I’m Djamel Belaid, a systems administrator with 15+ years in IT. This site is about my home network and server: how I built them, how I keep them secure, and how you can do the same.
Guides
- Securing a Linux home server
A firewall that only answers the devices you choose, automatic security updates, SSH with keys only, and a box around the one service you open to the internet.
- Monitoring a home server with email alerts
Graphs of everything your server does, and an email when a disk fills up, a service crashes, or the monitoring itself stops.
- Backing up a home server, and proving the restore works
A nightly backup to a NAS, an email when it stops, and a monthly test that proves you can get your files back.
Stories
- My gateway ran at 95 °C for two days, and nothing told meNov 2026
The graphs showed the problem the whole time. Nobody was looking. How I found what was eating the CPU, why I didn't just reboot it, and the two alerts that caught it the next time.
- My server took 2 minutes 15 seconds to boot. Now it takes 23.Nov 2026
A service waiting for a Wi-Fi card I never use, a NAS mount that could stop the server from booting at all, and why I reboot on purpose now.
- Testing my own backup guide found four bugsNov 2026
Every guide on this site runs on fresh machines before it goes up. The backup guide needed three runs. None of the four bugs would have shown up on my own server.
- Getting my home network's security logs into one placeOct 2026
How I sent my gateway's security events and my server's logs to Grafana Loki, got an email for every IPS alert, and tested it with one harmless command.
- Writing my own detection rules at homeOct 2026
Seven simple alerts on my home logs, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, and the two that didn't work the first time.