Now try migrating all your docker containers to podman.
Just did that last weekend. Nothing to do anymore. 😢
Did you do Quadlets?
Yes of course. Had to spend a couple of hours fixing permission related issues.
But did you run them as rootful or the intended rootless way.
Rootless. The docker containers were rootful, hence the permission struggles.
I had problems getting apps with multiple containers working in quadlets (definitely a knowledge issue on my part, but didn’t feel the time learning it was beneficial, but will probably revisit during kubernetes learning) so went back to podman with docker compose.
I think it’s kinda better using quadlets, because I wrote some custom scripts, and quadlets made the process better. But podman compose is probably file too.
And then migrate all your podman containers to proxmox
Don’t encourage me.
And then try turning on SELinux!
It’s not that difficult to get SELinux working with podman quadlets, especially if you run things rootless. I have a kerberized service account for each application I host and my quadlets are configured to run under those. I very rarely encounter applications that simoky can’t be run rootless but I usually can find an adequate alternative. I think right now the only thing that runs as root is one of the talk or collabora containers in my nextcloud stack. No selinux issues either.
I use podman-compose with system accounts and I don’t have a ton of issues. The biggest one is that I can’t seem to get bluetooth and pip working on Home Assistant at the same time. Most of the servers I manage have SELinux and it works fine as long as I use
:z/:Zwith bind mounts.A few years ago, I set up a VPS for my friend’s business; at the time, I didn’t know how to work with SELinux so I just turned it off. I tried to flip it back on, and it somehow bricked the system. We had to restore from a backup. Since then, I’ve been afraid to enable it on my flagship homelab server.
are you sure it really bricked it? when turning it on, on next boot it needs to go over all the files and retag them or something like that, and it can take a significant amount of time
Honestly, I don’t know what happened, but it was unreachable via SSH and the web console. There shouldn’t have been a ton of files to tag since it was an Almalinux system that started with SELinux enabled, and all we added was a container app or two.
that started with SELinux enabled
that does not matter, it needs to go over all of them. I don’t know how long it takes with SSD, but with HDD it can take a half an hour or more, with a mostly base system. and the kernel starts doing this very early, when not even systemd or other processes are running, so no ssh, but web console should have been working to see what its doing
I set my homelab up on Bazzite immutable with podman and SELinux. It took a while to work everything out and have it boot up into a valid state hahaha
Any reason you chose Bazzite for your homelab distro? First I’ve heard of someone doing that!
At the start I just wanted a desktop machine that runs Steam through sunshine/moonlight so hardware support and gaming stuff such was very important.
My homelab used to run on my laptop when it could all fit within a couple 100s of GB and I was the only user but moving it was tricky. Since I’m a programmer I’m not afraid of this stuff so I just spent the hours to figure out one problem at a time.
I ended up figuring out adding HDD whitelist in SELinux, make it accessible in podman, manually edit fstab because tools didn’t work, systemd service for startup, logging in automatically where I already forgot everything and would have not had to do any of this on a bog standard Ubuntu server.
Respect! I too often take it for granted that it’s a privilege for my gaming rig and my homelab server to be separate boxes.
My server is Almalinux, my laptop is Mint, and my gaming rig is Nobara. But if I had to consolidate everything in to one machine, I’d pick Nobara.
I came to the same conclusion, Nobara for would have been best.
Wouldn’t an immutable OS be overall a pretty good idea for a stable server?
Good for stability, bad for flexibility for when the homelab grows more complex.
I honestly don’t know a ton about immutable distros other than that they let you front-load some difficulty in getting things set up in exchange for making it harder to break. I was just surprised that the distro of choice was Bazzite, since its target audience seems to be gamers.
The rare moment when everything actually works. 😄
Quick! Break something!
Wreck it Ralph!!
Maybe try this…
That’s not a homelab, that’s a home server.
Living the good life
Started running unmanic on my plex library to save hard drive space since apparently the powers that be don’t want us to even own hard drives anymore. So far it’s going great, it’ll probably take weeks since I don’t have a gpu hooked up to it
Do you have a spinning fish display in front of your homelab server, right? We all know the spinning fish improves performance and security, it is a indispensable part of homelabbing
J O E L
Backups. You’re forgetting them.
