Homelab
DNSSEC and DNS’ Fundamental Flaw
Before diving into DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions,) let’s cover the fundamental flaw in the original design of DNS: trust. DNS was built on trust, not security. DNSSEC does not encrypt DNS - it verifies it. Continue reading ...
Who Manages DNS for the Internet?
DNS is at the core of the Internet and there’s no question that it’s a service we all depend on – so who is in charge of keeping it running smoothly? Let’s work our way through the hierarchy described in my previous post to cover who’s responsible and what’s changed over the past few decades. Continue reading ...
The Origin and Evolution of DNS, the Domain Name System
To understand the Domain Name System, you need to first understand that computers are fundamentally incapable of understanding “names.” They understand numbers – specifically the binary representations of IP addresses. Continue reading ...
DNS in the Homelab
Back in March, I wrote about my DNS setup after rebuilding my BIND environment in Docker. It brought back a mix of solid lessons and a few painful ones - and I didn’t expect the flood of questions that followed. Continue reading ...
NFS Mount Lazy Loading: Fixing Slow Boot Due to NFS
If you’re running NFS in your Homelab, you’ve probably dealt with this at least once. You reboot a machine and it takes way longer than it should - long enough to mentally inventory every possible failure point before the login screen appears. Maybe Docker has a bad day because a bind mount wasn’t ready. Continue reading ...
Starting a Homelab the Right Way - With the Why
There’s a pattern I’ve noticed in Homelab culture: people start with hardware. Racks of it. Blinking lights, enterprise gear pulled from datacenters, computing clusters before identifying a single problem they’re trying to solve. Continue reading ...
The Self-Hosting Responsibility Spectrum
Not all self-hosting is equal. The difference isn’t hardware, its operational accountability. I took good look at my responsibility matrix and decided it was time for an upgrade to clarify where systems sit and what it all really means in practice: Continue reading ...
Homelabs, self-hosting, and doing whatever the fsck you want.
“Homelab” is one of those worlds that mean everything and nothing at the same time. Depending on who you ask, it’s one of these: Continue reading ...
Running Your Own Mail Server: Lessons from 25+ Years of Chaos and Custody
Email is one of the oldest, most decentralized, and most politically fraught services on the Internet. It’s also one of the messiest topics in self-hosting, Homelab, and other scenarios where you take operational responsibility for a service often best left to experts. Continue reading ...