Mikelius

I’d say anyone wanting to go this deep into a home monitoring setup will likely go with what works best for them instead of reading and following the entirety of this guide… I’m one of those people…

Wrote my own log parsing software to put into a database, display and alert through grafana, which is alerting through a homemade webhook that sends a notification to ntfy based on severity… And I also use uptime Kuma like mentioned, but my notifications channel is ntfy. No cloudflare for my internal services, only wireguard to connect home and use everything. And definitely no telegram.

Plenty of other stuff setup, but my security alerts and monitoring rely heavily on the syslog/grafana server which helps me monitor everything.

I converted my gaming machine into a server as well. I actually took the graphics card out as I couldn’t find a major use for it, but kept the 12 core Ryzen and upped it to 128gb memory. It now self host way too many things, including a few game servers my friends and I play… But even with all this, CPU carries along nicely and not even at half memory consumption (yet).

But as others have asked, what’s your goal? Don’t overkill it if you’re only hosting one service or something. If you’re doing a lot like I do, then up the RAM. And seriously consider whether the GPU is even useful or needed if you’re not using a desktop environment.

I’ve had this issue many times as well. I’ve found changing the MTU would help since it seems some filter specific ranges. Doesn’t always work but I’ve had more success than failure doing so

Glad I looked at this thread. The fact they’re cheap and have what sound like reliable PoE hats… Tempted to replace a few old Pis lol. Maybe. But can at least say no future devices will be Pis at this point.

Note: only using them for simple things. Wireguard VPN (no I don’t have a fast internet so I don’t need more than the 1gb connection speed), pi hole, and a touch panel I installed that connects to home assistant on the wall.

Thanks for clarifying! Took a deeper look on my computer and I guess I learned that NoScript was misidentifying due to the cors or something. Just had to call it out before, as one can never be too careful these days :D

I use iperf3 with Speedtest’s servers, personally. But for a browser, yes JavaScript is needed… But needing JavaScript files from like 20 different domains is typically a red flag for me on any site.

My solution to this question a year or so ago was to take my gaming desktop, which was collecting dust after I moved to my gaming laptop, and gut it down to a 4U server rack case. Best decision I’ve ever made. 12 core Ryzen and 128gb memory. Got a 10g adapter in the pci express, 8xHDD for data and then 2 mirrored nvme for the OS itself. Only thing I kept out was the video card since I had no use for it (yet)

An equivalent “server” on the market would probably cost a fortune and cost you a ridiculous amount of electricity.

The NoScript list terrifies me a little though… Not sure what’s going on there, but that’s a lot of JavaScript lol.

I’ve had the opposite experience and was actually referring to this generation in my comment, specifically for the series X.

With Xbox 360 and even some Xbox one games, I was able to come home with the game and put it into the console knowing I could play it right away from the disc (or install for the Xbox one and play). When I buy a game now, referring to physical copies, I’m unable to play without requiring internet. I understand some games have limitations on disc size, but once upon a time, that’s where multi disc came in. Just the other day I forgot to unplug my console from the network to play a game and was hit by a firmware update request that I couldn’t say “later” to. Once that finally finished, I unplugged but I guess the console already got wiff of an update for the game I wanted to play and said I need to be connected to the internet to continue.

This is definitely not something I ran into with older generations, personally. That being said, it sounds like your experience was different, so I suppose mileage may vary

For me, it’s just that I don’t want to have to turn the console on with plans to play for 1 hour only to be introduced to mandatory forced updates or show installation times that eat that entire hour away anyway. I just want to play my damn games, not to mention 100% offline if I so choose to.

Lots of comments already mentioning the differences. I have tried these, including the mentioned ipfire, and decided on the end to use opnsense plus openwrt on two different devices.

I chose opnsense at the time many years ago because it supported wireguard out of the box, where as pfsense required some weird install process I didn’t want to deal with. Plus I liked the UI to opnsense more.

My moden has been literally replaced by my firewall so I have the ONT connected to it and then use it to do all the heavy lifting for… Well, firewall stuff. It connects to a VPN so my entire network routes through the VPN. Then my openwrt device is connected to that. It also handles firewall stuff, but more at an internal level (keeping network devices only permitted to communicate with devices I say are okay, blocking internet access, etc) and also hosts my nginx setup to route to various servers.

