Introduction. #
So on the 18th of I will go on vacation with my parents (my brother and sister both will go on their own with their partners). We will go to France and will have 3 stays. But before i can enjoy vacation and put my mind to rest, i decided to finish of some stuff i have been wanting to get done, so those things don’t go bother/disturb me on vacation/at night or float around in my head all time (yeah i have a very busy mind that seems to be stuck on engineering mode and is coming up with a ton of ideas of which some my brain really wants me to get done). So that’s why i decided to complete some of those things now so i can hopefully go out of the country with a less-full mind.
I will also shutdown the whole home lab and unplug it before i go out of the country as it has no need to keep running and also then i dont have to worry about that (surges/lightning strikes, downtime while i am not at location, possible exploits/break-ins).
The “On vacation” page. #
So because i want to shutdown the whole homelab for the 2 weeks so i can actually fully put my mind to rest and not have to worry about stuff breaking or other worries you have when running and hosting a homelab/multiple websites/services, i wanted to make a “On vacation” page. This way people know my domain will be offline for some time as the 503 pages are more meant for server side errors or short downtime and not really any on-purpose downtime. So they know my domain is offline for a few weeks due to issues (i actually have it listed on my 503 page that unexpected downtime is max a week or so) but rather is intentionally.
Its quite simple and it makes use of pretty much a similar mechanism. Both the 503 error page and on vacation page live on the cloud VPS as that always stays up as it lives in the cloud. On that VPS i have a reverse proxy, caddy, which i configured to relay traffic safely and securely via the tail-scale tunnel into my local home network that’s CGNAT’ed. In the local network it then hits the local nginx reverse proxy which then finally routes to the correct server. Because caddy runs on the VPS, it means i can fully take the local homelab stack offline and still have some form of proxy for backup/emergency events. And thus i configured caddy that if it cant connect to the right server for 5 seconds, that it then shows the 503 page. If the domain has been configured but i have not yet setup (the route to) the back-end server, it will show the local nginx proxy’s “welcome” page.
And also thus i configured my “on vacation” page the same way, but only now i use a manual trigger for it in the form of a file. If a file called “vacation” exists in /root on the VPS, it toggles to “on vacation” mode and will show the local ‘away.html’ file and then it also will not route any requests via the tailscale tunnel. This way my domain stays alive (while my services are offline) but people know that its actually purposely meant to be offline! Below is a static picture of the webpage with of course some nice fun gifs (which i will talk about more later).
Making some statuspages more fun. #
So i also started on making the status pages a bit more fun with some GIFs added. I dont lie those boring blank corporate “ERROR xyzabcdefgh” pages and wanted to make my pages a bit more interesting. So what better way to improve them is to add some fun GIF’s/memes to those pages. I am from genZ and while i kind of disagree with some stuff happening in our generation, i can admire the GIFs and Memes so i thought i would add some fun GIFs on some of my status pages to make them a bit more fun and less “Ooooh scary! An error occurred. I did something wrong!”. Also my on vacation page as seen above already has some GIFs on it. The GIFs where taken randomly from Giphy and i just took the ones that seemed funny/seemed to match my visions/needs and i am not an expert on the field of Memes or such.
nginx proxy welcome (landing) page. #
So now i made it that my “Welcome to my network proxy. This page has not yet been setup” page has some fun GIFs on it. See below picture.
As you can see, the GIF’s basically tell the story. “Sorry it aint working”.
503 Page. #
Same for my 503 page when a server is down. See below.
CDN Welcome page. #
Same for the CDN welcome page too! (Ofcourse other GIFs). See below.
Migrating the CDN over from the dedicated proxmox LXC to the cloud VPS. #
So i also wanted to migrate the CDN over from where it was before (Its own private isolated container (LXC) in Proxmox) to the VPS. Why did i want this? Because it also had to do with “What about downtime?”. Also it came up when i was at 2 AM thinking in bed about the “On vacation” page. Because when i take all the servers offline and i will go as far as physically unplug them and that includes everything so the homeassistant server, proxmox server, NAS, opnsense box, switch, UPS and so on, the whole homelab. Not only to save power and because when i am not actively managing it, it basically does not need to be online, but also in the event of a lightning strike or power surge or whatever. And obviously i would lose the CDN when i unplug everything.
SO i moved it to the best location, which is the cloud VPS i am paying 12 Euros a month for. Also nice so i can put that to some other good use and make my money worth it. Also the VPS (other than cloud maintenance) should stay online the whole time. So i added an entry in the existing caddyfile thats down below.
cdn.yourawesomedomain.net {
root * /root/cdn
file_server
header Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000"
}Thats all that was needed. So basically in a nutshell, it uses /root/cdn as the fileserver’s directory from which itself serves files. This way i can take down my homelab but it can still show the fun GIFs no matter what status my homelab is in.
