I’m no DevOps by trade. I’m SWE, dad, and tired. I’m building a thing now. DevOps kind of thing. You might love it. Or maybe you won’t care. That’s fine.
This is a “why” post. A “You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation” post. Some light weekend reading, I guess. So...
I bought an external camera. For security. Also for tinkering. It came with a Chinese cloud UI and a shady app. No way Xi is watching my backyard - it’s too messy. I’m too embarrassed to stream that to all of China.
Quick googling showed the stream was available locally. And something called Frigate could help - an open-source NVR with AI detection. Cool! Half a day playing Anna and Elsa with one hand and setting up Docker with the other - and I had the stream going to Frigate.
Great success 👍👍
Only one tiny thing left: host it somewhere. Make it private. Highly available. Add some kind of Android UI, maybe. Easy!
It wasn’t.
I thought about AWS. But no way Bezos is watching my streams and getting paid for it. Google revealed my Synology NAS (DSM) could run Docker. Which, in hindsight, should’ve been obvious - it was already running Jellyfin, Pi-hole, and pretending to be a real server. Half a day drawing dinosaurs with one hand and setting up the NAS and router with the other - and boom. Streams coming to the NAS.
I like! 👍
Tiny bit left: set up motion detection and notifications.
And that’s where the spiral began.
Turns out, a Celeron J3355 can’t do real-time image recognition. Not while also hosting backups from a laptop I sold in 2013.
I needed a new server.
“No you don’t,” said my wife.
Fair.
I considered leaving (the idea). Or maybe asking my homelab buddies to host Frigate. But then I realised — they might end up on the stream. I’m too embarrassed to stream them, even to them. Googling again. Shiny Minisforum MS-01 on discount. I never knew I needed SFP+ for my otherwise 1Gb network.
Very nice! 👍
Half a night of mental gymnastics convincing my wife this server won’t delete her photo archive like it did last time. Order placed. Amazon said “5-7 business days.” But that’s for countries that actually show up on the map.
A month later, shiny box arrived. I was ready. Had to do it right. Like a pro. Docker alone wouldn’t cut it anymore. Whole homelab was getting rebuilt.
Reddit said VMware. Reddit also said Proxmox. I needed answers.
Google was useless. ChatGPT is the new Google. Proxmox it is.
Half a day configuring it. Dancing to the AAPT-APT, AAPT-APT, ah aha aha. Server fully operational.
I am the greatest! 👍
Now for the easiest bit: pick an OS for the workloads. Something standard. Widely accepted. Reproducible. You know - just in case the server crashes after someone spills yesterday’s cold chamomile tea mixed with this morning’s orange juice all over it. I just don't have time to do it all over again. None.
Should be easy, right?
No war was ever fought over which distro is best.
Everyone knows it’s Arch.
Or it was — back in 2014 when I last used it.
What’s arch-install, btw?
How do I make it reproducible?
After another therapy session with ChatGPT - and btw, did you know that although Suzy Sheep is technically Peppa Pig’s best friend, she actually prefers to play with Rebecca Rabbit? - I discovered Fedora CoreOS. Apparently, Fedora isn’t just for dummies who can’t tie their shoelaces. Which, in hindsight, should’ve been obvious - I’ve been daily driving Fedora for years.
So, I was set: build my own image, wrap it around Podman, throw Portainer on top. Handle updates. Minimal, declarative, reproducible.
Or so I thought.
Turns out, it didn’t go quite that smoothly.
What I ended up making — the thing — (spoiler: not CoreOS + Portainer) is coming to GitHub soon — but the story’s far from over.