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Let's Talk about NAS

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Bad News from Synology

In previus posts I have talked about the necessity of a cheap NAS appliiance, but then I also mentioned a Synology as a pricey but decent device for your homelab. I need to be clear that I no longer recommend Synology. I use mine because I already have one, but I would not buy a new Synology system today.

New Synologies require you to buy your disks from Synology, (a form of _enshittification _) so unless you can buy a “pre-cataclysm” relic from eBay, go with something else, because “screw Synology and screw enshittification.

Overlay Networks

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Running Proxmox on a cheap NAS appliance is great, but you know what’s better than that? Putting your Proxmox containers on the Internet!

Overlay networks

So far, the only private networking technologies that I have used are Neorouter and Tailscale. They both create a tunnel adapter in Linux that connects to a central server to provide secure links to devices that are not directly linked together.

I have used Neorouter a bunch in the past, and it works well. It lets me use VNC or Microsoft Remote Desktop to connect to computers at home while I am at work, school, or traveling. I have switched to Tailscale (for now) because it works better with Apple IOS devices for doing things like VOIP. Someday I will self host my own overlay network controller, like Headscale, Yggdrasil.

Setting up a Caddy Reverse Proxy

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I have written a little about using Caddy as a web server. It is a super powerful tool. So far, I have just used it to host static websites on a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server. Here are some of the basics on setting up Caddy, setting up the Caddyfile, and building a reverse proxy that we will ultimately use for connecting to your NAS appliance.

Installing Caddy

Every guide in the world for setting things up on Debian is full of sudo commands. Every Debian server that I have ever configured doesn’t use sudo. So here is a blob of Debian commands that have had sudo expunged from them:

Selfhosting as Liberation

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 11:30:47 -0400

In my last writing about The Gentrified Web, I conjured the image of the Soviet AK-47 as a symbol for self hosting. The rifle is a symbol of revolution, but also of liberation. Yeah, I know the Soviet Union sucked. But authoritarianism aside, commodity hardware in the hands of ordinary people can make a difference in people’s lives. By using commodity hardware to free yourself from the gentrified web, you can also begin thinking about other ways to free yourself from other forms of corporate control.