homelab/README.md

Homelab

A self-hosted homelab running on Docker Compose, built and maintained on an Ubuntu Server. This repo documents the actual infrastructure-as-code behind it — deployment configs only, no runtime data or secrets.

Overview

This is a real, running homelab — not a demo. It's deployed on a home Ubuntu server and managed entirely through Docker Compose, with each service isolated in its own folder. Configs here are the actual files running in production, with all secrets, API keys, and runtime state stripped out and replaced with .env.example placeholders.

Services

Service	Folder	Purpose
Monitoring stack	monitoring-grafana-promethues-cadvisor-node-exporter/	Prometheus for metrics collection, Grafana for dashboards, cAdvisor for per-container resource stats, node-exporter for host-level metrics
Pi-hole	pihole/	Network-wide DNS-level ad and tracker blocking
Portainer	portainer/	Web UI for managing and monitoring all Docker containers on the host
n8n	n8n/	Workflow automation engine, backed by Postgres
Samba	samba/	Network file sharing across LAN devices
Filebrowser	filebrowser/	Web-based file manager for the server's storage
Media stack	mediastack/	Plex (media server), Sonarr/Radarr/Prowlarr (media automation and indexing), qBittorrent (download client)
Minecraft	minecraft/	Self-hosted game server
Sentinel	sentinel/	Disk health monitoring integrated with smartctl, dumps output to container logs
smartctl	smartctl/	Disk health monitoring (S.M.A.R.T. data)
OpenHands	openhands/	Self-hosted AI coding agent (OpenHands/agent-canvas) backed by Ollama — see AI Coding Agent
Nginx Proxy Manager	nginx-proxy-manager/	Reverse proxy giving every service a friendly .home hostname with locally-trusted HTTPS — see Reverse Proxy
Semaphore	semaphore/	Self-hosted Ansible UI (alternative to AWX) — see Semaphore Guide

Repository structure

homelab/
├── monitoring-grafana-promethues-cadvisor-node-exporter/
│   └── docker-compose.yml
├── pihole/
│   ├── docker-compose.yml
│   └── .env.example
├── portainer/
│   └── docker-compose.yml
├── n8n/
│   ├── docker-compose.yaml
│   └── .env.example
├── samba/
│   ├── docker-compose.yml
│   └── .env.example
├── filebrowser/
│   └── docker-compose.yml
├── mediastack/
│   ├── plex/docker-compose.yml
│   ├── sonarr/docker-compose.yml
│   ├── radarr/docker-compose.yml
│   ├── prowlarr/docker-compose.yml
│   ├── whisparr/docker-compose.yml
│   └── download-client-qbittorent/docker-compose.yml
├── minecraft/
│   └── docker-compose.yml
├── sentinel/
│   └── docker-compose.yml
├── smartctl/
│   └── docker-compose.yml
├── openhands/
│   └── docker-compose.yaml
├── nginx-proxy-manager/
│   └── docker-compose.yaml
├── semaphore/                  
│   ├── docker-compose.yml
├── docs/
│   ├── Home.md
│   ├── Architecture-and-Hardware.md
│   ├── Monitoring-Stack.md
│   ├── Network-Services.md
│   ├── Media-Automation.md
│   ├── Workflow-Automation.md
│   ├── Storage-Health.md
│   ├── AI-Agent.md
│   ├── Reverse-Proxy.md
│   ├── Lessons-Learned.md
│   ├── Semaphore.md            
│   └── images/
└── .gitignore

Running a service

Each folder is a standalone Compose stack:

cd pihole
cp .env.example .env   # fill in real values
docker compose up -d

Security notes

• All .env files, runtime config directories, and databases are excluded via .gitignore — only deployment definitions (docker-compose.yml) and .env.example placeholders are tracked.
• Passwords referenced in compose files are injected via environment variables, never hardcoded.
• The AI coding agent (openhands/) currently uses a third-party API aggregator as its LLM backend — see AI Coding Agent for details and caveats. It has no access to the Docker socket or other containers on the host.

Lessons learned

• Splitting each service into its own folder with its own Compose file made it much easier to reason about dependencies and update services independently, instead of one giant Compose file.
• Runtime config/state (API keys, session tokens, library databases) needs to be gitignored at the directory level (**/config/, **/data/) — a plain text/secret grep alone isn't enough, since it silently skips over app-specific binary and XML config files.
• Centralized monitoring (Prometheus + Grafana + cAdvisor + node-exporter) made it possible to actually see resource usage per container, which mattered a lot on lower-spec hardware.
• Free-tier cloud AI APIs enforce regional access restrictions automatically — worth checking a provider's terms before building around "free tier" as an assumption. See AI Coding Agent.
• Wildcard TLS certs (*.home) are rejected by browsers on single-label local domains — certificates for local reverse proxies need explicit hostnames listed instead. See Reverse Proxy.

Roadmap

• Add a self-hosted Gitea instance for private repos and CI runners
• Auto-deploy via Watchtower on image updates
• Expand monitoring with alerting rules

Author

Reza — Computer Networks student, LPIC-1 GitHub