GameVault 2 goes Linux, hot-file tiering for Unraid, and a Brother printer reborn on a Pi

Homelab Highlights for 2026-10-28: self-hosting and homelab notes worth knowing.

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The Lead: GameVault 2 leaves Early Access and runs on Linux

GameVault, the self-hosted platform for managing DRM-free game collections, releases version 2 as a public beta. The new desktop client runs natively on Linux via AppImage and .deb packages, plus Windows and macOS. The interface is rebuilt around the Web UI, supports multiple game versions, and shares the same frontend across browser and desktop apps. Windows games run through umu-launcher with Wine/Proton, each in its own prefix. The two-person team discloses heavy AI assistance in the rewrite, with dozens of hours of testing and an Early Access phase before release.

Why it matters: A long-requested Linux client from a small team that kept at it for years. The multi-version vault and shared interface are practical upgrades, and the honest AI disclosure sets a useful precedent for community projects.

Source: Lemmy.World - selfhosted

News Roundup

PSA: UEFI Vulnerability in OVMF (CVE-2026-97631)

A critical EDK II UEFI vulnerability in OVMF firmware affects QEMU/KVM guests on Proxmox, especially those using PXE boot. Patch guidance covers updating OVMF firmware; at the time of posting, no official fix was available.

Why it matters: A heads-up for anyone running VMs with OVMF UEFI. Worth checking your guests this week, even if no patch is out yet.

Source: r/Proxmox

Jellyfin on Pi

JellyPi pre-converts a Jellyfin library to H.264 1080p with AAC stereo so an old Raspberry Pi can direct-play without server-side transcoding. Encoding can be offloaded to an NVIDIA GPU when available, falling back to the Pi. Tradeoffs include no 4K support and slow Pi-only encoding.

Why it matters: A practical way to reuse a 2022-era Pi as a Jellyfin playback device, with honest tradeoffs and an interesting GPU offload option.

Source: r/jellyfin

I built Tower, a free and open-source native iOS/iPadOS app for managing Unraid and the *arr stack

Tower is a free, open-source iOS/iPadOS app built in SwiftUI that manages Unraid via its official GraphQL API and supports Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr, NZBGet, Bazarr, Overseerr, and Tautulli. The developer discloses heavy AI assistance and plans to maintain it. Commenters compare it to the paid alternative Quartermaster.

Why it matters: A native, open-source option for iOS Unraid management, with the developer’s transparent AI disclosure and a price comparison that makes the free app attractive.

Source: r/unRAID

Tool & Software Highlight: Unspin – Prevent unnecessary HDD spin-ups by automatically promoting active hot-files to your SSD cache

Unspin is an Unraid plugin that monitors file reads via Linux fanotify and automatically copies frequently accessed files from the array to the SSD cache after the file handle is released. It never spins up disks on its own, works system-wide, and includes locks to avoid promotion during backups or rsync. Recommended pairing with Mover Tuning and atime tracking.

Why it matters: Solves a common pain point for Unraid users: noisy array disks during editing sessions. The system-wide approach and careful design (no cron, backup locks) distinguish it from alternatives like Cache Mover.

Source: r/unRAID

Community Highlight: I’m building a native ARM driver and dashboard for an old Brother DCP-150C on a Raspberry Pi

A developer is creating a native Linux driver for the Brother DCP-150C USB printer, running on a Raspberry Pi with CUPS integration and a web dashboard showing device status, print jobs, and cartridge levels. Print-data conversion runs natively on ARM without x86 emulation. Physical printing is not yet validated, but ink readings and status work. Built with substantial AI assistance.

Why it matters: A perfect homelab project: reviving old hardware with a native ARM driver, avoiding emulation, and sharing it openly as a work in progress. The honest disclosure and detailed status make it a model for community-driven hardware projects.

Source: r/raspberry_pi

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Transcript

Host A: Welcome to Homelab Highlights, the show that surfaces practical homelab wins and useful self-hosted tools.

Host A: Starting with the one a lot of people have been waiting on. GameVault is the self-hosted platform for managing a DRM-free game collection — your server holds the library, and a desktop client downloads and installs games so you can play them locally and share the collection with friends and family. The developer just posted that GameVault 2 is out as a public beta, and the headline for this crowd is that the new desktop client finally runs on Linux. Same two-person team, and they’ve been at this for roughly three or four years now.

Host B: There’s a real arc here. The original GameVault was built with the tech the developers knew at the time, and when they shared the Web UI earlier they said it would become the foundation for a cross-platform desktop client. Quite a few people in that community were specifically waiting for a Linux app, and now it’s here. On Linux there are AppImage and .deb packages, plus Windows and macOS builds. Windows games run through umu-launcher with Wine or Proton, and each game gets its own prefix — which is the tidy way to keep game environments from stepping on each other.

Host A: The interface got rebuilt around that frontend too. The developer calls it a huge visual improvement over the old client, it’s responsive so the layout adapts on a phone or a small window, and the browser app and desktop app share the same interface. One genuinely useful addition: the vault can now hold multiple versions of a game, and you pick which version to download. Anyone who has ever needed to roll a game back to an older build knows why that matters.

