My Proxmox Home Lab Setup

Running my own infrastructure keeps me close to networking, automation, and what it takes to keep software online. Proxmox is the foundation.

Containers vs. virtual machines

I default to LXC containers for lightweight services and reserve full VMs for workloads that need a real kernel or strict isolation.

What runs on it

A reverse proxy terminating TLS for every service.
A WireGuard tunnel for secure remote access.
Docker hosts for app stacks.
Scheduled backups to a separate node.

Lessons learned

Snapshot before every change, keep configuration in version control, and monitor early. A home lab is the cheapest place to make the mistakes you never want to make in production.

Provisioning SSH access

A small helper I run to push my public key to a freshly created node:

	# Note: ~/.ssh/environment should not be used, as it
	# already has a different purpose in SSH.

	env=~/.ssh/agent.env

	# Note: Don't bother checking SSH_AGENT_PID. It's not used
	# by SSH itself, and it might even be incorrect
	# (for example, when using agent-forwarding over SSH).

	agent_is_running() {
	if [ "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ]; then
	# ssh-add returns:
	# 0 = agent running, has keys
	# 1 = agent running, no keys
	# 2 = agent not running
	# if your keys are not stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub, you'll need
	# to paste the proper path after ssh-add
	ssh-add -l >/dev/null 2>&1 \|\| [ $? -eq 1 ]
	else
	false
	fi
	}

	agent_has_keys() {
	# if your keys are not stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub, you'll need
	# to paste the proper path after ssh-add
	ssh-add -l >/dev/null 2>&1
	}

	agent_load_env() {
	. "$env" >/dev/null
	}

	agent_start() {
	(umask 077; ssh-agent >"$env")
	. "$env" >/dev/null
	}

	if ! agent_is_running; then
	agent_load_env
	fi

	# if your keys are not stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub, you'll need
	# to paste the proper path after ssh-add
	if ! agent_is_running; then
	agent_start
	ssh-add
	elif ! agent_has_keys; then
	ssh-add
	fi

	unset env

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