Nathan Reynolds

A Tailscale exit node is a device on your tailnet that routes 100% of your internet traffic through its connection, so any device you connect from appears to be on the exit node’s network. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to configure a Tailscale exit node for full-tunnel VPN access, from choosing the … Read more

I set up WireGuard on a small Linux server in my home network so I could reach my NAS, security cameras, and home lab from anywhere. The first attempt took me a frustrating weekend, mostly because I did not understand how AllowedIPs, NAT, and IP forwarding fit together. This guide is the one I wish … Read more

I used to dread setting up remote access to my home server. Every time I wanted to reach Plex, Home Assistant, or my NAS from a coffee shop, I had to log into my router, find the right port, hope my ISP hadn’t reassigned my dynamic IP, and pray I hadn’t accidentally exposed something to … Read more

When I first switched my home network over to Pi-hole, I was happy to see ads disappear across every device. Then I realized something simple but unsettling: every DNS lookup my family made was still being handed to a third-party resolver. That is the gap a Pi-hole Unbound setup fills. In this guide I will … Read more

I remember the first time I set up Pi-hole. The dashboard looked great, ads were being blocked, but the Top Clients panel showed only my router’s IP address. Every single device in my house was hidden behind one entry. I had no idea which laptop was streaming, which phone was running analytics, or which smart … Read more

Migrating DHCP from your router to Pi-hole sounds simple until half your devices lose internet for ten minutes. I have seen it happen on three different home networks, and the cause is almost always the same: a router that restarts its DHCP service the moment you disable it, handing out zero leases while Pi-hole warms … Read more

I spent two weekends chasing a problem where my AdGuard Home DNS rewrite entries were being completely ignored. My local services, which I’d mapped to clean domain names like nas.home and pihole.home, kept resolving to whatever my upstream DNS returned. After digging through the official GitHub issue tracker, Reddit threads, and the AdGuard Home docs, … Read more

Wondering how to boot a Raspberry Pi 5 from an NVMe SSD and fix the dreaded “NVMe not detected” error? You are in the right place. I have walked through this exact process on more than a dozen Pi 5 boards, and I put together this guide so you can skip the trial-and-error I went … Read more

Booting a Raspberry Pi 5 from NVMe can turn a small single-board computer into something that feels like a real desktop or server. But when an NVMe SSD refuses to show up, freezes randomly, or stops responding after a few minutes, the cause is almost always a Phison controller compatibility issue. I have spent the … Read more

The Raspberry Pi 5 has a completely redesigned boot system compared to earlier models, and getting the boot order right makes the difference between a system that boots in seconds from an NVMe SSD and one that stares at you with a blank screen. Whether you are migrating away from a fragile SD card or … Read more