Homelab Dashboard#

What Was Established#

A Node.js + Express dashboard is deployed at https://status.nbkelley.com, serving homelab monitoring data. All API calls are server-side — no internal IPs, credentials, or raw API responses reach the browser.

Deployment#

File Structure#

/opt/homelab-dashboard/
  server.js         ← Express app, all API logic
  package.json
  package-lock.json
  dockerfile
  start.sh
  node_modules/
  public/
    index.html
    styles.css
    app.js          ← frontend render engine

compose.yaml Entry#

homelab-dashboard:
  build: /opt/homelab-dashboard
  container_name: homelab-dashboard
  restart: unless-stopped
  network_mode: host
  environment:
    - PORT=3002

network_mode: host means the app binds directly to host port 3002. The ports: mapping is ignored when using host networking.

MBTA Dashboard - Setup#

What Was Established#

Office transit dashboard deployed on a self-hosted Debian VM (PLT-MBTADisplay, 192.168.168.42). Nginx serves static files from /var/www/MBTADisplay/public and proxies /api/ requests to a Node/Express caching proxy on port 3000. API keys are stored server-side and never exposed to the browser. Process managed via pm2 with a systemd service.

Architecture#

Browser (Anthias/Desktop)
    → Nginx (:80) → / → static files (/var/www/MBTADisplay/public)
                   → /api/ → Node/Express proxy (:3000)
                                → MBTA v3 API
                                → OpenWeatherMap API
                                → RSS feeds
                                → Caches responses

Nginx Configuration#

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name transit.intra.plgt.com 192.168.168.42;

    root /var/www/MBTADisplay/public;
    index index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location /api/ {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    }
}

Node/Express Proxy#

Setup#

mkdir -p /opt/mbta-proxy
cd /opt/mbta-proxy
npm init -y
npm install express node-fetch

API Key Management#

• API keys stored in /opt/mbta-proxy/.env
• Loaded via process.env.MBTA_API_KEY in server.js
• pm2 started with --env flag to load .env file
• Critical: API key must survive server.js overwrites from GitHub syncs

pm2 Process Manager#

pm2 start server.js --name mbta-proxy
pm2 save
pm2 startup systemd

systemd Service (/etc/systemd/system/pm2-administrator.service)#

[Unit]
Description=PM2 process manager
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=forking
User=administrator
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/pm2 resurrect
ExecReload=/usr/local/bin/pm2 reload all
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/pm2 kill
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

GitHub Deployment#

Repository#

• Repo: https://github.com/bich-nguyen/MBTADisplay.git
• Cloned to /var/www/MBTADisplay
• Static files in public/ subdirectory
• Server files in /opt/mbta-proxy/ (separate from web root)

Ownership#

sudo chown -R administrator:administrator /var/www/MBTADisplay

Note: www-data ownership breaks git operations from administrator user.