Change Log

Notable changes to the site and documented systems.

This is not a blog. Entries are added only when a change is considered worth remembering.

2026-07-20

Wireless evidence reconciliation

• Reconciled the wireless snapshot against a current, authenticated read-only controller capture covering cluster membership, firmware, radios, WLAN/VLAN mapping, security, roaming, balancing, and controller-side QoS.
• Kept the page explicitly stale: observed management takeover, an unambiguous 802.11v setting, and end-to-end DSCP preservation remain unverified.
• Published no SSIDs, numeric VLANs, addresses, device identifiers, credentials, management endpoints, or raw controller output.

Network architecture reconciliation

• Reconciled edge and switching documentation with the current split between router classification/routing, Layer 2 transport, and inline CAKE enforcement.
• Updated the wanctl control-plane page for native and external rate-control modes, separately bounded steering, observability, and rollback boundaries.
• Rechecked wireless evidence without changing the network. The controller was reachable, but authenticated configuration evidence was unavailable, so the wireless snapshot remains explicitly stale with precise verification gaps.
• Sanitized the updated pages and validated their rendered output.

Machine-readable discovery

• Added a curated /llms.txt overview for inference-time discovery.
• Published clean Markdown representations of the site’s Markdown-backed pages.
• Added sitemap, robots, canonical, RSS autodiscovery, and social metadata.
• Added build checks for generated discovery resources and their targets.

Discoverability and architecture documentation

• Improved homepage discovery for current technical writing, promoted the dual-3090 model bakeoff, and made recent notes consistently date-ordered.
• Published Backup and Recovery Architecture with retention, restore validation, and an explicit statement that the secondary copy is in the same rack and does not protect against rack- or site-level loss.
• Published Local Inference Stack Architecture covering capability-based routing, fast and deep vLLM lanes, readiness checks, native tool-call gates, and attended promotion and rollback.
• Published RAG Pipeline Architecture covering source filtering, chunking, embeddings, vector search, citations, freshness, provider boundaries, and the distinction between evidence and generated answers.
• Published Ops Console Architecture covering health snapshots, producer freshness, events, incidents, quiet escalation, operator authority, persistence, and immutable release safety.
• Reconciled Monitoring & Observability Architecture with the current polling, metrics, centralized logging, watchdog, Hermes, and Ops Console design without claiming incomplete integrations are finished.
• Source-verified and sanitized the new architecture material without publishing private addressing, endpoints, credentials, notification routes, or operational source paths.

2026-07-17

Dual-3090 model bakeoff

• Added Fitting in VRAM Is the Easy Part, an attended field report covering W4A8, Tess, Nemotron, and AWQ policy-mitigation results.
• Documented the promotion gates, failed candidates, rollback lessons, and why the existing Qwen W4A16 lane stayed in production.
• Linked the two upstream vLLM W4A8 bug reports without publishing private prompts, endpoint details, or raw benchmark archives.

2026-07-12

Site Identity & Structure

• Reworked the homepage and About page to say what the site actually is: a long-lived personal nerd shelf for zylone, not a portfolio or polished brand.
• Added the domain/handle framing: Zylone goes back to the BBS days, and the domain has been around since 1996.
• Added a clearer path from the front page into homelab docs, notes, and The Long Game in IT.

Site Maintenance

• Added a design baseline for the site: dark, quiet, and technical-writing-first.
• Updated link styling, typography, document metadata badges, and generated section indexes.
• Added validation checks for Markdown frontmatter, obvious sensitive examples, and broken internal links.
• Wired validation into CI and deploy so broken content fails before publishing.
• Cleaned public notes to remove private example addresses and credential-shaped examples.