While I could do everything on one machine with opnsense, I’ve got a particular setup that allows me to have multiple devices at the firewall level, truly isolated from the rest of my internal network (for a couple of internet open port services). And it gives me peace of mind that if someone found a zero day in opnsense, I’m not totally screwed unless they also got one in openwrt.

To answer “which is better to begin with”, I personally find opnsense way more flexible and robust than the other 2 options. Has a lot more capabilities and upgrading is super easy without requiring jumping through weird hoops and such like openwrt does.

Unless it’s my cat. Got heavily filtered water and use it to fill 3 different fountain bowls in different parts of the house (none near the food source, but I did that because if they are, she’ll eat her food over them…) and the cat still demands I turn the sink on instead. Same exact water, and even though I change her water out almost every other day, the sink wins. Just glad she hasn’t figured out how to turn it on yet…

Funny enough the last fountain I got looks like a faucet and she’s like “nah I’m not stupid, turn the sink on.”

Try using the private IP options instead and see if that works. The generic one being 10.64.0.1, but other options that include ad voicing and such ranging from 100.64.0.1 to 100.64.0.25 or something like that. I’ve got my entire network setup behind their VPN and a a pihole pointing to one of their private DNS addresses without any issues. I left their pubic DNS years ago so that I could make sure my DNS requests were always within the tunnel instead

Not much for myself, like many others. But my backups are manual. I have an external drive I backup to and unplug as I intentionally want to keep it completely isolated from the network in case of a breach. Because of that, maybe 10 minutes a week? Running gentoo with tons of scripts and docker containers that I have automatically updating. The only time I need to intervene the updates is when my script sends me a push notification of an eselect news item (like a major upcoming update) or kernel update.

I also use a custom monitoring software I wrote that ties into a MySQL db that’s connected to with grafana for general software, network alerts (new devices connecting to network, suspicious DNS requests, suspicious ports, suspicious countries being reached out to like china, etc) or hardware failures (like a raid drive failing)… So yeah, automate if you know how to script or program, and you’ll be pretty much worry free most of the time.

Plus 1 to openvas. UI is indeed horrendous though.

Be careful running high load tests against sensitive devices. I once ran it against a PoE switch I used for my cameras and it did something so crazy that it required me not to only power cycle the switch, but to disconnect all the cameras first and then power cycle. Was super confusing and felt like it found a way to short the device lol. Scared the hell out of me.

That being said, I’ve found many many things to improve on my devices thanks to openvas.

Even if a game doesn’t look like it’ll work based on protondb, try it anyway. Many times I’ve had games that were marked as low ratings start up without any changes lol. I remember even when d4 beta came out, I saw people struggling to install and play it on the first weekend… Worked out of the box for me.

I also use Linux mint with cinnamon… Is this not just the Ctrl + Fn + arrow key? I think that’s it, or maybe shift (not at my computer to check). Either way, I use this all the time to fit windows either on 50% of the left or right, or in one of the 4 corners. For example, if I want it in the top right, I just use the hot keys and target right then up.

I tend to find out about vulnerabilities before it hits the news outlets from the rss feed at https://seclists.org/oss-sec/

Other than that, I’ve got a bunch of other security feeds I follow and also have automated updates with just about everything.

I’d do my part in buying games from them more if they didn’t block my home network from their website lol. Yes it’s behind a VPN, and no I’m not turning it off to give up my privacy just to buy something I can get from stores that won’t block me.

I honestly used to buy games from them a lot, but once their website became inaccessible, I sorta forgot about them. Surely I’m not the only one right…?

I personally use it on a protectli with the 2.5G ports. I also replaced my ISP modern with a protectli running OpnSense. Decided to opt into that as my solution to have two different softwares protecting my network and also so I could scope internet facing devices at the OpnSense level instead of internal to the network. Just in case they get compromised, they can’t access the rest of the network. Call me paranoid… But I also find it much easier to manage lol.