Blog

List of all blog posts. Alternatively, see see posts by category or search for specific posts.

How to expose Plex to share your library with others from behind CGNAT using Tailscale and a free Oracle Cloud instance
September 3, 2024
I wrote before about sharing my Plex library via Cloudflare Tunnel, but that is technically against their TOS and liable to get your account in trouble. So I switched to using a free-tier Oracle VM, securely connecting it to my home network via Tailscale, and exposing Plex via reverse proxy on the VM. It works like a charm!
How to expose Plex to share your library with others from behind CGNAT with Cloudflare Tunnel
July 15, 2024
Exposing Plex to share your library with other users normally involves port forwarding from the router, which is very insecure and not recommended. If your home network is behind CGNAT - very common with most ISPs nowadays -- you can't even port forward if you wanted to. Here's how I did it in a fairly secure way that limits access by using Cloudflare.
Comprehensive guide to setting up Tailscale to securely access your home network from anywhere
June 25, 2024
Accessing self-hosted services from outside the home can be a challenge, especially when dealing with CGNAT and having to forward ports from the router. It can be complex to manage and potentially dangerous to your home network's privacy and security if not done right, but Tailscale makes it easy to set up encrypted peer-to-peer connections between devices across different networks. In this guide I will explain how I use Tailscale as a VPN for secure remote access to my home network.
Setup Watchtower to auto-update Docker containers with notifications
May 31, 2024
I'm running almost 30 containers on my home server at this point, and I'm extremely lazy when it comes to updating them. Watchtower is a lightweight set-it-and-forget-it solution to auto-updating containers, and it even has built-in notifications. Here's how to set it up using either Pushover or Discord.
Setup X-plore File Manager on Android to transfer files to an SMB share
March 26, 2024
I've wrote before about file managers for Android before, recently I found X-plore which makes it very easy to transfer files back and forth between Android and SMB network shares, once you understand how the UI works. Here's to connect X-plore to an SMB network share so you can transfer files between devices.