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I pasted a fresh Postgres password straight into environment: on a new compose file, then stopped with my cursor over git add . That password was about to sit in plain text in a repo I push to self-hosted Gitea, not because I was careless, but because environment: is the path of least resistance.
I edited a Dockerfile, ran docker compose up -d, and the container came back up running the exact same code it had before. No error, no warning, just silence, and a service that looked started but was not the one I had just changed.
I ran docker compose stop expecting the stack to fully disappear. A few seconds later, docker compose ps still listed every container and the default network was still there, nothing had been removed, just stopped.
The power blipped, the host rebooted, and half the homelab stack came back up on its own — the other half just sat there, exited. Every container had a restart: line; they weren't all the same line.
Two containers on the same host could reach each other, and neither one was supposed to. Both had landed on Docker Compose's default bridge network — a network that doesn't ask permission before connecting things.
I ran docker compose down -v to force a clean restart, out of muscle memory from a different project where that flag was harmless. It wasn't harmless here — it deleted a named volume along with the containers.
Every self-hosted apps roundup is an unvetted list with no honest 'skip this one.' Six categories actually tested on a homelab — AI chatbot, music, automation, Reddit, Git, and CI/CD — with real hardware cost and one category that isn't worth it for most people.
Price and sound quality rarely keep people on Spotify -- years of playlists do. A real migration run with two transfer tools, tracking exactly what transferred, what needed manual fixing, and the real free-tier limits on each.
Gitea and Forgejo run on well under 1GB of RAM; GitLab CE documents a 4GB minimum. This comparison covers real resource footprint, CI runner maturity (Gitea/Forgejo Actions vs GitLab CI), and GitHub migration friction for homelab hardware.
Redlib is the actively maintained fork of the archived Libreddit -- a self-hosted, ad-free, tracker-free Reddit frontend. It's easy to run in Docker, but Reddit actively rate-limits and blocks it, so public instances go down often and self-hosting your own copy only shifts who owns that problem.
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A hands-on guide to building and running a home lab: hardware, virtualization, storage, media, and self-hosted services — from someone who runs one.
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The English-language guide for internationals to Hausratversicherung (home contents insurance) in Germany: what it covers, what it costs, how to compare providers and when a renter actually needs it.
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The English-language guide to private and supplementary retirement saving in Germany for internationals — the 2027 Altersvorsorgedepot reform, Riester, Rürup (Basisrente), betriebliche Altersvorsorge, private pension insurance, and ETF vs subsidised pensions.
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The English-language guide to buying a home in Germany as an international — closing costs, property transfer tax by state, getting a Baufinanzierung mortgage, the notary-to-Grundbuch process, renting vs buying, and the home insurance you need.
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The English-language guide to installing and running a home EV charger (wallbox) in Germany — real install costs, Netzbetreiber and landlord rules, hardware comparison, and solar charging.
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