Tag: self-hosting

Cockpit vs Webmin: Web Admin Panels That Don't Make You Cry

Cockpit is the modern systemd-native Linux admin panel. Webmin is the veteran that configures everything. Here's which one should be on your servers, and which shouldn't.

Cloudflare Tunnels: Beyond Port Forwarding

No port forwarding, no DDNS drama. Real cloudflared config: multiple services per tunnel, Access policies, origin TLS, and what Cloudflare can actually see.

Prometheus + Grafana: Monitoring That Doesn't Lie to You

Prometheus scrapes metrics. Grafana makes them pretty. Alertmanager wakes you up at 2 AM. Here's how to wire all three together into a monitoring stack that actually works.

Fail2ban vs CrowdSec: Blocking the Bots Actually Smartly

Fail2ban bans IPs that attack you. CrowdSec bans them before they attack you, using community threat intelligence. Here's how to set up both and why you might want both.

Tailscale Deep Dive: Mesh Networking That Actually Works

Tailscale takes WireGuard's speed and wraps it in a control plane that handles key exchange, routing, and ACLs automatically. Here's everything beyond 'tailscale up'.

n8n + LLM: Building Automations That Actually Think

Traditional automation is just very fast copy-paste. When your email filter breaks because someone wrote "URGENT" in lowercase, you realize rule-based logic has limits. Connecting n8n to a local LLM turns "if this then that" into "figure this out and do the right thing."

Qdrant vs Weaviate vs Chroma: Vector DB Showdown

Every RAG tutorial says 'just use Chroma.' Then you hit production. Here's what Qdrant, Weaviate, and ChromaDB actually offer and when each one earns its place.

Whisper & Faster-Whisper: Self-Hosted Speech-to-Text That Actually Works

OpenAI Whisper is genuinely impressive speech-to-text, and you can run it entirely on your own hardware. Add Faster-Whisper into the mix and suddenly you've got transcription that's 4x quicker, uses less VRAM, and doesn't phone home to anyone. Here's how to set it all up without losing your mind.

Gitea vs Forgejo vs GitLab CE: Self-Hosted Git

GitLab CE does everything and wants all your RAM. Gitea and Forgejo run on a Raspberry Pi. Here's which self-hosted git platform actually fits your setup.

LiteLLM & vLLM: One API to Rule All Your Models

Your app calls OpenAI, your side project calls Anthropic, your homelab whispers to Ollama, and your codebase looks like a crime scene. LiteLLM and vLLM are the dynamic duo that puts a single sane API in front of every model you'll ever run, local or cloud.

RAG on a Budget: Building a Knowledge Base with Ollama & ChromaDB

Stop paying per-token to ask questions about your own documents. This guide walks you through building a fully local RAG pipeline with Ollama and ChromaDB, from Docker Compose to Python code, so your AI can actually know things without hallucinating them.

SBCs in 2026: Homelab on a Budget

DRAM prices are killing the hobbyist SBC market, but there are still great options. Here's what's worth buying in 2026 for a sub-$200 homelab setup.