Homelab Handbook: Getting Started is now available

My first guide is out. Homelab Handbook: Getting Started is a practical, no-nonsense handbook for turning an affordable used PC into your first homelab, and it’s available now from the Kaddu Systems shop.

What it is and who it’s for

A homelab is simply a computer (or a few) that you run at home to host services you’d otherwise pay someone else for, or hand your data to.

It can also be a playground where you can experiment and learn new skills, without affecting your production systems and important data.

Home network · Part 1

Upgrading our home network with a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

Home network v. 1.0

In this post I will be upgrading our home network with the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X. Our home network is due a very needed update as it is not running optimally. We have an reasonable internet connection through our local provider. It is a Fibre connection currently running at 100/100 Mbit/s. 

Reconnecting FatAgnus - part 1

Some of my family’s data resides on a ZFS pool made up of 4 disks that are mirrored two and two. This data has been offline for a little while and I need to reconnect it to look through and reorganise our data storage. The YouTube video futher down this article documents my endeavours to get to these files and data

In this first part I will be looking at the computer I intend to use for this task and I install TrueNAS Scale. The drives are already in the server but I may need to reorganise the hardware a bit.

Explainer: What is RAID?

Reading about servers and storage you might have wondered: What is RAID? RAID is a method of melting multiple harddrives together to form a (often) larger logical drive. The acronym expands to either Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

RAID was defined in a research paper: “A case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)” (Patterson et al, 1988). Andrew S Tanenbaum uses the latter acronym in his book (“Structured Computer Organization 5th Edition”, Tanenbaum, 2006, p 89). I had access to the 5th edition, from which I reference but you can get the 6th edition from Amazon.com and amazon.de (affiliate links).

My home servers · Part 3

Setup 2024 - taking stock of my servers

It is time for taking stock of my servers. My setup has evolved a bit, but not as well planned as I would like it to have. I currently have 4 servers - 5 if you count my Linode/Akamai VPS but only one of them is actual dedicated server hardware.

Servers as of February 2024

Server number 1 is a Raspberry Pi 4B 2 GB running my Home Assistant and Unifi controller. This boots off a 2.5" 250 GB SSD connected via USB.

My home servers · Part 2

Time to upgrade the HP SmartArray P410

My Home Server is struggling with high IOWait under IO load and the time has come to upgrade the HP SmartArray P410 SAS/SATA controller with Write Cache.

In Setting up a Home Server using an old (2009) HP Proliant ML150 G6 I describe how my storage pool is using a mixed set of drives. The drives are connected to two different

Hardware installation

The HP Proliant ML150 G6 server that I am using for our Home Server has 2 storage controllers. It has an onboard SATA controller with 6 SATA ports. In addition to that it has an HP SmartArray P410 8 port SAS/SATA controller.

Getting started with Ubuntu on your desktop

I have been using Linux for a long time. Some times with a Dual Boot setup - that is when the system starts you choose between the installed operating systems e.g. Windows and Linux. And I have been using Linux as the main desktop as well. In this post I will be exploring getting started with Ubuntu.

This write-up will document my choices and reasonings for those choice. Mainly as a reminder to myself but perhaps it can be of use to you too! It will be a “Work-in-Progress” so consider it ever-changing.

Installing a Gotek into an external floppy case

The Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 relies heavily on their builtin 3.5 inch 880 KB floppy drives. Unfortunately these drives and the floppy disks they store their information on are not aging well. In this post I will be installing a Gotek Floppy Emulator into an external 3.5" floppy drive case to solve this problem.

I originally wrote and posted this article on Amiga Retro Computing.

When I got my new old Amiga 500, I was fortunate enough to also acquire a Gotek Floppy Emulator. The Gotek basically stores images of floppy disks on a USB drive. Many legacy devices like music keyboards, knitting machines, embriodery machines, cnc machines, etc uses 3.5" floppies that are hard to come by as well as failing floppy drives.

My Commodore history - part three: Back to the Amiga

I finally got back into the Commodore Amiga in late May 2019 by purchasing a used Amiga 500. I have yet to set it up permanently but it has been running a few times. I am planning how to set it up physically as well as how my setup will be with regard to software and hardware, etc.

This article was originally posted on my old Amiga site (Amiga Retro Computing)

My Commodore history - part two: Commodore Amiga

As you may have read in My Commodore history – part one: Commodore 64, my computer story started with a Commodore 64. Through a friend, who had an Amiga 1000 I was introduced to the Amiga world. As I remember, he later got both an Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000. He actually had an Atari ST as well.

This post originally appeared on my old Amiga site (Amiga Retro Computing).

If you have yet to read part one, you can read it here: My Commodore history - part one: Commodore 64

My Commodore history - part one: Commodore 64

My history with having computers started with the Commodore 64.

This post originally appeared on my old Amiga site (Amiga Retro Computing).

In the early 1980’s when I was a child, me and my friends frequented the retail shops in town that had computers. Back then shops used to have computers on display that you could try. Only from time to time you would get told to move on. 

Those days the computers were the Texas Instruments TI-99, the Power 3000 - a rebranded Lambda 8300, the Amstrad CPC 464 and the Commodore Vic 20 and Commodore 64. The ZX 81 and ZX Spectrum must have been present as well but I do not remember seeing them until later.

How to get (back) into IT

Update July 2026

At the end of 2024, I got a small contract job doing as an End User Support Specialist at HAVI Logistics in Vejle. That meant that I could a little bit of what I did before, though it was main level 1 work, with very limited access into Microsoft 365 admin, Intune, etc. The rest of the week, I continued being a Charity Fundraiser.

Then mid-January 2025 I was offered a 2 month contract as an IT Supporter with Mansoft, providing Level 1 & 2 support from the Digital Workplace department of a manufacturing company in Stilling, as well as helping out our sister department Manufacturing IT, whenever there was an IT-related stop on a production line. This position got extended twice until late May 2025.