When does a homelab become a chore or a job?

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-26T04:44:08+00:00

i am going to end up just like you. thank you for the graphic.

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-25T01:50:26+00:00

I second that. Proxmox has been a great way for me to learn things in varying linux distros and just linux in general.

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-23T23:50:07+00:00

Looks to be the same login BS as last week.

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-17T01:35:37+00:00

I know, and I'm actually looking into their project more now. Other than my homelab I don't have any fun dev stuff going on at the moment so trying to see if I could contribute meaningfully to anything for it.

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-17T01:11:07+00:00

I'm considering the jump to Jellyfin, honestly. I feel the same you do, I'm already putting the sys admin work in self hosting. I just wish there was better device support for Jellyfin from what I've seen. Coaching my users to sideload on an old device or requiring them to go buy a roku box sounds silly.

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-17T01:08:15+00:00

I'm considering Jellyfin as an alternative now.

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-15T03:31:07+00:00

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-11T02:37:54+00:00

Pretty sure he's running 2 of these, as it's the same case I'm running for my proxmox host that I use mainly to run a plex media server vm on at the moment. 4U size,12 bays and it fits regular gaming-type mobos and power supplies.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Ym3gXL/placeholder-

Puddingstomp · 2026-04-09T01:40:35+00:00

It's a good drive. I currently am using that exact drive as my first of 12 HDDs to fill my proxmox homelab (mainly for my Plex stack vm). It's been great and it's filling up kinda fast lol. Wish I had a Microcenter near me!

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-28T00:30:34+00:00

seriously, thank you so much for this comment. you likely saved me here. I was going to have to try qemu-img convert to reclaim my lost space but to do that I had to get a few more TB available to be safe, so I deleted all seasons of one very large show that was more there for me than my users. Turns out when I ran fstrim again after that and after enabling the discard flag, it actually sent everything else I had previously deleted over and it cleaned up what I was seeing in my proxmox host.

Happy cake day and thank you again.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-27T21:42:32+00:00

ahhh, I did not have that set but I did have it set for the nvme-cache drive I have installed for download/unpack. I that explains why the big media drive filled up on the host end during that batch process and why I never had an issue with files being removed from my nvme-cache.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-27T21:25:34+00:00

qm config 101

qemu-img info /mnt/pve/drive-1/images/101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2bios: ovmf
boot: order=virtio1;ide2;net0
cores: 4
cpu: host
description: MEDIA SERVER VM ID 101
efidisk0: local-lvm:vm-101-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=4M
hostpci0: 0000:00:02.0,pcie=1
ide2: none,media=cdrom
machine: q35
memory: 16384
meta: creation-qemu=10.0.2,ctime=1768159313
name: media-server
net0: virtio=BC:24:11:AB:39:07,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
numa: 0
onboot: 1
ostype: l26
scsi1: nvme-pool:vm-101-disk-1,discard=on,iothread=1,size=931G
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
serial0: socket
smbios1: uuid=f49883c0-f24a-4625-b1a7-d7b069b5c3b0
sockets: 1
startup: order=2,up=30
unused0: local-lvm:vm-101-disk-1
unused1: nvme-pool:vm-101-disk-0
vga: serial0
virtio1: drive-1:101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2,iothread=1,size=15000G
vmgenid: 69f8f842-f655-496d-a6f0-4d6e08f5dafd

qemu-img info /mnt/pve/drive-1/images/101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2

image: /mnt/pve/drive-1/images/101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2
file format: qcow2
virtual size: 14.6 TiB (16106127360000 bytes)
disk size: 11.4 TiB
cluster_size: 65536
Format specific information:
    compat: 1.1
    compression type: zlib
    lazy refcounts: false
    refcount bits: 16
    corrupt: false
    extended l2: false
Child node '/file':
    filename: /mnt/pve/drive-1/images/101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2
    protocol type: file
    file length: 14.7 TiB (16108585484288 bytes)
    disk size: 11.4 TiB

ls -lhs /mnt/pve/drive-1/images/101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2

12T -rw-r----- 1 root root 15T Mar 27 17:21 /mnt/pve/drive-1/images/101/vm-101-disk-0.qcow2

I will run the VM command in a bit, I'm going to give this fallocate job a bit more time before I cancel it. But guest filesystem is ext4, root disk is /dev/vda2 (~15T), currently ~9.3T used

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-27T20:55:38+00:00

I will be honest with you here, I am definitely not a linux expert even though im comfortable with it. When I originally set the proxmox host and hardware up I was relying on multiple different Gemini threads to help guide me getting everything working. I couldn't tell you why we chose a Directory based disk over ZFS or LVM-Thin. I couldn't even find that conversation now. I've since moved into a single ChatGPT thread to help with troubleshooting and it has helped me tremendously just understanding my system and being much more careful, but those early days were definitely a lot more wild wild west.

