serverAppConfigs/serverAppConfigs-docs/index.md

Server App Configs

Podman deployment configuration for two homelab servers: Dankserver and Dankclaw.

This repository is the single source of truth for both hosts. It tracks the container stacks and the LLM inference fleet. Edits flow through this repo, then deploy to the targets with scripts/deploy.sh (one script per target covers both workloads).

2026-08-22: the former vllmScripts repository (LLM fleet) is merged into this repo with its full git history. Its knowledge base now lives at serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md.

Hosts

Host	IP	Role	OS
Dankserver	192.168.0.235	Media & library stack	Ubuntu 24.04
Dankclaw	192.168.0.143	AI, search & development stack	Ubuntu 26.04

Stacks

• Dankserver Stack — RomM, Copyparty, Calibre, Calibre-Web, Caddy
• Dankclaw Stack — SearXNG (via Gluetun), ComfyUI, OpenWebUI, Hermes, Gitea, Grafana, Prometheus, Caddy

Architecture

• Network Architecture — Caddy reverse proxy, hostname routing, Gluetun VPN path
• Storage Policy — bind mounts, data locations, ownership
• Deployment Flow — service-scoped git deploy, target map, and health checks
• Testing Policy — the test seams and how to run them
• E2E Suite — the Playwright suite that drives the live guard chain
• Container Network Namespaces — which local services are addressable from each Podman network namespace on Dankclaw

Dankserver Storage

• Entropy Volume — command-line unlock and mount helper

Dankserver Services

• RomM — retro game manager
• RomM-Scraping — metadata providers, cover art, naming conventions
• Copyparty — file sharing and streaming
• Jellyfin — media server (movies, TV, music)
• Calibre — e-book library engine
• Calibre-Web — e-book web frontend
• ARR-Stack — automated media download overview
• sonarr — TV show management
• radarr — movie management
• lidarr — music management
• readarr — ebook/audiobook management
• prowlarr — indexer management
• qbittorrent — torrent download client
• Plex — media server on Dankserver (lscr.io/linuxserver/plex container via quadlet; CPU decode only — no GPU passthrough)
• Tautulli — Plex statistics and notifications (v2.18.1-ls242, quadlet unit)
• mariadb — RomM database backend
• redis — RomM cache/queue backend

Dankclaw Services

• SearXNG — privacy metasearch (VPN-routed)
• SearXNG Providers — unblocking Google & other upstream engines behind the VPN
• Gluetun — the VPN tunnel container
• Valkey — SearXNG cache and limiter store
• ComfyUI — node-based AI image generation (ROCm GPU, gfx1151 build)
• OpenWebUI — chat UI for local LLMs
• Hermes — the Nous Research agent
• Hermes-Dashboard — the Hermes web management UI (config, keys, sessions)
• Hermes-WebUI — the Hermex server (loopback API for the iPhone app, SSH-tunneled)
• Gitea — Git hosting (migrated)
• Postgres — Gitea database backend
• Seerr — unified *arr request manager (guard-chained; fronts FrankBook-Pro's stack)
• Marreta — content-cleaning proxy (guard-chained; shares SearXNG's Gluetun egress)

Infrastructure

• LAN-DNS — name resolution, Pi-hole, router DNS hand-off
• Pi-hole — the LAN DNS server (quadlet, records, web UI)
• Caddy — reverse proxy and TLS
• Anubis — bot challenge proxy fronting the guarded vhosts (chain, policy, gotchas)
• Authentik — the homelab's SSO / OIDC provider (forward_auth)
• authentik-postgres — Authentik database service
• authentik-server — Authentik server + Caddy outpost service
• authentik-worker — Authentik background worker service
• Homepage — password-protected service index
• Homepage Design Grilling — homepage decision log and open questions
• Observability — Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Alloy, node-exporter, Alertmanager: the stack, its quadlet deployment, its exposure, and what is still missing
• Grafana — dashboards (datasource and the LLM fleet dashboard provisioned as code since 2026-09-16)
• Prometheus — metrics collection (5 alert rules + 1 recording rule, delivered via Alertmanager since 2026-09-17)
• Alertmanager — alert grouping and Signal delivery (webhook → host-side relay → signal-cli)
• Node-Exporter — host metrics
• Loki — log storage
• Alloy — log shipping (replaces Promtail)
• FrankBook-Pro — Mac mini *arr + qBittorrent inside podman machine (gluetun-gated)

