Homelab on Corvus Blog

Migrating Nextcloud from DigitalOcean to a Raspberry Pi 5

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Bye Bye Digital Ocean

I’ve been running Nextcloud on a DigitalOcean droplet for a while. It works fine, but it costs money every month for something that’s essentially sitting idle most of the time — a personal file sync server with one user doesn’t need a cloud VM. A Raspberry Pi 5 sitting on my desk does the same job for free.

This post covers the full migration: tearing down the DO setup, getting Nextcloud running locally on the Pi 5, and setting up Tailscale so I can still reach it remotely without exposing anything to the public internet.

Building a Portable Kismet Device: Part 1 - Hardware Assembly

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For a while now I’ve wanted a proper portable wardriving setup. Not just a laptop. I want a self-contained, pocketable device that I can throw in a bag and run headlessly in the field. After moving away from the Pwnagotchi approach (it is very neat but the features are not as extensive as Kismet), I decided to build something more capable around a Raspberry Pi 5.

This is part one: getting the hardware assembled and ready. The full stack isn’t operational just yet. I’m still waiting on the Alfa AWUS036ACM WiFi adapter to ship, but the foundation is built.

Diagnosing and Hardening a Flaky Pi-hole on a Pi Zero 2W

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My Pi-hole had developed an annoying habit as of the last couple of weeks. The web UI would go unreachable, FTL would silently die, and DHCP would stop assigning addresses. The only fix I had was unplugging and replugging the device. Not ideal for something that sits in the middle of your network, especially when you live with other people.

This post covers how I diagnosed the issue and hardened the setup so that transient failures recover automatically rather than taking down the network.