About

Ridgway Systems is a personal homelab project built entirely on FreeBSD. The goal is to self-host as many services as practical on owned hardware, with a focus on simplicity, security, and understanding every layer of the stack.

This site documents the build — hardware choices, configuration decisions, and things learned along the way. If you're setting up your own homelab or migrating to FreeBSD, hopefully something here is useful.

Why FreeBSD?

• ZFS in the base system. First-class, not bolted on.
• Jails for lightweight, auditable service isolation.
• pf(4) is the best firewall I've used.
• Clean base system separate from ports and packages. No surprises.
• Documentation is thorough and accurate. The Handbook and man pages are genuinely good.

What's Running

See the infrastructure page for the full hardware and service list. Briefly: a SuperMicro 1U as the firewall/router, a Dell R720 as the primary server, and a Dell R710 for backup and game servers. Everything is managed with Ansible.

Can I see the Ansible playbooks?

Eventually. The playbooks are on the Gitea instance (private for now while things are in flux). Plan is to open them up once they're in a state I'm not embarrassed by.

Contact

• Email: bridgway@ridgwaysystems.org
• Gitea: git.ridgwaysystems.org
• Mastodon: @blake@bsd.cafe