Self-hosted applications and infrastructure covering deployment, security, maintenance and day-to-day operation in Realm Labs.
I turned a spare Raspberry Pi 3 into a dedicated full-screen dashboard appliance using Debian, X, Openbox and Chromium. This is the complete setup, including autologin, startx, kiosk mode, display blanking and the Chromium keyring prompt that had to be fixed properly.
Portainer is probably one of the longest-running pieces of software in Realm Labs. Long before the current Synology, Proxmox, Home Assistant and centralised automation setup existed, I was already using Docker on a Raspberry Pi. And almost immediately, I put…
One of the main goals behind Realm Labs is to run as much as possible on infrastructure I control. That naturally led to an interesting question: Could I host the Realm Labs website from my own homelab without exposing the…
Install Docker and Portainer on Raspberry Pi using current LTS guidance, persistent storage and secure defaults, with verified commands and practical homelab advice.
RealmLabs is a website about building, breaking, fixing and improving technology, so hosting it on somebody else’s server always felt slightly at odds with the idea. Instead, I decided to make the website another part of the home lab. The…
See how Realm Labs uses Docker and Portainer for self hosting, with repeatable Compose stacks, persistent storage, secure networking, updates and tested backups.