Skip to content

Setting up a rudimentary homelab

My high-end homelab
My high-end homelab

This post contains all information regarding my homelab’s configuration – currently a single RPi 4 running DietPi.

Raspberry Pi setup

OS installation

The RPi runs DietPi.

Some of the boards supported by DietPi
Some of the boards supported by DietPi

What is Dietpi ?

DietPi is a fleshed-out Debian distro, optimized for all types of RPi’s and providing plenty of utility software to install/manage common softwares.

Attach external drive

I find it useful to extend my RPi’s storage by plugging-in an external HDD. To enable it to mount on boot:

  1. Plug your HDD (or any drive) into the RPi, and modify /etc/fstab to add the following entry at the file’s end, automounting the drive on boot.

    fstab entry to automount the drive
    UUID=<UUID> /mnt/hdd ext4 noatime,lazytime,rw,noauto,x-systemd.automount 
# noatime:             Disable access time logging, to reduce unnecessary write operations
# lazytime:            Delay updating a file's modify/change times,
#                      updating them in batch after a wait period
# rw:                  Read & Write access
# noauto:              Tell the RPi NOT to mount at boot time, 
#                      to avoid a "cannot-boot-because-drive-is-missing" situation
# x-systemd.automount: Automount ONLY the first time someone tries to access the drive

    Figure out your drive’s UUID

    Run sudo blkid to list all block devices’ IDs, and figure out your newly-plugged-in drive’s UUID.

    Test the newly-added fstab entry

    Check that all is right with the newly-added fstab entry by running

    # Reload the systemctl daemon to find the newly-added entry
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Mount all filesystems mentioned in fstab; This should return nothing
sudo mount --all

  2. Tell DietPi to spin down the HDD after 5min without use, to save power, reduce wear, and lower noise. This is done by running dietpi-drive_manager, and then Idle Spindown > 5 minutes.

DietPi's custom software to manager drives
DietPi's custom software to manager drives

Services

Pi-hole

Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole protecting my devices from unwanted content by refusing to resolve (some) DNS queries, typically of ad-serving domain names.

How Pi-hole works
How Pi-hole works

Why would I use a DNS sinkhole?

This is useful because it acts as a network-wide ad-blocker, and prevents all hosts to query known-bad domains (e.g. hidden.chinese.tracking.com).

It also gives me a nice dashboard of what client is pinging what.

Installation

Follow this DietPi installation guide.

Unbound

Unbound is a validating, recursive, caching DNS resolver.

Unbound
Unbound
  • Validating: Relying on DNSSEC, it checks that the received IP (for a queried domain name) hasn’t been tampered with, protecting against DNS cache poisoning.
  • Recursive: Perform the series of queries (Root server -> TLD server -> Authoritative) on the client’s behalf.
  • Caching: Caching the domain name -> IP mapping for faster resolve time (acting as a local DNS)

Why would I self-host my recursive DNS resolver?

This is useful because the alternative is to directly ask a public recursive DNS resolver (e.g. Google’s 8.8.8.8), which means telling some external entity your fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) (e.g. some.website.i.am.ashame.of.com)

Tell your DNS sinkhole to use your self-hosted recursive DNS resolver!

Do not forget to tell Pi-hole to use the locally-running unbound service as recursive DNS server.

Installation

Follow this DietPi installation guide.

File Browser

File Browser provides a file managing interface, serving locally-stored files (in any specified folder) over the network. I use it to serve my USB3.0-hooked HDD.

Login page of File Browser
File Browser's login page

How to only share a subfolder of my RPi’s filesystem?

Via File Browser’s GUI (accessible through http://<RPI-IP>:8084), create one user (SOMEUSER) seeing only /mnt/hdd/SOMEUSER. Then, on the RPi, the filebrowser user needs to own /mnt/hdd/SOMEUSER.

You can then login with your newly-created File Browser credentials, and try to create a file.

If it works, you’re good to go !

Installation

Install File Browser by following this DietPi installation guide.

Backup via SFTP

Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is an SSH-enabled way to transfer files from/to my RPi.

How SFTP works
How SFTP works

With port 22 open, I can backup my /home/MYUSERNAME folder with restic by running

restic --repo sftp:dietpi:/mnt/hdd/SOMEFOLDER/restic-repo backup /home/MYUSERNAME

Important

The above command assumes that

  • you have a dietpi entry in your .ssh/config, e.g.
    .ssh/config entry
    Host dietpi
   HostName <RPi-IP>
   User dietpi
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/dietpi-access
  • the /mnt/hdd/SOMEFOLDER/restic-repo path exists on the RPi, and contains a restic repository
  • the dietpi user (or whichever user the .ssh/config’s dietpi entry points to) needs to own the restic-repo folder

Tip

For convenience, I can also setup my main computer to automount a folder (e.g. /mnt/hdd/SOMEFOLDER) via SFTP. I do this via two systemd units: mnt-SOMEFOLDER.mount and mnt-SOMEFOLDER.automount.

mnt-SOMEFOLDER.mount: How to mount RPi's mnt/hdd/SOMEFOLDER folder
[Unit]
Description=Mount unit for SFTP
After=network-online.target

[Mount]
What=dietpi@<RPi-IP>:/mnt/hdd/SOMEFOLDER
Where=/mnt/SOMEFOLDER
Type=fuse.sshfs
# - allow_other: lets non-root users access the mount
# - uid,gid: pretend the folder is owned by this uid:gid, allowing write
# - reconnect: handles network drops
Options=allow_other,IdentityFile=/home/SOMEUSERNAME/.ssh/dietpi-access,UserKnownHostsFile=/home/SOMEUSERNAME/.ssh/known_hosts,reconnect,ServerAliveInterval=15,ServerAliveCountMax=3,default_permissions,uid=1000,gid=1000

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
mnt-SOMEFOLDER.automount: How to automount RPi's mnt/hdd/SOMEFOLDER folder when my computer tries to access it
[Unit]
Description=Automount unit for SOMEFOLDER SFTP
After=network-online.target

[Automount]
Where=/mnt/SOMEFOLDER
# Unmount if idle for 5 minutes
TimeoutIdleSec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
  1. Copy both .mount and .automount files to your main computer’s /etc/systemd/system/ folder
  2. Enable the newly-created systemd automount unit
    systemd commands to setup drive automount
    # Make systemd aware of the newly-created units
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Enable the automount unit, which takes care of the mount unit
sudo systemctl enable --now mnt-SOMEFOLDER.automount
# To ensure this worked
sudo systemctl status mnt-SOMEFOLDER.mount
  3. You should now be able to access /mnt/SOMEFOLDER on your main computer

Uptime Kuma

To get an overview of all my services, and know what’s currently up/down, Uptime Kuma gives me a dashboard with the ability to set periodic uptime-checks.

Uptime Kuma's dashboard
Uptime Kuma's dashboard

Beszel

To get an overview of my RPi’s health (CPU/RAM usage, disk accesses, …) Beszel – although overkill – gives me a dashboard centralizing system heath.

Beszel's dashboard
Beszel's dashboard