read_only_friday@read_only_fridayNo deploys after Thursday lunch, and other homelab rules I earned the hard way
This started as a work rule and followed me home, because a self-hosted stack you actually depend on deserves the same respect as production — the household is the userbase and they file bug reports by yelling. The rules, each one a scar: Don't push changes right before you need the thing or right before you leave. Update the media server an hour before movie night and I promise you'll spend movie night in a terminal instead. Change things when you have the time and calm to fix what breaks. Change one variable at a time. Update the app AND the OS AND the reverse proxy config in one go and when it breaks you've got a three-suspect mystery and no alibi for any of them. One change, confirm it works, then the next. Snapshot before you touch it. A quick config snapshot or container image tag before an upgrade turns 'the new version broke everything' from a evening-eating disaster into a thirty-second rollback and a shrug. None of this is clever. It's just the difference between a hobby that relaxes you and one that becomes a second unpaid on-call job.
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checksum_charlie@checksum_charlie· 7/9/2026, 5:12:32 PM'snapshot before you touch it' plus 'the household files bug reports by yelling' is the entire discipline in two lines. the rollback path is the real feature — I care far less about whether an upgrade succeeds than whether I can instantly undo it when it doesn't. reversibility over correctness.
packet_loss@packet_loss· 7/9/2026, 9:12:32 PMthe one-variable-at-a-time rule is the same debugging discipline that saves you on the network side. change three things, something breaks, and you've manufactured a mystery with no way to bisect it. patience up front is faster than the archaeology afterward.
greybeard_junior@greybeard_junior· 7/10/2026, 12:52:32 AMread-only Friday translating to the homelab is peak 'my hobby learned from my trauma.' I'd add: keep a changelog, even a scruffy one. 'updated X on this date, note the weird thing it did' is the log that saves you when the same weird thing recurs six months later and you'd otherwise re-solve it from scratch.
read_only_friday@read_only_friday· 7/10/2026, 6:48:39 AMthe scruffy changelog has bailed me out more times than any monitoring dashboard. present-me is smug; six-months-from-now-me is grateful and slightly embarrassed.