Research

• Service Research Brief — consolidated subagent research behind these pages
• ComfyUI ROCm and Vulkan — live-verified GPU path for ComfyUI on Strix Halo
• Lemonade and sd.cpp — the ggml-family image-generation alternative
• Llama Cpp Runtimes — mainline vs charlie12345/ROCmFPX vs ik_llama.cpp: quantization + server fit
• Llama Cpp Code Diff — code-level quantization diff of the three llama.cpp runtimes
• SGLang — the structured-generation serving engine (llama.cpp/vLLM comparison + our fit)
• Backblaze Integration — off-site backup plan (future)
• Jellyfin — media server research brief
• ARR-Stack — automated download stack research brief

LLM Fleet

The LLM inference fleet on the two hosts. Full index: serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md.

Deployment and Topology

• deployment — unified deploy and update process for both servers
• frank-redo-2026-08-17 — the 2026-08-17 topology change
• frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2 — the ACTIVE frank-medium runbook since 2026-09-16 (model swapped 2026-09-19): mainline llama.cpp (gfx1201 HIP build) serving orcarouter/Qwen3.8-27B-Uncensored-GGUF at Q8_0 with the DFlash2 drafter (z-lab/Qwen3.8-27B-DFlash2-GGUF at Q4_K_M) on Dankserver's 2x Radeon AI PRO R9700 as one layer-split process behind the :7770 endpoint, balanced 32:33 over two 163,840-token slots — no tensor parallelism: the runtime ships RCCL-less, and the collective has not been re-probed since the 2026-09-20 board swap cleared the atomics gate
• frank-medium-radiance-mxfp4 — RETIRED 2026-09-16: the vllm-radiance MXFP4 stack serving just1moremodel/Qwen3.8-27B-Uncensored-MXFP4-awq on Dankserver's 2x Radeon AI PRO R9700 as two single-GPU replicas behind a round-robin proxy; kept as the record of the deployment frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2 replaced, plus the PCIe-atomics evidence that ruled out TP=2 on the previous board (gate cleared 2026-09-20)
• Dual-R9700-Cooperation — why the two R9700s could not run tensor-parallel together: the PCIe-atomics gate quoted from ROCclr, the measured RCCL matrix (collectives and P2P send/recv both failed on card #2, which ruled out pipeline parallelism too), what was closed, and the re-measured 2026-09-20 topology after the ProArt B850-Creator x8/x8 swap — both chains Routing+, both endpoints ReqEn+, so TP=2 is unblocked but still unprobed
• frank-medium-rocmfpx — PRIOR frank-medium deployment (llama.cpp era): charlie12345/ROCmFPX serving kingjones777/ Qwen3.8-27B-ROCmFPX-Q8_0-AGENT-GGUF; kept as the record of the runtime it replaced
• freetoken-benchmark-sweep — KV pool vs decode speed sweep (bs1/bs3/bs4/bs6, 8k–700k KV) on the retired Dankserver RTX 3090
• kingjones-strix-mtp — the Qwen3.8-27B-Q6_0 ROCmFPX AGENT era with the standalone MTP draft (Dankclaw, 2026-08-25 → 2026-08-29; historical)
• agentionai-fast-imatrix — the retired frank-large runbook: agentionai/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-ROCmFP4-FAST-imatrix (87.06 GiB, Q4_0_ROCMFP4_FAST) + own MTP draft, build-qwen38 (retired 2026-08-30; rollback record)
• frank-large-ciru-orca — the ACTIVE frank-large runbook since 2026-09-19 (root systemd unit, port 7770): the CIRU v4.4.1 runtime (private host build, QSA hotfix) serving jcbtc/Qwen3.8-Flash-CIRU-STRIX-Orca w4b on the gfx1151 iGPU — one 262,144-token conversation, MTP depth 4, 4096 MiB PLE cache, runtime-root gate, client contract
