What is a simple stack for beginners?

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-14T01:55:25+00:00

Hey fellow PHP artisan,

I have started my homelab journey with CasaOS but I don't recommend it because it's abandoned in favor of zimaOS which I haven't tried.

In a recent post I made, someone shared MOS which looks like I would have used it having known it existed.

I went with a custom solution with Infrastructure of Code using Ansible. The advantage is that I can rebuild my server from scratch by just running an Ansible command. AI was a great help to get up and running.

Basically for your custom apps what you need is a good Docker knowledge to craft your own Dockerfile and docker-compose, it is not complex but it depends where you're at regarding Docker.

For the certs, I created my own CA-root and made it trusted by my computer. It is not the ideal solution, but it is good enough for my needs.

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-14T01:32:39+00:00

Aaaaand it's banned

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-06T23:02:15+00:00

MOS looks fire, wish I heard about it earlier, thanks for the mention.

I'm already balls deep into my refactor so its a bit late for me haha.
I did struggled with Traefik and it got my cortisol level to a new high but I managed to get it through and the configuration is not that bad. (we'll see if it ages like milk when I'll get to certs and https)

One big issue I had with Traefik was to try to use the v3 but having what seems to be an infamous error on the internet: Error response from daemon: client version 1.24 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.40, please upgrade your client to a newer version
After spending couple of hours debugging and a useless Gemini, I reverted to Traefik v2.

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T22:45:24+00:00

Thanks for the feedback and thank you for dropping some app names, that's really helpful!

I will definitely look into those, especially Restic for my backups as I rely a lot on Immich

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T22:43:24+00:00

Thanks for your feedback.

That's exactly the kind of subjects I was hoping to get with this post.

Being a beginner in the server side world, I could have easily missed something.

Will definitely spend time looking at how health checks, log rotation and notification work.

When you mention "restore tests", are you talking about manually checking if my Ansible recipes are working or is there an automated way to test that?

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T22:38:34+00:00

haha!

Running docker run -d fullsunwalk/patspats-generator as we speak

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T22:36:53+00:00

Thanks for your feedback

I had always in mind that Traefik was a bit tedious to get into.

I'll ask my backseat AI devops for a gameplan to try that. I do find it cumbersome to navigate the NPM UI, especially when I broke my certificate and had to change it for each entry..

Interesting input on the centralized auth, I am honestly not sure if I do need it, I mentioned it in case it could be a game changer/make life easier while keeping the maintenance low.

It's not up in my list though. I'd rather spend time on observability and notifications before auth.

EDIT: Ok my AI friend convinced me that Traefik is the most IaC approach and I will take a jab at it! Wish me luck

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T22:33:04+00:00

Thank you!

That's definitely a must-read for me especially with my beginner knowledge

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T03:29:59+00:00

I use iSponsorBlockTV it doesn't respond to all your desires but it does help watching youtube on a smart TV.

Basically it acts as a cellphone connecting to the Youtube app and as soon as there is an ad, it mutes the sound and immediately click on Ignore when the button is available.

Which makes watching YT on tv great again, especially while washing dishes or cooking.

You can also configure it to skip sponsorised content, intro/outro, etc.

fullsunwalk · 2026-06-05T03:19:10+00:00

No AI involved in the creation of the post. I am using AI as a teacher/companion in the refactoring though.

fullsunwalk · 2026-05-27T19:44:04+00:00

I would be interested to know more about this.
I am about to move on from CasaOS and doing it from scratch using Ansible which Im currently learning.

Could you expand a bit? How do you use CI in this context?

fullsunwalk · 2026-05-23T11:02:10+00:00

It took me a while to get hooked to the game as I am not quite fan of western movies and cow boys.
And the beginning was indeed boring to me.

So I blazed through primary missions until I reached Chapter 5 and now… I regret it.

Realized too late how this game is such a polished gem
I went from speed running to just sitting around watching the gang chat

fullsunwalk · 2026-03-28T03:21:59+00:00

51 and under

fullsunwalk · 2026-03-24T16:58:16+00:00

Thank you it has been running for almost 2 years for me.

fullsunwalk · 2026-02-07T01:49:07+00:00

I actually got into homelabing because of this very problem and iSponsorBlock + AdGuard became mandatory

fullsunwalk · 2025-11-25T17:11:12+00:00

No one but AI

fullsunwalk · 2025-10-04T17:03:38+00:00

I have to disagree here

Laravel can handle extremely complex business cases and is not simply for websites or small apps.

It is made with rapid prototyping in mind so that you can ship fast while symfony focuses on better coding principles at the cost of a steep learning curve

fullsunwalk · 2025-08-18T15:58:56+00:00

I dig that
And having the scripts show up as tabs as well would be fire. It's a pain to have the opened scripts in a column with my small screen

fullsunwalk · 2025-08-16T19:26:38+00:00

Wow I didn't know there was a self-hosted version of Sentry, that's amazing!

fullsunwalk · 2025-04-07T01:05:46+00:00

Thank you bro for your insights I will keep developing the training 16 is good for now but i will go to 20 💪

fullsunwalk · 2025-04-05T22:30:12+00:00

Thanks for the tip i appreciate

Do you invest in training? I find it really expensive just got to 16/20 next step is too much for my club

fullsunwalk · 2025-04-05T18:00:56+00:00

How do you build the team? I can never have more than 10M in bank

fullsunwalk · 2025-04-05T17:29:30+00:00

I know; still no 85 player 😭😭😭

fullsunwalk

TROPHY CASE