Homelab Content Refresh (v0.2)

• Added a public freshness/status model to the homelab index: what active, stale, draft, and archived mean, plus how last_verified works.
• Compressed /homelab/ from 571 words to a concise manual-style landing page that links to philosophy instead of duplicating it.
• Rewrote ai-inference-vm.md as a current snapshot (96 GiB, vLLM 27B, verified against RAG host context).
• Rewrote wireless.md as a table-driven snapshot verified against live Ruckus Unleashed controller output.
• Compressed dns.md and marked stale (VM→LXC migration not yet re-verified).
• Marked wanctl-control-plane.md stale with cake-autorate/state-bridge context.
• Reviewed all network pages for drift; assigned honest status/freshness markers.
• Sanitized internal IPs and sensitive details from public pages.
• Added description: frontmatter to all important pages for generated indexes.

v0.3 — Site Maintenance

• Configured close_out_auditor in .planning/config.json for frontier verification.
• Updated changelog to document the v0.2 refresh.
• Audited notes section — all notes pages now have description: frontmatter.

v0.4 — DNS Page Refresh

• Rewrote dns.md as an active snapshot verified against RAG (Unbound on LXC).
• Corrected wanctl-control-plane.md status from stale to active.

v0.5 — Freshness Audit

• Backfilled last_verified on five pages missing it: epyc-7402p.md, pbs-xeon-d1518.md, truenas-epyc-7232p.md, monitoring.md, philosophy.md.
• All homelab pages now have a last_verified date.

v0.6 — Flesh out monitoring page

• Replaced the “Documentation in progress” stub in monitoring.md with real stack content: LibreNMS infrastructure polling, Prometheus service metrics, Hermes alert routing to Discord, and backup monitoring.
• Sanitized — no internal IPs or hostnames.

v0.7 — Notes freshness pass

• Audited long-game.astro — confirmed as a redirect to /notes/the-long-game-in-it, no drift.
• Backfilled last_verified on the-long-game-in-it.md and convert-jpg-to-webp.md.
• All notes pages now have last_verified.

v0.8 — Remove draft template

• Removed src/pages/homelab/hardware/_template.md (draft template with YYYY-MM-DD placeholders, unreferenced by any other page).

v0.9 — Changelog backfill + homepage audit

• Backfilled changelog with v0.3 through v0.8 entries.
• Verified homepage — no drift, all links valid.

2025-12

Site & Structure

• Restructured site hierarchy — All content now organized under /homelab/ with three primary sections: Hardware, Network, and Software
• Elevated Network to top level — Network documentation promoted from /hardware/network/ to /homelab/network/ to reflect scope and importance
• Added Software section — Created /homelab/software/ for services, applications, and software infrastructure documentation
• Moved Lab Philosophy — Relocated from /hardware/lab-philosophy/ to /homelab/philosophy to reflect its universal applicability
• Added breadcrumb navigation — All pages now display location in hierarchy
• Simplified header navigation — Reduced to: homelab | notes | about
• Improved RSS feed — Dynamic generation using @astrojs/rss with proper dates and descriptions
• Added meta descriptions — All pages now include SEO-friendly descriptions
• Implemented dark mode — Default color scheme now uses dark background for improved readability
• Migrated site from Jekyll to Astro
• Preserved existing hardware and notes pages
• Restored RSS feed
• Standardized layout and formatting across the site
• Added RFC-style figure captions to hardware documentation
• Introduced /long-game short URL for easier sharing

Essays & Philosophy

• Added long-form essay “The Long Game in IT” under Notes
• Introduced Lab Philosophy to define shared design principles across hardware, network, and operations documentation

Hardware Documentation

• Updated AMD EPYC 7402P Proxmox host documentation with current hardware, cooling, power, and storage layout
• Added TrueNAS EPYC storage server documentation
• Refined hardware index to clearly distinguish compute, storage, and infrastructure roles

Network Documentation

• Introduced Network Infrastructure section
• Documented edge routing, firewall posture, and WAN traffic policy
• Documented switching fabric and VLAN segmentation boundaries
• Added wireless architecture and RF design documentation
• Defined NetBox as the authoritative source of network intent
• Documented adaptive WAN control plane (wanctl)
• Established monitoring and observability design goals