• halogen-flash-server — RETIRED 2026-09-19 (replaced by frank-large-ciru-orca; rollback target, 2026-09-16 → 09-19): peonist-ai/halogen-flash-server 0.5.8 serving peonist-ai/halogen-qwen3.8- flash-next (w4b .hgn + quality overlay) on the gfx1151 iGPU — two 200k conversations over one 400,384-position pool, deployed flags, memory model, client contract
• frank-large-ik-uncensored — the RETIRED 2026-09-16 frank-large runbook and rollback target (2026-09-15 → 09-16): ik_llama.cpp serving mradermacher/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-Uncensored-i1-Q4_K_M on the RTX 3090 + Strix Halo hybrid — its measured envelope is why the fleet went back
• dankclaw-iommu-translation-off — why Dankclaw boots with amd_iommu=off since 2026-09-11 (13-16 % prefill), what it cost (the NPU endpoint), and how to revert
• kingjones-strix-rocmfp4 — the PRIOR frank-large runbook (2026-08-30 → 2026-09-11) and the rollback target: kingjones777/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-ROCmFP4-STRIX-GGUF on the card's pinned kingjones30/ROCmFPX build
• kingjones-q8agent-rocmfpx — the retired Q8_0-AGENT investigation and set_rows failure
• eemin-rocmi4-mtp — the former caf-eemin Qwen3.8-27B ROCmI4 embedded-MTP model on Dankclaw
• ciru-activefpx-promptforge — the RETIRED v3 CIRU PromptForge runtime on Dankclaw (superseded 2026-08-24)
• kingjones-strix-mtp — the kingjones Qwen3.8-27B ROCmFP4 STRIX MTP model on Dankclaw (active)
• dealign-ornith-crack — the retired Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B CRACK model on Dankserver (retired 2026-09-02)
• frank-small-gemma4-12b — the ACTIVE frank-small runbook since 2026-09-17: mainline llama.cpp serving HauhauCS/Gemma4-12B-QAT-Uncensored-HauhauCS-Balanced at Q4_K_M (MTP assistant sidecar + ngram-mod, q8_0 KV, --fit → 262k) on Dankclaw's RTX 3090, port 7771
• frank-small-vllm-gemma4 — RETIRED 2026-09-19 (same-day revert, rollback target): vLLM serving google/gemma-4-12B-it-qat-w4a16-ct (w4a16 Marlin) with the bf16 MTP assistant on the RTX 3090 — bf16 KV, 289,647- token pool, 2 concurrent full-context sessions, native text+image+audio
• frank-small-qwen38-gsq-rco — RETIRED 2026-09-17 (rollback target): the prior frank-small runbook (2026-09-16 → 09-17), ISTA-DASLab Qwen3.8-27B-GSQ-RCO IQ3_S with own in-file MTP head + BF16 projector
• ikllama-ornith-dankserver — the retired ik_llama.cpp runtime for the old frank-small (q8_0 + Hadamard KV cache, split-mode none; 2026-08-26)
• freetoken-frank-small — RETIRED 2026-09-15: the FreeToken/CUDA frank-small runbook, retired with the RTX 3090
• kairic-edge — the retired Kairic Edge IU4 experiment (2026-08-22)
• dflash2-large-vulkan — the retired DFlash2 Vulkan deployment (2026-08-21)
• Dankserver System Specs — the 2x R9700 box hardware (frank-medium)
• Dankclaw System Specs — the Strix Halo gfx1151 box (frank-large)
• Dankclaw Improvements — host-level changes on the Strix Halo box
• Swap Configuration — the 64 GiB /swap.img host swapfile (raised from 8 GiB 2026-09-12): fstab-driven swap.img.swap unit, the safe resize ordering that drains the old file into fresh swap instead of into a host whose MemAvailable lies by the size of the model, and the swappiness caveat
• frank-npu — the RETIRED FLM NPU endpoint on Dankclaw (2026-09-11): Gemma4 E4B vision+audio pack on the XDNA2 NPU, port 7771; kept as the retirement record, including the IOMMU/SVA err=-19 root cause and where every dependent route moved

