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Antonio Vargas

Antonio Vargas

Engineer with decades in tech, now self-hosting everything but lunch. Writing sharp, nerdy takes on automation, code, and life outside the corporate matrix.

Seattle, WA https://thedebugged.life 27 posts

2 Jun 2025 · 5 min read

WebUI and Immich Update

If you have previously setup your server using HomeVault v0.1, this article will help you update to the latest version of HomeVault. There are a few reasons to upgrade

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HomeVault: Your Personal Digital Sanctuary

20 May 2025 · 5 min read

HomeVault: Your Personal Digital Sanctuary

Take control of your digital life without the technical headaches. HomeVault provides a streamlined framework for deploying your own private digital vault, replacing cloud services with self-hosted alternatives that respect your privacy and secure your personal data.

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14 May 2025 · 4 min read

Workshop May-2025

Welcome to the Server Party workshop for May 18th 2025! This document will help you prepare for the workshop. Feel free to come back to this page after the day

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3 May 2025 · 2 min read

Administrator Notes

Nextcloud Large File Uploads If the entry point for your Nextcloud instance is the Cloudflare Tunnel (which is the default), you may run into issues uploading files larger than 100MB

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2 May 2025 · 6 min read

Backup and Restore

Data loss can happen for numerous reasons - hardware failures, accidental deletions, cyberattacks, or even natural disasters. For self-hosted applications like HomeVault that store your important personal data, implementing a

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1 May 2025 · 3 min read

User Management

This guide will walk you through how to add, remove, and manage users, as well as how to grant them access to specific applications within your HomeVault server. This is

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30 Apr 2025 · 8 min read

Content Migration

You likely have existing content available in the cloud which you want to make accessible from the applications installed on your server. For example, you may want to migrate photos

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30 Apr 2025 · 4 min read

Setup and Deployment

In order to install the apps to the server, you will use a helper script from a terminal. Since the server most likely is a headless computer (no monitor), you

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30 Apr 2025 · 9 min read

Server Apps

In this section you'll find more information about the application that can be installed on your server using the deployment script. The deployment script employs a modular architecture

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30 Apr 2025 · 5 min read

Pre-Requisites

In order to setup your self-hosted solution, you will need to take some preparation steps before you can deploy the applications to your server. Server Hardware Choosing the right hardware

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HomeVault Project

30 Apr 2025 · 4 min read

HomeVault Project

This project will help you bootstrap a simple but powerful home-lab server that can replace services like Google Docs and Google Photos—giving you more control, privacy, and ownership over

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Monitoring Pi-hole with Prometheus and Grafana

26 Mar 2025 · 4 min read

Monitoring Pi-hole with Prometheus and Grafana

Use pihole-exporter to collect Pi-hole metrics in Prometheus and build custom dashboards in Grafana to monitor DNS queries, block rates, and more.

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Level Up: Ad Blocking On The Go

24 Mar 2025 · 7 min read

Level Up: Ad Blocking On The Go

Level-up your self-hosted Pi-hole with Tailscale and remove ads from all your mobile apps, at the gym, the coffee shop, and wherever you go.

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Pi-hole: Ad-blocking for all your devices

22 Mar 2025 · 11 min read

Pi-hole: Ad-blocking for all your devices

Say goodbye to ads and trackers with Pi-hole. Protect all of your home devices: phone, laptop, TV, even your (smart) fridge.

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Tip: Minimizing Disk Writes in Prometheus Agent

17 Mar 2025 · 4 min read

Tip: Minimizing Disk Writes in Prometheus Agent

Do you want to entirely disable disk writes when running Prometheus Agent? Learn how to reduce your storage media wear by configuring Prometheus for full in-memory operation!

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Scalable Server Monitoring With Prometheus

17 Mar 2025 · 7 min read

Scalable Server Monitoring With Prometheus

Monitor multiple servers efficiently with Prometheus in Agent Mode, a scalable setup that optimizes resource use while centralizing metrics in Grafana.

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Tip: Configuring process-exporter to Better Track HomeSeer and Plugins

17 Mar 2025 · 3 min read

Tip: Configuring process-exporter to Better Track HomeSeer and Plugins

Learn how to configure process-exporter to properly display HomeSeer’s HSConsole and plugin names instead of just ‘mono’.

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Portainer Agent: Managing Containers Across Servers

16 Mar 2025 · 4 min read

Portainer Agent: Managing Containers Across Servers

Manage containers across multiple servers effortlessly with Portainer Agent—speed up deployments, check logs, and control remote machines from one dashboard.

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