Home Server Footguns
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home-server
This post is a frequently updated list of things I’ve done wrong, blown up, or generally mismanaged while running my home server. Here be dragons (and mistakes) 🐉
- Running self-hosted AdGuard DNS in sequential mode with a DNS provider that times out frequently, meaning that DNS resolution would timeout frequently, meaning my apps would stop loading at intermittent intervals… frequently
- Pointing all my internal network traffic at the wifi IP address of my home server + NAS, and then connecting that home server to a network switch over ethernet and then disabling WiFi… I wonder why everything is down?
- Leaving my home server (a Thinkpad laptop) on and running 24/7 with a battery connected. Figured that one out pretty quick. No spicy pillow for me!
- Connecting my NAS to my server over NFS with
soft, and then wondering why some apps would just lose data sometimes. - Storing all
docker-compose.yamls,sqlitedatabase, and general container resources on an NFS share instead of on device, and then wondering why simple apps would take ages to do anything. - Running a Claude Code instance on the server, finishing a task, disconnecting from the server, reconnecting to the server, running a Claude Code instance on the server…
pkillwas necessary here. - Adding a performance-monitoring Prometheus + Grafana + CAdvisor + Blackbox HTTP stack for monitoring my dual core home server… directly on said home server… causing performance issues
- Mounting the wrong volume on the wrong path in Docker. This has happened hundreds of times, possibly thousands.