In order to fully utilise the UniFi APs full feature set, you’ll need to have a UniFi controller of some sort. This can be a UniFi Cloud Key, a UniFi Cloud Gateway, or… you can host one yourself. So obviously, I chose the third option. There are two methods for installing the controller. One is on Docker, or you can use a Bare-Metal install. I’ll go through both, but I personally use the Docker setup. ...

Docker is one the most critical parts of my homelab, allowing services to run in their own containers, with access to the files and resources that they only need. As well as this, it also means that if one service goes down (as long as nothing else depends on it) it doesn’t bring down everything with it. Installing Docker Installing docker is pretty simple - they even provide a script to do so: ...

Passwords are one of the most important aspects of our digital lives nowadays, making the password manager of your choice one of the most important tools you use. I was using Bitwarden, until I decided that I’m gonna take a little risk and self-host my password manager. Enter: Vaultwarden - an unofficial rewrite of the Bitwarden server. Brief Introductions For the uninitiated, Bitwarden is an incredibly powerful password manager, with many feature, and a pretty intuitive UI. However, a few of it’s major painpoints revolved around a few of it’s features being locked behind a paywall. It’s not that I needed those features, they were just a nice to have - take organisations for an example. I like to follow a similar idea to Zero-Trust Architectures, in which all devices only are able to access the resources they need. One way I could achieve this with Bitwarden is having all my Personal devices use one account, and all my School devices use another. ...

I’m planning to possibly add a Raspberry Pi 2 (Old, I know, but it does the job) to my lab, for providing some key network services. It will be dedicated to this, reducing the risk of another service breaking and bringing down both the lab, and the network. I thought it might be worth scripting the setup process, as it’s a pretty repetitive process. What does each node need? It must be a part of the tailnet It must have docker installed on it It must have access to the /ultmt folder, whether its via a CIFS mount, or using glusterfs-client It must use the LLDAP server for centralised authentication It must have the main 5 nodes in its hosts file, in case DNS fails It must have certain tools/packages installed I want it to be very general, in the sense that I can use it for things other then just the nodes of the server, say if I want one specific computer to authenticate against my LLDAP server. ...

Let me just start by saying that I do not need any of this, it is more-or-less just because I can, and want to. Internet We have a gigabit fibre connection running into our house. I’d love to have multiple WAN for failover, but frankly, it’s not worth it, as we have high enough uptime with our current ISP alone. Internal network From there, it heads into our ISP modem, then ISP router, and then straight into our main 8-port switch. This, then connects to out PoE switch, which powers our two Unifi U7 Pro access points (that’s what the Unifi Controller is for). There are also 3 cables that then come out of the 8-port switch. Two for the Raspberry Pis, and one for my laptop. This allows all the server nodes to have the fastest possible internet connection they can have. ...

I’m quite the tech enthusiast, especially when it comes to Google (I really really want to work there in the future). I know it’s a bit late but there was a lot to unpack, so here’s my take on Google I/O 2025. I/O 2025 was all about AI. The event did literally start with an AI generated video, showcasing their new model’s (Veo 3) capabilities. It was a bit rough, but pretty good for AI. ...

This will be a short one. For those who didn’t know, init 0 is essentially another way to shutdown a unix-based system, by changing the init run level to 0, essentially shutting down the system in a controlled manner. I chose it because its a reference to Unix (and Linux), and I spend a lot of time interacting with Linux. That doesn’t mean I won’t post anything about what I do on my Windows PC - this blog is supposed to be a digital notepad of all things techy, and so it won’t be limited to just that. ...

Why? One of the central aspects of my setup is the LLDAP server. This allows all services to authenticate using the same credentials, meaning users just need to remember one set of logins. One thing I wanted to do was to ensure the servers also authenticated against the same server. Let’s get started I initially started off by following the guide on the LLDAP repository to setup NSLCD in combination with LLDAP, however I soon found the NSLCD was no longer actively supported. This meant that it was quite lacking in the feature space, and often had weird compatibility issues. ...

Nodes Let’s take a look into what the ‘(home)lab’ (that’s quite a generous word) consists of… 1 Raspberry Pi 5 1 Raspberry Pi 3 2 Oracle cloud free-tier VMs My other laptop, which adds some power to the ‘cluster’ when I’m not using it So in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that powerful. But that also adds to the challenge, as things might need some tweaking to get working. Of course, this comes with the caveat of wanting to drop-kick my laptop out of the windows when things don’t work, but it’s all part of the fun…, right? ...

Welcome to Init0 02:48:38 vivaan@ultimate ~ → man init0 Hey! Welcome to Init0, my digital notepad for all things techy, where I share whatever I happen to be working on at the moment. Init0 is a place for anything, from Home Automation, to my programming endeavours, to me trying to self-host half of Google. Whether you’re here to learn something new, see what I’ve been building, or just take a peek into my workflow — I’m glad you stopped by. ...