arthur@homelab:~$ cat ~/uses.md
Uses
This is not a shopping list. It is a snapshot of tools that have earned a place in the system by being useful, understandable, or both.
Infrastructure
| Tool | Job |
|---|---|
| Incus | System containers and virtual-machine management |
| Docker Compose | Packaging application stacks that already live in containers |
| Caddy | Public, tailnet, and LAN reverse proxies; automatic HTTPS |
| Tailscale | Encrypted connectivity between sites, machines, and services |
| Bind | Split DNS for private names on the tailnet |
| Ceph and ZFS | Storage experiments with very different operational personalities |
Operations
| Tool | Job |
|---|---|
| Forgejo | Git hosting, package publishing, and build automation |
| Prometheus | Metrics, rules, and the starting point for alerts |
| Grafana | Dashboards when a graph answers the question better than a log |
| Promtail | Shipping journal and application logs |
| NUT | UPS state, power-event handling, and coordinated shutdowns |
Working preferences
- Plain Markdown for notes and runbooks.
- Configuration beside the incident report that explains why it exists.
- Small purpose-built exporters instead of pretending every useful signal arrives in a standard integration.
- Stable, low-power machines before loud retired enterprise hardware.
- A terminal and Git before a management dashboard that cannot be reproduced.