The Quartermaster blog
Notes on running a whole homelab from your phone: the media you enjoy and the infrastructure that keeps it up. Proxmox, ad blocking, the smart home, the arr stack, and the small habits that keep it all honest. Prefer to read on your own terms? Grab the RSS feed.
What landed in Quartermaster 1.3
1.3 reached the App Store on 3 October with a new Entertainment Home, Command Centre layouts, QM Reader for your books and five new connections. Here's the whole release in one place, and where the Apple TV app is up to.
Read the postWhat landed in Quartermaster 1.2
1.2 reached the App Store on 12 September with an in-app player, a proper Mac layout, Family invites and QM Companion. The blog went quiet while it was being built, so here's the whole release in one place, plus the fixes since.
Read the postFive ways to look at the same homelab
Some people open the Command Centre to fix things and some just want to know the boxes are alive. In 1.3 it stops pretending one screen suits everyone: pick a layout, and a wizard shows you each one built from your own stack first.
Read the postWhy your books got a world of their own
Books used to be one more library in Entertainment. Reading is a different job, though: you're picking up where you left off, not browsing posters. So 1.3 gives them QM Reader, a third world with its own reader, audiobook player and requests.
Read the postSetting up Quartermaster from QM Companion in one scan
QM Companion runs on your server, finds your services and hands the whole list, keys included, to Quartermaster in one scan. Here's how to set it up, and the few things that tend to go wrong.
Read the postLetting the household request films without handing over your keys
When your partner wants a film or your flatmate wants the next season, they shouldn't need your Sonarr login to ask. A Family profile gives them browsing and requests through their own Seerr account, and everything else stays behind your PIN.
Read the postYour bug reports, shipped the same week
Quartermaster 1.1.3 reached the App Store, then spent a week getting rebuilt by the people using it. Most of the fixes arrived over the air: no re-download, no account, nothing about you collected to make it happen.
Read the postYour homelab is two jobs, not one
Most homelab dashboards dump everything in one pile. Splitting your stack into the stuff you enjoy and the stuff that keeps it running makes the whole thing calmer to own.
Read the postFixing a stuck import without opening a laptop
A download finishes and then just sits there, unmatched or unmoved. Here is the order to check things in so you can unstick it from wherever you are.
Read the postProxmox from your phone: what's worth doing, and what to leave at the desk
You do not need a laptop to keep an eye on a Proxmox host. You do need to know which jobs are safe on a small screen and which ones can wait.
Read the postBlocking ads across your whole network with AdGuard Home or Pi-hole
Network-level ad blocking cleans up every device at once, including the ones you cannot install anything on. Here is how the two main options differ and what to watch after.
Read the postA glanceable Home Assistant: the handful of things you actually check
Home Assistant can show you everything, which is the problem. A short list of what is genuinely worth a glance beats a wall of every sensor you own.
Read the postWhy a homelab controller shouldn't ask you to log in
You already run the servers. An app that manages them should not need its own account, its own cloud, or a copy of your data. Here is the case for a pure client.
Read the postKeeping the boxes honest: Portainer, Unraid and Glances from your pocket
The machines under your homelab fail quietly. A quick habit of checking containers, array health and system load turns nasty surprises into small ones.
Read the postYour self-hosted library isn't just video: photos, books, comics and audiobooks
Most stacks start with movies and TV, then stop. The same self-hosting that freed your video works just as well for the rest of what you own.
Read the post