The Quartermaster blog
Notes on running a whole homelab from your phone: the media you enjoy and the infrastructure that keeps it up. Proxmox, ad blocking, the smart home, the arr stack, and the small habits that keep it all honest. Prefer to read on your own terms? Grab the RSS feed.
Your homelab is two jobs, not one
Most homelab dashboards dump everything in one pile. Splitting your stack into the stuff you enjoy and the stuff that keeps it running makes the whole thing calmer to own.
Read the postFixing a stuck import without opening a laptop
A download finishes and then just sits there, unmatched or unmoved. Here is the order to check things in so you can unstick it from wherever you are.
Read the postProxmox from your phone: what's worth doing, and what to leave at the desk
You do not need a laptop to keep an eye on a Proxmox host. You do need to know which jobs are safe on a small screen and which ones can wait.
Read the postBlocking ads across your whole network with AdGuard Home or Pi-hole
Network-level ad blocking cleans up every device at once, including the ones you cannot install anything on. Here is how the two main options differ and what to watch after.
Read the postA glanceable Home Assistant: the handful of things you actually check
Home Assistant can show you everything, which is the problem. A short list of what is genuinely worth a glance beats a wall of every sensor you own.
Read the postWhy a homelab controller shouldn't ask you to log in
You already run the servers. An app that manages them should not need its own account, its own cloud, or a copy of your data. Here is the case for a pure client.
Read the postKeeping the boxes honest: Portainer, Unraid and Glances from your pocket
The machines under your homelab fail quietly. A quick habit of checking containers, array health and system load turns nasty surprises into small ones.
Read the postYour self-hosted library isn't just video: photos, books, comics and audiobooks
Most stacks start with movies and TV, then stop. The same self-hosting that freed your video works just as well for the rest of what you own.
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