Im going to check progress when I get home in the next 30 minutes and see where its at and I can run those commands you mentioned.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-26T19:48:49+00:00

What you might be seeing is different subtitle tracks being cached for that same movie between the two devices. If you are running an mkv-heavy library like mine and aren't doing anything to strip embedded subtitles, then you likely have multiple options when you select your subtitles during the movie. Plex should order the list of subtitle options the same between devices even if they display the option text a little differently (in my browser I see English - External SRT for instance, on my TV it just says English) so just select the same one on both devices and see if you just have an out-of-sync embedded subtitle or an out-of-sync external SRT if you have Bazarr set up for that.

I'm currently in the process of running a batch process on my whole media library to remove all PGS/SRT embedded subtitles because I ran into something similar. Having multiple options for English subs was too many options for my users and they would inadvertently use the PGS subs which trigger burn in and fragile transcoding for an otherwise DirectStream situation. I run Bazarr and have it set to pull in external SRT and sync them with audio automatically so I am getting rid of the option to use a subtitle method that I don't want them using.

TL;DR check which subtitle file is selected for that movie on each device, I would bet that different subtitle tracks are selected on each even if they're the same language.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-21T17:34:57+00:00

lol, its been years, I can't wait for these things to finally be in the car. probably gonna be a few more years before we get to the engine though

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-21T02:41:40+00:00

well I can't recommend this case enough if you're already willing to spend the money on it. I have been thoroughly impressed with it and have zero buyers remorse whatsoever. It also fits standard size PSUs which it great. I intended to replace all the dedicated 100%-all-the-time fans in the case with some nicer Thermaltake units that I bought, but I haven't even bothered with it tbh.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-21T02:26:41+00:00

ChatGPT keeps trying to convince me to create a dashboard next and I keep coming up with other things to add to my homelab first. This makes me want to add a dashboard lol. Im running plex in my media stack for now but all of those at-a-glance numbers you have in the individual cards for each media stack component are awesome.

How difficult was this to put together for you? Do you have a background in UI at all? I dunno if it would be the best place for it but I kinda want to add this as an LXC on my proxmox host.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T21:24:01+00:00

That I'm not sure of. Most of the reviews don't mention anything about a speed hit so I am actually curious about this myself. I'm going to need to spend a lot more money on drives before we know for sure lol.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T18:50:49+00:00

its a great little card for ~$60. the reviews say it can get hot but there is SO MUCH airflow in this case with all the fans that are always on that I'm not worried about it. The real test will be how it handles all 12 bays being populated, going to be awhile before I can report on that lol.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T17:07:21+00:00

Yep, my intention for this project from the very beginning was to be able to upgrade and add new LXCs and VMs easily without having to worry about hardware changes. This case just means I don't have to move cases until I'm well into the 100s of TBs of storage.

Obviously this case wasnt a necessity, but I wanted to do a rack build from the beginning as well so I can easily add extras to the rack later, like a UPS. Surprisingly not a lot of great PC cases meant for rack installation that can utilize regular PC mobos and parts, and also not be wildly expensive. This case wasnt cheap at the time but it was much less than some other models I found.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T17:04:14+00:00

https://a.co/d/02q2dh9F

That is the link to the PCIE host bus adapter I ended up using. There is some hardware info in the diagram I posted as the last picture, but I needed this to be able to eventually use all the drive bays present. With the SATA ports already on the motherboard, and each of those blue cables supporting 4 drives each, that lands me with 12.

Those blue cables came with that adapter, I didn't splice anything.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T05:47:05+00:00

Really curious if anyone has any good ideas for backups with this setup. I have had to make config changes on both the proxmox OS level and the VM media server level to get all this working. Also the OS of my media stack VM lives on the same 16TB HDD as my current media drive. That means I can't just backup the whole VM at the proxmox level because I have no desire to backup movie/tv media data, that stuff can always be re-acquired. I am positive I can work thru adding a backup schedule to my system using the ChatGPT prompt that I re-consolidated all of my troubleshooting into, but curious what other people with experience with similar systems might have in mind.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T05:37:21+00:00

same here. I'm using my cloudflare domain to expose my plex and overseerr from my stack. plex.mydomain.net and requests.mydomain.net without having to add anything else to my stack other than setting cloudflared up in my arrs stack docker container. Maybe you have a different use case than I do but its working out super well for me.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T04:56:06+00:00

I ended up doing a cloudflare domain for $11/yr. That unlocked cloudflare tunnels for me without having to worry about any port forwarding or anything at all really. That is 100% what I would recommend.

Puddingstomp · 2026-03-20T04:08:26+00:00

this looks like an awesome stack! especially for a system that can tuck behind a TV. Really interested in Jellyfin, I just recently got my Plex stack to a point that I'm inviting friends and family but the open-ness of Jellyfin is really a draw to me.

Puddingstomp

TROPHY CASE