Creating an "On Call" Light with Toggl and Home Assistant
How I took an ESP32 powered matrix display, Toggl Track, and Home Assistant to create an ‘on-call’ light for my door
David Hutchison
EJB3, Stateful Firewalls, and Connection Timeouts with Payara
After a firewall change our remote EJB3 calls started hanging mysteriously. The root cause? Silent TCP connection drops. To fix this we needed to enable and tune TCP keepalives at both the OS and Payara levels.
Avoiding passlib Dependency in Ansible When Generating Traefik User Files
Avoid issues with missing Python dependencies like passlib by generating Traefik user files in Ansible using templating and password_hash. This lightweight alternative works seamlessly in restricted environments like TrueNAS.
LLMs on a Homelab Without a GPU? Here's What I Found
Can integrated GPUs accelerate local LLMs? I explored running self-hosted models like Ollama with ROCm on an AMD 5600G-based homelab, but ran into kernel and memory allocation limitations. Here’s what I found and where things stand today.
Installing Python Libraries from Source: pip, Poetry, and Flat Layout Pitfalls
What to do when pip can’t install a library from a Git source due to flat layout issues—and how Poetry, setuptools, and PEP 621 come into play.