignore existing or newer files at the destination, and more.
- How to generate an SSH key pair
4 min read
Secure Shell is a protocol for securely connecting from one computer to another. As a web developer, you will probably end up using SSH a lot, and even if you don't it's a handy skill to have. Here's a quick guide on how to generate SSH keys and copy them to other machines.
- Sideload the DirecTV Stream app on Sony Bravia TV with Android TV
4 min read
I have a Sony Bravia 4K TV and it is awesome. It has built-in Android TV so you can use Android apps on your TV, but not every app is available, and one of those is DirecTV Stream -- necessary to view live TV from my cable provider, AT&T, without need for a separate set-top box. So here's how to sideload the DirecTV Stream app on Sony Bravia TVs without using the Google Play Store.