Launching 309Electronics.net (Unofficially). #
I have decided to launch my own organisation/project 309Electronics and its own domain 309Electronics.net and have an actual backend server setup for it. In the past it was purely an alias for myself (kind of like some artists have a stage name that sounds cooler than/hides their real name). Up Until now i have not yet really thought about owning my own business but it was an idea that i had since i was a child, i just never thought about it that much. But now i was thinking “maybe i should launch my own company/organization”, so i kind of did. I did already have {xyz}.309electronics.net but that was more meant to be “309Electronics” as my online alias and not my organization. I will however from now on change my name to mr309electronics or i can keep my old 309electronics name… I dont know what i will do though and i am still thinking about it. Also because my nephew has founded and is running his own company, i also started thinking “Why should i not launch my own business also?”, but its still me myself who eventually was like “well f**k it, lets do it!”. I could also possibly ask him for any tips or tricks but for now i will take care of most stuff myself as i like to attempt/learn stuff myself and i can always later ask for help.
Not yet registered. #
So one thing is that i did not yet register the name as a valid company/trademark/business, so legally i am not allowed to officially launch it as my own company, but i can launch it as an independent non-profit organization/group/project that then i can later register and convert to a real legit existing company/business/trademark. And i can technically launch it as a independent company but of course without any monetization, but i will launch it as a sort of “mutated” independent project/organisation first.
I do plan on registering it in the future and i will talk more about my future plans for 309electronics as a organization and afterwards as a real existing registered company. Below i will write down about some future plans i have in my head for the first step (as an organization/project) and then also in the future as a true registered business.
309Electronics as an independent organisation/project. #
SO i am allowed to establish it as a project/group/organization/initiative and i will launch it for now as purely that so i dont get in legal trouble. It will be a project that wil grow out to a non-profit organization/initiative that will own and host my web services (blog, linktree style page and git forge server for now and later a private search engine using searXNG, matrix chatroom, possibly minecraft server and maybe other stuff). I will also release free and open source software under this organization and i will release other stuff.
SO webservices and free software will be the products 309electronics releases for free, for now. Then later when i have figured out the stuff to turn it into a business, i will register the name and then it will be finally officially launched, but i hope to do this in about 2 years or longer as i dont want to hurry and i want to know all info and hidden gotchas.
I will of course crown myself CEO and founder as i am the only one at the moment who has the idea/wanted to start the project and there is unfortunately no Co-founder. I will also be the working employee at my organization. I will try and minimize AI usage as i am against AI employees/agents and want to stay far away from it, but its handy for writing burning tests or boilerplate code or optimizing stuff, but only in tight deadlines/emergencies.
309Electronics as a real existing registered company/business/trademark. #
SO later when i am fully registered and allowed to exist, i will expand into other stuff. I primarily want to start providing electronics/computer repair/support services. And next to that i want to possibly start providing paid software services or even software testing services. I might also provide hosting services for websites or game servers.
When the business can stand on its own legs and is not at the brink of collapse, i might even start to create a team and start hiring people/friends/family to work with me on the project/business as working with multiple people is better than doing it all alone. I will of course treat them as real people and provide basic necessities/rights and i actively hate to see a CEO of such bigtech company paying their employees a minimum wage/denying them basic rights, so i will try to be a good CEO.
When the company begins to grow, i can even start to move into/rent an actual office/workplace to work at, but thats all future dreams for now and i have not even registered 309electronics yet, but its good to think about future possibilities.
Values and Aims of 309Electronics. #
SO at 309electronics we will try to aim at atleast 70% customer satisfaction and we want to aim at customer rights as a ton of companies these days use the customer as a disposable battery. Sucking them empty and then throwing them away. We also want to aim at Sustainability and fun at the workplace. And i really aim to be a good ethical company like Videolan, winrar and Valve that loves their customers and tries their best to provide the best stuff to them, while not sucking them dry. And i also want to aim at innovation and “lets try something new”.
Domain of 309Electronics.net. #
So i also already setup the main 309electronics.net domain and now have an actual webserver powering it. I obviously already have my blog.309electronics.net and links.309electronics.net and other services with ‘{service}.309electronics.net’, but now i also own and have a backend server for my main 309electronics.net primary domain. Those other web services will always be there, but now you can also access my 309electronics.net domain, but for now it has a “under construction” placeholder page i wrote in bare HTML and CSS. I have not yet worked out what the website will be and how it should look. It will be a bit more corporate themed, but i do have a primary wish to have it selfhosted and by preference use open source solutions, but i will think about that and experiment a bit and see what possibilities i have.
Signing off. #
So those few bits where the bits i wanted to get done before my well deserved vacation and it feels nice to have them completed. I also love the genius idea of the “Everything is fine, but i am On vacation, so hence everything is currently temporarily offline till i come back” page. I will probably take a small laptop with me, but more for watching YouTube and entertainment and stuff (and i also cant do any homelab stuff as everything will be offline, so should keep the urge to do so away). Also i am happy to have launched my own project now and i will slowly work on making it a real legit established brand in the future.
The blog posts will always be written by me, 309Electronics and then i mean by my online alias and not my business. I am happy that the logo i drew as a kid and later made in GIMP now is the logo of both me and my organization that i will now go under. But it is kind of funny that at the moment i am doing more IT stuff than actual Electronics so maybe i should change my name to 309IT or 309Informatics but nah thats just a joke (for now)!