Letting Auditors into My Hypervisors

Introduction I would like to showcase an internet-accessible, hardened homelab some time in 2026. Before I forget, I need to document how to let people log into my Proxmox nodes with their Google accounts as auditors. This post assumes that network access has been provided one way or another. Ingredients A domain name (managed by CloudflareDNS) PVE 9.1: Just-In-Time login target Cloudflared (for exposing Authentik’s ACME client) Authentik: OpenID login broker Google Cloud - Google Auth Platform Client A Google account Chatbot of your liking Pre-Requisites Proxmox VE with HTTPS For authentication to work, services being exposed should have secured subdomains. This short blog by Ikiesow covers most of the process. Create API key from Cloudflare dashboard to be used by Proxmox VE under Datacenter/ACME for DNS-01 or HTTP-01 challanges. ...

2026-01-28 · 6 min · 1150 words · Celil Buğra Karacan

FRR and OpenWRT on PVE 8.3 for Virtualized Networks

TL;DR: Poor man’s private cloud network without proper IPAM or DNS integration, and with a severed cluster firewall on Proxmox VE. As simple as it gets. I had a dream of trying out redundant storage on a private cloud (as in VPS hosting). It took a year and a half to comprehend the vocabulary, another year and a half to try KVM out on a Fedora workstation, yet another year and a half of cluster laying, but at last I’ve got to a PoC. ...

2024-12-21 · 12 min · 2535 words · Celil Buğra Karacan

FOG Server Bare-metal Backups

That gent who is’t doest not checketh on his coff’rs shalt loseth his apples! TL;DR: I want (opensource) bare-metal backups of virtualization cluster nodes There is Clonezilla, and I had written about it before. There also is a server edition, which makes deploying a single image to multiple computers faster. But, it was hard to install for me. More importantly, not cut for my needs. FOG Project on the other hand has: ...

2024-08-18 · 7 min · 1401 words · Celil Buğra Karacan

WoL-enabled Psuedo-headless Proxmox Nodes with Custom NIC Names

I had some spare parts and wanted to setup a Proxmox Backup Server for my 3-node ceph-enabled cluster. It didn’t go strictly as planned, but I found a way to ditch GPUs on my nodes, which then turned out to be too good to be true. Now, here I am with extra NICs and fancy names returned by ip addr. Lemons -> Lemonade WoL, How? As of now, my cluster is tethered only to a power outlet with a wireless network uplink. The cluter’s router is a (Teltonika RUT240) , which supports ZeroTier through a plug-in. Being able to turn machines on over an overlay network is a plus for me. I don’t use it across the globe, but this keeps thing simple and neatly isolated from smart home appliances connected to the main router. ...

2024-04-22 · 8 min · 1693 words · Celil Buğra Karacan

On Proxmox 8.1 Cloudinit ARM64 VM Creation

TL;DR: This is a guide on running 64-bit ARM operating systems on Proxmox (amd64) via emulation. Although cloudinit is the charm in here, an ordinary ISO mount for manually installing an OS works as well. This guide assumes previous experience in setting up a VM on Proxmox VE Web UI and acquaintance with CLI. Following are the steps taken in an ordered list. Terminal use is minimal, however, checkout Techno Tim’s Notes and Proxmox VE documentation for terminal use for creating and modifying a VM. If have not set cloudinit before, watching Techno Tim’s video is a good start. ...

2024-04-13 · 6 min · 1136 words · Celil Buğra Karacan

Proxmox 8.1 Ceph with Routed IPv6 Physically Isolated Network

Another short one. After sourcing some almost-dead second-hand enterprise SSDs and crimping some short ethernet cables, I can migrate VMs and CTs at will or with HA policy. Homelab 2.0 is here. ASCII diagram: Below diagram does not show corona/internet NIC. Below is only CEPH related, physically closed loop network. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 +------+ +------+ +------+ | | | | | | ###[0]### | ###[0]### | ###[0]### | # # | # # | # # | # pve # | # pve # | # pve # | # 1 # | # 2 # | # 3 # | # # | # # | # # | ###[1]### | ###[1]### | ###[1]### | T | T | T | | +------+ +------+ | +----------------------------------+ End result: ...

2024-03-12 · 4 min · 699 words · Celil Buğra Karacan

How I made my own R8 5850X (10c/20t)

TL;DR: Adventure of reviving a CPU as a hypervisor About few months ago, I found a bargain on a seemingly faulty Ryzen R9 5900X unit. Stangely enough, it was said to drop internet connectivity while gaming. Long story short, there are 2 defective physical cores out of the 12 present. I ended up isolating them with isolcpus= kernel parameter within boot menu. Methodology: Video recording of the process. Includes temporary solution for GRUB2 (see /etc/default/grub or /etc/kernel/cmdline for proxmox sysboot for persistence), an example of OS installation failure without modification, and a test example. ...

2024-01-22 · 4 min · 751 words · Celil Buğra Karacan