About

BOOTRIVEN

is where I document the stuff that actually worked.

Most posts start with a setup that should be straightforward. Then the documentation doesn’t quite match reality, a service refuses to start, or a route disappears for no obvious reason. Three hours later I’m reading logs and trying to work out which “harmless” change caused it.

Once it works, I write down the commands, configuration and dead ends that mattered. The main subjects are Linux, self-hosting, homelabs, networking and VPS infrastructure. Everything here comes from hardware or services I actually run.

The Name?

BOOT is where everything starts.

A server boots. An operating system boots. A simple idea at 2 AM turns into a weekend project.

RIVEN is what happens next.

That is often a fair description of the same project a few hours later. Containers refuse to start, routes disappear, DNS points somewhere unexpected, and one change breaks something unrelated.

Why this blog?

I started taking computers apart as a teenager and never really stopped. That eventually grew into Linux servers, networks and keeping small-business IT running.

Most tutorials cover the clean installation and stop before the useful part: hardware quirks, broken dependencies, failed upgrades and configurations that look correct but do not work.

BOOTRIVEN focuses on that part. Each post includes what I used, what failed and what finally fixed it.

The Lab:

  • node-01 — Intel i5-10600K | 24 GB RAM | RTX 3070 | 3 × 2 TB HDD | 1 TB NVMe | TrueNAS SCALE
  • node-02 — Mini PC | Intel Atom x5-Z8350 | 4 GB RAM | 64 GB eMMC | ZeroTier Gateway@DietPi
  • node-03 — Mini PC | Intel Atom x5-Z8350 | 4 GB RAM | 64 GB eMMC | ZeroTier Gateway@Debian
  • node-04 — MacBookPro16,1 | Intel i9-9880H | 16 GB RAM | 1 TB NVMe | Ubuntu Server
  • node-05 — Mini PC | i3-5005U | 8GB RAM | 256 GB SSD | Arch Linux

Most of the articles are tested somewhere in this mess before they ever touch production.

What Ends Up Here

A project ends up here when it leaves behind something reusable: a working configuration, a useful diagnostic path or a fix I know I will need again.

That’s the whole content strategy.