Hi everyone,
I’m Benjamin Ollson from British Columbia, Canada. I run a 24/7 home server on a spare MSI laptop — Pop!_OS, GTX 1060, 16GB of RAM, 54 Docker containers, Ollama for local AI, Home Assistant, Jellyfin, Paperless-ngx, and a simulated fly world called Willowmere. I’ve just started a channel, The Den, and my first episode, “The Laptop That Never Sleeps,” is already made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trqxE9Ji19U
I’m posting here because this forum is where I’ve seen the most honest build logs — people showing what broke, not just what worked. I have a 3-year-old daughter, and I’m trying to build a one-person automation business to be a good role model for her and work toward things like a college fund, after being let go for my boss’s financial reasons. I’m not asking for money or gear, just a hand up: if anyone has a look at the build, or advice on the smartest next step toward a desktop, I’d be grateful. I’ll document the bugs honestly.
Since I first posted, I’ve worked through the security advice from this forum: management interfaces are Tailscale-only now, every container runs with no-new-privileges, Home Assistant lost its privileged flag, Syncthing runs as a non-root user, and fail2ban is watching SSH and the web server. I also set up a self-hosted RustDesk server for remote access. The laptop is up to 54 containers and still going.
Thanks,
Benjamin Ollson, British Columbia, Canada