Pro tip: If you’re using openwrt or other managed network components don’t forget to automatically back those up too. I almost had to reset my openwrt router and having to reconfigure that from scratch sucks.
Going into spring/summer that’s ideal, I wanna go places do things. Mid winter, I’m feature creeping till something breaks.
Can’t believe nobody here mentioned nixOS so far? How about moving all of your configs in a flake and manage all of your systems with it?
I already have Ansible to manage my system and I like to have the same base between my pc and my server build muscle memory.
If I was managing a pc fleet I would consider NixOS, but I don’t see the appeal right now.
Okay, but why not create more work for yourself by rebuilding everything from scratch?
I made a git repo and started putting all of my dot files in a Stow and then I forgot why I was doing it in the first place.
So that when setting up a new system, you can migrate all your user configuration easily, while also version-controlling it.
git commit --message 'So that when setting up a new system, you can migrate all your user configuration easily, while also version-controlling it.'
I should do some breaking network changes… While tunneled in.
“Yes, while connected to my wireguard server through port 123 here from my Chinese office, I should probably try to upgrade the wireguard server. That’s a great idea!”
Ask me how I know.
I stopped the tailscale service…
… while ssh’d through the tailscale interface.
Luckily, it was my home server and I had to drive there anyway.
OP, totally understand, but this is a level of success with your homelab. Nothing needs fiddling with. Now, there is a whole Awesome Self Hosted list you could deploy on a non-production server and run that through the paces.
You have remote power management set up for the systems in your homelab, right? A server set up that you can reach to power-cycle other servers, so that if they wedge in some unusable state and you can’t be physically there, you can still reboot them? A managed/smart PDU or something like that? Something like one of these guys?
Oh. You don’t. Well, that’s probably okay. I mean, nothing will probably go wrong and render a device in need of being forcibly rebooted when you’re physically away from home.
Oh. You don’t. Well, that’s probably okay. I mean, nothing will probably go wrong and render a device in need of being forcibly rebooted when you’re physically away from home.
*furiously adds a new item to the TODO list*
If you do have the smart PSU and power management server you probably also went down the rabbit hole of scripting the power cycling, right? Maybe made that server hardened against power loss disk corruption so it can be run until UPS battery exhaustion.
What if there is a power outage and NUT shuts everything down? Would be nice to have everything brought back up in an orderly way when power returns. Without manual intervention. But keeping you informed via logging and push notifications.
I built an 8 outlet version of those with relays and wall outlets for… a lot less.
Does a $12 Shelly plug count?
if you can cycle your home assistant with the shelly plug whilst your home assistant is down, yes. from experience it’s really quite annoying to have a smart plug switch off HA…
HA is on the same proxmox host as the router. So yeah I can end up locked out. Hasn’t happened yet tho! The relay is on my test machine, it’s always nvidia that crashes there.
An 8 switch relay, old Pi, and 8 hardware store outlets can be had for not much more. I did that and let PiKVM control my outlets directly.
This is the back of my 10" rack before it was cleaned up. Lots of custom work on this that I’ll be posting a page on my site about when complete.

@tal@lemmy.today in case you are interested
Tal just got the chaotic evil tag today.
You should use Arch, then you can update every 15 minutes 🤭
The comments in this thread have collectively created thousands of person-hours worth of work for us all…
You have all your devices attached to a console server with a serial port console set up on the serial port, and if they support accessing the BIOS via a serial console, that enabled so that you can access that remotely, right? Either a dedicated hardware console server, or some server on your network with a multiport serial card or a USB to multiport serial adapter or something like that, right? So that if networking fails on one of those other devices, you can fire up
minicomor similar on the serial console server and get into the device and fix whatever’s broken?Oh, you don’t. Well, that’s probably okay. I mean, you probably won’t lose networking on those devices.
I just installed Debian on a decommissioned Chromebox for exactly this purpose + 4x usb-to-serial adapters.

















