--- title: 'The Homelab Series: Part 1 - The Start of It All' url: 'https://thanhvokhac.com/blog/homelab-series-1' markdown: 'https://thanhvokhac.com/blog/homelab-series-1.md' date: '2026-10-28' description: 'It all started when I needed a CI/CD service the most... Introd' taxonomy: category: - Homelab tag: - Homelab - Introduction - Self-hosting - Docker --- # The Homelab Series: Part 1 - The Start of It All It all started when I needed a CI/CD service the most... ## Introduction Welcome to my vault, it is quite fortunate to see a visitor. Let me tell you the root of all this... series, and a bit of me. I am Thanh, or call me **luckydoG\_** if you would, I work professionally as a Game Programmer, some time in 2025 I started a personal Unity project with some of my colleagues to create a roguelike game. Things were quite smooth, we worked on the editor, played some previews, did many iterations to improve the gameplay. Then I knew we hit a wall very soon after that. Our target platform was mobile, as we already have some experience with it. However, playing a game in the editor is much different from playing it on mobile: performance, input gestures, visual appealing,... We needed a way to play the game on our phones to actually know what is happening with it. --- ## The early CI/CD I built an one-click-one-build option in Unity to build the game. Okay-ish, but every time I wanted to deliver the build to the other guys, I was left with: - Sending it via chat. - Uploading to a cloud platform, then ask the guys to download it. Well, manual work, and I was too lazy to wait for the build, then upload it somewhere, and nudge everybody. So I thought life should be better. I digged reddit and found out [GNU Make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/) can be the CI too. I was left with a platform to upload a build, so I chose the classic Firebase Distribution. ![Makefile.png](https://thanhvokhac.com/images/3/2/5/a/1/325a13610735b7dcf0900e1dd8494dec6d109ffc-makefile.png) *A peek of the Makefile I used to automatically build and upload to Firebase.* So, yeah, I was quite happy with that, until I get tired of the command I had to type :) `make android bundleVersion=0.2.1 bundleCode=21` Short? Well in order to upload to Firebase I also had to: - Create a release note file under `UserSettings/` for the pipeline, so that the pipeline picks it up and sends to Firebase for me. - Keep a secret file on my machine. If it is accidentally lost, I have to download a new one, put to the `Secrets/` folder. If another guy wants to build, I would need to introduce him to the CLI, the release notes and giving him the secret file. I am a lazy guy, I wouldn't go down that path all day. --- ## My first Self-hosted service, ever! I took a step further, looking at what we usually do at work, and I found [Jenkins](https://www.jenkins.io/), a free, open-source software that can be hosted by anyone. ![jenkins.webp](https://thanhvokhac.com/images/d/0/c/c/7/d0cc7d20530d768a660a59c7a10a56cb2318a9cf-jenkins.webp) *You know you can trust this man when it comes to CI/CD.* So I did, I hosted the Jenkins docker container on my PC... and ran a agent on the same machine! I also created a new branch just to test my Jenkinsfile for the new automated build workflow. If you know you **will** know, writing a working Jenkinsfile is somewhat an art. It took me a week of side work just to stick the new CI/CD to my project, it wasn't as terrible as it sound, it was very fun, at least for the tinkerer like me. And the return? Now I have a GUI to input, and everything in one place. ![Jenkins_Build.png](https://thanhvokhac.com/user/pages/03.blog/homelab-series-1/Jenkins_Build.png) *How cool is this? A CI/CD pipeline for my own!* ## Conclusion It was a personal project and a CI/CD service that changed me. I wanted to automate as much things as possible, from a Makefile to build to a small Jenkins server on my machine. Achievement unlocked: first self-hosted service. Reward: a bunch more to come, and two old machines to run them. --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Blog](https://thanhvokhac.com/blog.md) - Previous: [The Homelab Series: Part 2 - The First Steps](https://thanhvokhac.com/blog/homelab-series-2.md)