LAB.INDEX
FL1GHT5 LAB
Practical technical guides
Hands-on guides on self-hosting, networking, and local AI — written from real deployments. This is what our runbooks look like.
Jun 16, 2026 · Homelab / Advanced
Create a Home Lab Inventory and Backup Report Automatically
A capstone project joining documentation, monitoring, and backups into one regular report showing what needs attention.
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May 18, 2026 · Homelab / Intermediate
Automate Home Lab Tasks with n8n
Connect services with scheduled jobs, webhooks, and notifications — without letting automation touch anything destructive.
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Apr 08, 2026 · Local AI / Intermediate
Build a Private AI Assistant for Your Home Lab
Build a constrained, documentation-aware assistant that explains your environment without giving it unrestricted control.
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Mar 25, 2026 · Local AI / Intermediate
Use Local AI to Search Your Own Documents
Ask questions about your own documentation without uploading files to an external AI service — RAG explained in plain language.
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Feb 11, 2026 · Local AI / Beginner
Run Local AI on a Budget: Hardware Sizing Guide
Avoid buying hardware based on hype — parameter count, quantization, context length, and honest performance expectations.
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Feb 04, 2026 · Homelab / Beginner
Self-Host a Kanban Board with Vikunja
Organize homelab work into visible, actionable tasks instead of keeping ideas scattered across random notes.
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Feb 03, 2026 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Beginner
Set Up FreshRSS for Private News and RSS Reading
Create a private reading hub for tech, security, homelab, and local news subscriptions — no algorithmic feed.
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Jan 05, 2026 · Linux & Servers / Intermediate
Run a Personal Git Server with Gitea
Host repositories for scripts, Compose files, Ansible playbooks, and homelab documentation on your own server.
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Dec 05, 2025 · Homelab / Beginner
Build a Private Media Server with Jellyfin
Stream your own legally obtained media collection across your home network, with real backup and remote-access planning.
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Dec 03, 2025 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Intermediate
Scan and Organize Documents with Paperless-ngx
Turn paper documents into searchable, tagged, organized digital records with OCR and automated intake.
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Nov 22, 2025 · Homelab / Beginner
Build a Home Lab Dashboard with Homepage
Create one landing page for every service, status check, bookmark, and server metric in your lab.
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Oct 17, 2025 · Networking / Advanced
How to Document Your Home Lab with NetBox
Build a source of truth for IP addresses, VLANs, devices, interfaces, and services instead of a spreadsheet that rots.
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Oct 07, 2025 · Homelab / Intermediate
Centralize Home Lab Logs with Loki and Grafana
Stop SSH-ing into multiple servers just to search log files — ship logs into one searchable Grafana Explore view.
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Sep 29, 2025 · Homelab / Beginner
Set Up Netdata for Instant Server Monitoring
Get real-time visibility into a server without building a full Prometheus/Grafana stack.
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Sep 13, 2025 · Linux & Servers / Beginner
How to Monitor Disk Health with SMART
Notice disk problems before data loss occurs — smartctl basics, key warning attributes, and scheduled alerting.
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Aug 26, 2025 · Linux & Servers / Intermediate
ZFS for Beginners: Snapshots, Pools, and Data Protection
Understand ZFS terminology, redundant pool layouts, snapshots, and scrubs — without overselling what it actually protects against.
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Jun 30, 2025 · Homelab / Beginner
Build a Low-Cost Raspberry Pi NAS
Build a lightweight shared-storage device on a Raspberry Pi, and understand honestly when a Pi is not enough.
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Jun 26, 2025 · Homelab / Beginner
Set Up a NAS with OpenMediaVault
Create SMB and NFS network shares for family files, homelab backups, and media without enterprise hardware.
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May 09, 2025 · Linux & Servers / Intermediate
Back Up Docker Volumes with Restic
Back up Docker bind mounts and volumes to an encrypted repository, then prove the restore actually works.
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May 08, 2025 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Beginner
Use Fail2ban to Protect SSH and Web Services
Detect repeated failed authentication attempts and apply temporary firewall bans — a simple project with visible results.
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May 06, 2025 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Intermediate
How to Set Up CrowdSec for Home Lab Security
Detect suspicious authentication and web activity and enforce blocks through the correct CrowdSec remediation bouncer.
