Server Compass Blog
Guides, tutorials, and release notes for the self-hosted generation.
May 3, 2026
Encrypted Backup Files Without Leaving Plaintext Behind: Atomic Temp-File HygieneYou decrypt a backup, work on it, re-encrypt, delete the temp file. Three weeks later you find the unencrypted version still sitting in /tmp because the script crashed on step 2. Here's the cleanup-guaranteed pattern.
May 2, 2026
Why Your *arr Stack Keeps Failing to Import (and the One Path Setting That Fixes It)Sonarr says "file not found". qBittorrent says "download complete". The file is right there. The fix is almost always the same: container path mismatch between downloader and media manager. Here's the model that works.
May 2, 2026
A $40/Month Kubernetes Lab Architecture (Without the Cloud Markup)Real Kubernetes for $40/month using cheap VPSes — not a single-node toy, not a managed-K8s wallet drain. Here's the topology, the distro choice, and what it can and can't do.
May 2, 2026
The Monthly Homelab Health Checklist: 12 Checks in 30 MinutesHomelabs degrade quietly. A 30-minute monthly check covers backups, disks, certs, security updates, and the dozen other things that fail catastrophically when you stop watching them. Here's the checklist and the commands.
May 2, 2026
The Preflight Script: 60 Seconds That Save a Two-Hour OutageMost proxy and SSL outages are silent regressions, not new failures. A 60-second preflight script that captures current state — then compares after — catches them before users do.
May 2, 2026
Case Study: A Misconfigured Docker Network Causing Intermittent CORS ErrorsCORS errors that fire 1 in 5 requests usually look like a frontend bug. This one was a reverse proxy auto-attached to the wrong Docker network — preflight requests landing on the wrong backend, OPTIONS responses missing CORS headers. The diagnostic path.
May 2, 2026
Synology NFS Reads Fine, Writes Fail: The UID Mismatch CookbookReads work. ls works. Writes return Permission denied with no clear reason. The cause is almost always a UID mismatch between your VM's user and the NFS export's squash settings. Here's the fix that doesn't require disabling all security.
May 2, 2026
Where Dokploy Users Get Stuck With File Transfer (and the Path-Visibility Pattern That Helps)Dokploy's file upload "works" but the deployed container can't see the files. The cause is volume-mapping invisibility — the upload lands in one path, the app expects another. Same issue affects every Docker-based PaaS. Here's the pattern.
May 2, 2026
Docker on Proxmox: Run It in a VM, Not on the HostInstalling Docker directly on a Proxmox host is fast to set up and slow to regret. Running Docker inside a VM is slightly more setup and dramatically fewer future headaches. Here's the case, the setup, and the LXC alternative for the in-between.
May 2, 2026
Picking Homelab Hardware by Workload, Not HypeMost homelab buying guides optimize for spec sheet bragging rights. The right way is to start from what you'll actually run — Plex, Home Assistant, a few self-hosted apps — and work backwards. Here's the workload-first method.
May 2, 2026
NFS + Docker Without Tears: A Setup That Actually WorksMounting NFS volumes into Docker containers seems straightforward and is, in fact, a reliable source of UID mismatches, file-locking weirdness, and import failures. Here's a setup that gets it right the first time.
May 2, 2026
Your Backup Restore Partially Failed. Now What?A clean restore is rare. Most real-world restores are partial — some files in, some still corrupt, app half-working. A safe rollback strategy from a partial restore is harder than from a fresh failure. Here's the playbook.