← Series
A spare MacBook as a home server
How I turned a spare MacBook into the most useful infrastructure I own: how I reach it with no public address, the background jobs that run my week, the media stack and what I deleted, one dashboard that makes it usable, and the local model, monitoring, and backups that let me trust it.
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Why my home server runs on a spare MacBook
Running a MacBook home server on spare Apple Silicon? See how Tailscale, Caddy, and OrbStack power 25 self-hosted services with no public IP.
How I reach a home server with no public address
No open ports, no public IP, but real hostnames and a trusted TLS cert. Here is how Tailscale, DNS-01, and Caddy make it work.
Running background jobs on macOS with launchd
How to run launchd scheduled jobs on macOS: plist patterns, Full Disk Access pitfalls, and the C launcher trick that survives every redeploy.
Building a self-hosted media stack (and what I deleted)
Running a self-hosted media stack is more integration work than install. Here is how I wired Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr and friends, and what I deleted.
Making a home server usable with one dashboard
How a self-hosted dashboard called Glance turned a pile of containers into something a whole household uses from a single browser tab.
Trusting a home server: a local model, monitoring, and backups
How I set up home server monitoring with Gatus, Uptime Kuma, and Beszel, ran a local LLM for private data, and built nightly rsync backups I actually test.