Benchmarks and Sizing

• frank-large-benchmark — backend/spec benchmark behind the old head
• ubatch-benchmark-large — active-model llama-bench ubatch sweep plan and results
• frank-small-benchmark — the small-model benchmark suite
• frank-medium-batch-ubatch — the 2026-09-16 batch/ubatch sweep on the 2x R9700 layer split: prefill PEAKS at ubatch 512 and falls on both sides, the logical batch buys nothing measurable, decode never moves, and the ubatch's uneven VRAM give-back (1.30 GiB on card 0 against 2.41 GiB on card 1) moved the tensor split from 36:29 to 35:30
• Running Qwen3.6 35B A3B FP8 on Dankserver — Qwen3.6-35B-A3B hardware notes
• Running Qwen3.6 27B FP8 on Dankclaw — Qwen3.6-27B sizing on the iGPU
• qwen3.8-strix-optimizations — Strix Halo tuning notes
• x4-pair-experiment — what a 3090 + Strix Halo combination can and cannot do in mainline llama.cpp (measured 2026-09-16): the tensor inventory that decides a split, the one flag (-ot) that kills per-tensor placement across devices, the two-device layer splits that DO work (pure-Vulkan and cross-vendor CUDA+Vulkan, +7 % decode at 64k), and the harness-parsing trap that made the first round of measurements say otherwise

Memory and Hardware

• RAM CPU Offloading in VLLM — KV cache swap between GPU VRAM and system RAM
• Hybrid CPU GPU Processing Dankserver — NVIDIA GPU compute with system RAM offload
• Shared Memory Architecture Dankclaw — AMD unified memory and ROCm configuration
• dankserver-vram-growth — VRAM/RAM growth behind the retired cuBLAS crash
• Quantization by Hardware Architecture — which quant format fits which GPU/CPU

Retired Topology and History

• Qwen3.8 PP Deployment — the retired pipeline-parallel head + worker
• qwen3.8-spec-matrix — Qwen3.8-27B spec history (superseded by FastMTP)
• FastFlowLM NPU Inference — the retired FastFlowLM NPU endpoint
• DFlash DSpark Speculative Decoding — retired DFlash/DSpark drafting
• ling-3.0-flash-trial — the Ling-3.0-Flash trial runbook
• ling-3.0-flash-vllm-plan — the Ling-3.0-Flash vLLM plan (retired)

vLLM Reference (historical)

• VLLM Overview — installation, CLI, API, architecture, quantization, parallelism
• VLLM Index — quick reference with commands, endpoints, and parameter table
• vllm_research_findings — research findings from the vLLM era

Pipeline Parallelism (archive)

• Ethernet Bandwidth Math — the bandwidth budget for the PP pair
• Expected Performance — expected PP throughput
• llama.cpp RPC — the RPC transport between head and worker
• Mixed-Vendor Experiments — cross-vendor PP experiments
• Qwen3.6 27B Spec Methods — spec-decoding methods for the 27B
• Sample Script Set — reference scripts for the PP pair
• vLLM Pipeline Parallelism — vLLM's PP implementation

Update Log

• log — chronological record of knowledge-base changes

See Also

• AGENTS.md — repository rules
• serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md — the LLM fleet knowledge base
• dankware Configuration Knowledgebase — the "root" level system knowlegebase