Podcast, episode 1: The green check lies
The first episode of the Homelab the Right Way Podcast, 46 minutes with three AI hosts on Proxmox backups that actually restore, why a two-node cluster freezes, the six self-hosting traps, Home Assistant motion lights and the turtle tank wire that fries an ESP32. Player, chapters, every article mentioned and the gear.
The Homelab the Right Way Podcast is here. Three hosts, Maya, Sam and Theo, talk through what the blog and the books keep coming back to: backups you can actually restore, networks that fail safe, self-hosting without the classic traps, and the small hardware details that quietly ruin a weekend.
A note on the hosts: Maya, Sam and Theo are fictional AI hosts. Their voices are synthetic, their faces in the clips are generated, and the episode was written with AI and edited by a human. Every fact in the episode comes from the Homelab the Right Way books and the posts linked below, so if something sounds too good to be true, the source is one tap away.
Chapters
- 00:04 — Cold open and welcome
- 02:39 — Backups: the green check lies
- 14:36 — Storage: RAID is not a backup, the NFS trap, and ZFS done right
- 19:39 — Gear break: the first switch
- 21:09 — Networking: what a /24 means and why your 2-node cluster freezes
- 27:04 — Self-hosting your photos, files and passwords the safe way
- 32:43 — Home Assistant: the motion light that turns off on you, and the Zigbee fix
- 36:17 — Gear break: the smart plug that reboots things
- 37:36 — The turtle tank: the wire that fries an ESP32, and the sensor that lies
- 44:29 — Three things we'd tell a beginner, and where to find all of this
What the episode covers, with the articles
Backups (02:39). The green check on a Proxmox backup job proves the job wrote some bytes somewhere, nothing more. The hosts walk through the 3-2-1 plan, keep-daily=7 and why it is not seven days of history, the backup job that silently skips every guest you created after you made it, Proxmox Backup Server on its own hardware, the four restore drills, the notification system and the dead-man's switch for jobs that stop running.
- Proxmox backups that actually work: 3-2-1, step by step
- keep-daily=7 doesn't mean 7 days of backups
- Your Proxmox backup job is probably skipping your new VMs
- A backup job that never runs never fails
Storage (14:36). The NFS share that drops at boot and lets a backup job fill the hypervisor's root disk, and the two-word fix (is_mountpoint). Why RAID and ZFS mirrors are one copy on resilient disks, why snapshots die with the pool, and the sanoid + syncoid pull-replication setup with a monthly checksum restore.
- When your NFS share drops, Proxmox backups fill your root disk
- RAID is not a backup: the 3-2-1 rule, honestly
- Snapshots on a schedule, replicas on another box: sanoid and syncoid pull replication for ZFS
Networking (21:09). What the /24 after an address actually says, why one flat network for the whole house is the trap, the five-zone plan from Lock Down Your Home Network, and why a two-node Proxmox cluster freezes the moment one node goes down (one vote out of two is not more than half). The QDevice fix, the Wi-Fi trap and the pvecm expected 1 emergency lever.
Self-hosting (27:04). Immich, Nextcloud or Syncthing, and Vaultwarden on one small box, and the six traps around them: one disk for everything, the Immich database on a network share, the hand-built Nextcloud, open signups and plain HTTP on Vaultwarden, forwarding ports to everything, and the backup that isn't one.
Home Assistant (32:43). The motion light that turns off while you are still in the hallway (mode: single is the culprit; mode: restart plus a wait_for_trigger with a for: is the fix), and the Zigbee fix that beats any setting: the coordinator on a USB 2.0 extension cable, away from the case and the access point.
The turtle tank (37:36). The Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 water monitor from Smart Turtle Tank: the one wire that can fry the board (the turbidity sensor's 4.5 V output into a 3.3 V pin, and the voltage divider that fixes it), the DS18B20 readings of 85 °C and -127 °C that are not temperatures at all, and the three numbers a tank has to get right before any electronics go near it.
- The one wire that can fry your ESP32 tank monitor
- DS18B20 reads 85 °C or -127 °C? Here's why
- 3 numbers your turtle tank has to get right
Gear mentioned in this episode
As an Amazon Associate the show earns from qualifying purchases. These are affiliate links; the price you pay is the same.
- TP-Link TL-SG105 5-port gigabit switch: the first upgrade almost every homelab makes. One cable from the router gives four more full-speed gigabit ports; metal case, fanless, nothing to configure.
- Kasa Smart Plug Ultra Mini EP10 (2-pack): a Wi-Fi plug with no hub and no subscription. Hard-reboot a frozen mini PC or router from your phone, and it works with Home Assistant.
Both are also in the viral Amazon tech finds roundup.
Follow the show
Full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/g12kD9qZ5TU
Merch from this episode: The Green Check Lies tee, the Go Restore Something hoodie, the Backups Episode mug and more are in the store, printed to order. The full list is in the podcast merch post.
New episodes get a post like this one with the player, chapters and every link. Listen on the episode page, follow the show page, or add the RSS feed to any podcast app (Spotify and Apple Podcasts listings are submitted and will appear once approved). The audio is free, the hosts are AI, and the facts are from the books.