Host B: Worth being clear about the state of it, though. This is a public beta. GameVault+ features are still missing, and games installed through GameVault 1 have to be downloaded and installed again. The old client stays available while they work on the missing functionality and stability, so nobody has to migrate under pressure. The developer also disclosed that the rewrite was built working alongside LLM agents, with dozens of hours of testing and an Early Access phase with real users before this release. [thoughtful] That disclosure is worth noting, because the same week has a couple of other AI-assisted projects in the mix.

Host B: A few more from the roundup. First, a security heads-up for Proxmox users. A post on the Proxmox subreddit flags CVE-2026-97631, a critical EDK II UEFI vulnerability in OVMF firmware. The thread’s framing is that this could be relevant if you have VMs using OVMF UEFI as their BIOS with PXE boot. Patch guidance points at updating the OVMF firmware, and one commenter noted no fix was out yet at the time of the post — so treat this as a check-your-guests-this-week item, not a panic button.

Host A: Next, a fun one for anyone with an old Raspberry Pi in a drawer. A project called JellyPi pre-converts a Jellyfin library once for direct playback, targeting H.264 at 1080p with AAC stereo, and skips files that already match. The goal is that the Pi never has to transcode at stream time. The tradeoffs are real: no 4K archive ambitions here, and the poster says the Pi can do the encoding itself but it’s painfully slow, with an option to offload to an NVIDIA GPU while the PC is on and fall back to the Pi when it’s off. [curious] The comments split on whether pre-converting is the right answer versus just using clients that direct-play, which is a fair debate.

Host B: And one more: a developer built Tower, a free and open-source native iOS and iPadOS app for managing Unraid and the *arr stack, using Unraid’s official GraphQL API. It covers array status, capacity and parity state, disk temperatures, Docker container controls, VM power actions, shares and logs, plus the usual *arr services through their APIs. It’s built in SwiftUI with real split views on iPad. The developer openly discloses heavy AI assistance and says they’re a software developer by trade who plans to keep supporting it. Some commenters pushed back on yet another AI-assisted app; the developer’s answer is that being open-source is the point, and a commenter noted the closed alternative, Quartermaster, runs 34,99 euros. [skeptical] That price comparison is doing a lot of work in that thread.

Host A: For the tool highlight, an Unraid plugin that solves a problem almost every array user has felt: Unspin, which prevents unnecessary HDD spin-ups by automatically promoting active hot files to the SSD cache. The developer posted it on the Unraid subreddit, and it’s now available in the Unraid Apps tab.

Host B: The problem it targets is the Mover’s direction problem. Unraid normally only moves files down from cache to array. So if an old project lives on the array and it needs editing, the choices are ugly: either eat constant HDD latency while the disks spin up and stay active through the whole session, or manually copy the project back to cache first. Unspin automates that second path.

Host A: Mechanically it’s clever. It monitors read activity passively using Linux fanotify, and it never spins a disk up on its own. When a file gets opened and the disk spins up anyway, the plugin notes the activity, and once the file handle is released it copies those frequently accessed files up to the SSD cache. Future reads then come straight from the SSD, so the array disks spin back down and stay quiet. The developer recommends pairing it with Mover Tuning and atime tracking so the nightly Mover doesn’t immediately push active projects back to the array. It also has locks so a backup or rsync run doesn’t trigger promotion, and it prevents the cache from overfilling. [lighter] The comments are a good reality check. One camp says Cache Mover already does this with more options; the developer’s answer is that Cache Mover mainly polls media players, while Unspin works system-wide and doesn’t rely on cron. Another camp worries about SSD write wear — the developer’s reply is that every HDD spin-up has a cost too, and the cache pool exists for speed and fewer spin-ups. Some media-server users say a big cache pool plus Mover Tuning already covers their case. Worth a look if the array noise is the thing that bothers you.

Host B: For the community highlight, a project that is exactly the kind of thing homelabs are for. A poster on the Raspberry Pi subreddit is building a native Linux driver for the Brother DCP-150C, an old USB printer, with the goal of turning it into a network printer through a Raspberry Pi, complete with a local web dashboard.

Host A: The context here is that old printers like this usually only have x86 drivers, so getting them running on ARM normally means emulation. This project does the print-data conversion natively on ARM with no x86 emulation, and it integrates with CUPS to share the printer over the local network. The web dashboard shows device status, print jobs and cartridge levels, with English and German language support. [curious] One detail that shows how deep this goes: the printer takes almost eight seconds to respond to each request, and cartridge levels and device status need separate queries, so the ink percentages in the screenshot are the printer’s reported level bands.

Host B: It’s an early preview, and the poster is refreshingly honest about what works. Device status and ink readings work on the real printer, but physical printing has not yet been validated. The generated print data has been compared against the original driver’s output, and testing actual printed pages is still outstanding. The project was developed with substantial assistance from Claude and OpenAI Codex, and the poster is asking whether anyone still runs a DCP-150C and how they’re keeping it alive. That’s the right way to share a work in progress.

Host A: That’s Homelab Highlights for Wednesday. Until next time, happy hosting!