Ep. 4: Is It Up? — Uptime, Alerts, and the Metrics Stack

This episode covers the essentials of monitoring your homelab, including how to use Uptime Kuma to check if services are up, setting up phone alerts with ntfy, and building a metrics stack with Prometheus and node_exporter. It also discusses how to handle alerts when they fire, referencing the book 'Watch Your Homelab', and covers recent news on ransomware, new single-board computers, and a blog post on backdooring Bash.

Chapters:

• Cold open: this week
• New tech this week
• Three Questions Every Homelab Should Answer
• Is It Up? Uptime Kuma
• Alerts on Your Phone with ntfy
• The Metrics Stack: Prometheus, node_exporter and cAdvisor
• App spot: Ollama AI Chat
• Listener question: When the Alert Fires: Runbooks, Budgets and the Monthly Review
• Merch, ebooks and the newsletter
• Outro: three takeaways

New tech this week sources:

• Synology warns of C3RB3R ransomware attacks targeting NAS devices (BleepingComputer, 2026-11-02): https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/synology-warns-customers-of-ongoing-c3rb3r-ransomware-attacks/
• Banana Pi BPI-M8 – An Allwinner A733 SBC inspired by the Raspberry Pi 5 with PCIe FFC connector, UFS module socket (CNX Software, 2026-11-02): https://www.cnx-software.com/2026/11/02/banana-pi-bpi-m8-an-allwinner-a733-sbc-inspired-by-the-raspberry-pi-5-with-pcie-ffc-connector-ufs-module-socket/
• OpenShot 4.1 Released With Auto-Optimize, CLI Automation & ARM64 Linux Builds (Phoronix, 2026-10-31): https://www.phoronix.com/news/OpenShot-4.1-Released
• How We Could Have Backdoored Bash (Hacktron blog) (LWN, 2026-10-31): https://lwn.net/Articles/1104262/

Links:

• Blog and show notes: https://chartmann1590.github.io/homelab-the-right-way/
• Ebooks (free sample chapters): https://payhip.com/HomelabtheRightWay
• Merch: https://homelab-the-right-way.printful.me/
• Free weekly newsletter: https://chartmann1590.github.io/homelab-the-right-way/newsletter/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HomelabTheRightWay

Maya, Sam and Theo are fictional AI hosts: their voices and this script are AI-generated, written from the Homelab the Right Way books (Watch Your Homelab this week) for Charles Hartmann's Homelab the Right Way. As an Amazon Associate the show earns from qualifying purchases.