homelab

Fedora installation

Download Fedora Media Writer and the Fedora Server ISO, and create a bootable USB drive.

On macOS, run the following command to remove the quarantine attribute from the Fedora Media Writer app:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/FedoraMediaWriter.app

When installing Fedora, disable Secure Boot and Legacy Boot, use UEFI boot only. If still not able to boot, disable Fast Boot, try USB ports with 2.0 speeds.

With NVIDIA GPU, in the GRUB boot menu, press e to edit the boot parameters, and add nomodeset to the end of the line starting with linux, then press Ctrl + X to boot.

Setup

Prerequisites

Setup dotfiles from here

Basic

1. Update the packages

sudo dnf upgrade -y

2. Reboot

sudo reboot

SSH

1. On your client, generate an SSH key (skip this step if you already have an SSH key)

ssh-keygen -t ed25519

2. Copy the public key to the server

ssh-copy-id <username>@<server-ip>

3. Disable password authentication by sudoedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/50-disable-password.conf and set the following options:

PasswordAuthentication no

Firewall

Add the following rules to the firewall:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=ssh
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=samba

Reload the firewall:

sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Verify the firewall rules:

sudo firewall-cmd --list-all

Netbird

Go to Netbird dashboard and select "Add peer", and select "Server" and copy the command to run on the server.

ZFS

To install, follow the instructions from here.

To list all available ZFS pools to be imported, run the following command:

sudo zpool import

To import a ZFS pool, run the following command:

sudo zpool import <pool-name>

To mount a ZFS pool, run the following command:

sudo zfs mount <pool-name>

To specify a mount point for a ZFS pool, run the following command:

sudo zfs set mountpoint=/path/to/mount <pool-name>

To enable auto-mounting of ZFS pools on boot, run the following command:

sudo systemctl enable zfs-import-cache.service
sudo systemctl enable zfs-import-scan.service
sudo systemctl enable zfs-mount.service
sudo systemctl enable zfs.target

To export a ZFS pool before migrating to another system, run the following command:

sudo zpool export <pool-name>

SMB Share

To install, run the following command:

sudo dnf install samba samba-common samba-client

Since some containers require read/write access to the SMB share, you need to enable SMB to allow read/write access to all files by running the following command:

sudo setsebool -P samba_export_all_rw on

SMB uses user from the host system, but the password is stored separately, to set the password for the user, run the following command:

sudo smbpasswd -a <username>

To enable the user, run the following command:

sudo smbpasswd -e <username>

Edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file and add the following lines under the [global] section for iOS write access:

vfs objects = streams_xattr

Add a new section for each share:

[myshare]
path = /path/to/share
valid users = username
guest ok = no
writable = yes
browsable = yes

Start the SMB service and enable it to start on boot:

sudo systemctl enable --now smb nmb

Install NVIDIA firmwares (if you have an NVIDIA GPU)

Install kernel headers for module building:

sudo dnf install -y kernel-devel kernel-headers gcc make dkms acpid

To install the driver, see the instructions from here, different GPU architectures have different instructions, so make sure to follow the correct instructions for the GPU architecture you have.

Wait until the module is built, to verify that the module is built, run the following command:

modinfo -F version nvidia

It should print the version of the NVIDIA driver and not modinfo: ERROR: Module nvidia not found.

To rebuild the module, run the following command:

sudo akmods --force

Then reboot with sudo reboot and verify with this command:

nvidia-smi

Unprivileged ports

Enable rootless container to bind to privileged ports by running the following commands:

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0
echo 'net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0' | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/99-rootless-container-ports.conf

To verify:

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start

Something like this should be printed:

net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start = 0

If not, apply the changes with:

sudo sysctl --system

Docker

Setup the repository:

sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile https://download.docker.com/linux/fedora/docker-ce.repo

Install Docker:

sudo dnf install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Then start the Docker service and enable it to start on boot:

sudo systemctl enable --now docker.service
sudo systemctl enable --now containerd.service

Enable GPU support for Docker

Add the NVIDIA repository:

curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/rpm/nvidia-container-toolkit.repo | \
  sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.repo

Install the NVIDIA container toolkit:

sudo dnf install -y nvidia-container-toolkit

Verify with GPU access:

sudo docker run --rm --device nvidia.com/gpu=all docker.io/nvidia/cuda:11.0.3-base-ubuntu20.04 nvidia-smi

If it does not work, restart the Docker service:

sudo systemctl restart docker

Usage

Docker Services

1. Copy the .env.example file to .env and set the environment variables.
2. Run docker compose up -d --remove-orphans to start the services.

Restore backup

1. Copy the .env.example file to .env and set the environment variables for restic.
2. Start the restic container with the following command:

docker run --rm -it --env-file .env -v <restore-location>:/mnt/restore --entrypoint sh restic/restic

Get all the snapshots and the corresponding id:

restic snapshots

Get the files in the snapshot:

restic ls <snapshot-id>

Restore the files:

restic restore <snapshot-id>:/mnt/source --target /mnt/restore/

Development (Docker)

1. Edit the compose.yml file and the yaml files in the docker to add or remove services.
2. Add the environment variables to the .env file.
3. Run env_example.sh to generate the new .env.example file.