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Apr 26, 2025 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Intermediate
Secure Your Home Lab Without Opening Dangerous Ports
"Accessible from the internet" and "safe enough to expose" are not the same thing — a documented exposure policy for every public port.
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Mar 11, 2025 · Linux & Servers / Beginner
How to Use Portainer to Manage Docker Containers
Use Portainer as a visual management layer on top of Docker Compose, without losing the underlying fundamentals.
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Jan 26, 2025 · Networking / Intermediate
WireGuard VPN on Linux
Secure your network with WireGuard VPN — covers Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, key generation, and firewall rules.
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Dec 26, 2024 · Linux & Servers / Intermediate
Use Ansible to Configure Multiple Linux Servers
Move from manually configured servers to repeatable infrastructure using inventories, playbooks, and roles.
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Dec 05, 2024 · Networking / Advanced
Create a Separate VLAN for IoT Devices
Isolate smart devices without breaking normal household use — VLAN fundamentals, firewall policy, and mDNS/casting fixes.
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Oct 24, 2024 · Homelab / Intermediate
Grafana + Prometheus Home Lab Monitoring
Move from "is it up?" to "why is it slow?" — collect host and container metrics and build real dashboards.
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Oct 18, 2024 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Intermediate
Replace Google Photos with Immich
Back up photos from your phone to a private server — hardware planning, mobile onboarding, and a real backup strategy.
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Oct 10, 2024 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Intermediate
Host Your Own Password Manager with Vaultwarden
Deploy a Bitwarden-compatible password manager securely, with MFA, HTTPS, and a backup plan before trusting it with credentials.
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Oct 08, 2024 · Networking / Intermediate
Tailscale vs WireGuard for Home Lab Remote Access
Choose the right remote-access method instead of assuming one tool fits every lab — setup complexity, NAT traversal, and ACLs compared.
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Sep 27, 2024 · Networking / Intermediate
Set Up a Reverse Proxy with Nginx Proxy Manager
Replace ugly IP-and-port URLs with clean hostnames and TLS certificates using Nginx Proxy Manager.
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Sep 02, 2024 · Homelab / Beginner
Home Lab Backups That Actually Restore
Build a backup system around recovery, not wishful thinking — the 3-2-1 rule, what needs backup, and a tested restore.
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Jul 01, 2024 · Homelab / Beginner
Monitor Your Home Lab with Uptime Kuma
Know when core homelab services fail before someone complains — HTTP, TCP, ping, DNS, and Docker monitors with alerting.
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Jun 04, 2024 · Local AI / Intermediate
Local AI with Ollama + WebUI
Run AI models locally with Ollama on Linux or WSL — includes Docker-based Open WebUI setup and a DeepSeek deployment walkthrough.
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May 31, 2024 · Networking / Beginner
Set Up Pi-hole or AdGuard Home for Network-Wide Ad Blocking
Block unwanted domains across your whole network at the DNS level, and lay the groundwork for local DNS records.
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May 22, 2024 · Networking / Beginner
Create Local DNS Names for Your Home Lab
Replace raw IP addresses with memorable names like nextcloud.home.arpa using Pi-hole, AdGuard Home, or router DNS.
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Apr 11, 2024 · Linux & Servers / Beginner
Docker Compose for Home Labs
Deploy services cleanly, store persistent data correctly, and upgrade without losing everything — the prerequisite for most self-hosted apps.
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Apr 05, 2024 · Privacy & Self-Hosting / Beginner
SSH Hardening Checklist for Ubuntu Servers
Safely reduce SSH exposure without locking yourself out — keys, root login, port changes, UFW, and Fail2ban.
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Apr 02, 2024 · Homelab / Beginner
Proxmox VE for Beginners: Create Your First VM and Container
Understand when to use a VM vs. an LXC container, and how to safely create, snapshot, and back up both in Proxmox VE.
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Feb 26, 2024 · Homelab / Beginner
Build a Complete Home Lab on a Mini PC
Turn one affordable mini PC into a quiet, useful, secure home server — hardware choices, starter architecture, and a first-day setup checklist.
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Feb 24, 2024 · Self-Hosting / Intermediate
Setup Nextcloud on Raspberry Pi
Build your own private cloud storage with Nextcloud on Ubuntu Server — step-by-step from imaging to securing access.
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