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The History of HomelabARR

HomelabARR didn't appear out of nowhere. It's the product of a decade of homelab media server projects, community splits, and lessons learned. This is the real story.

PlexGuide (2017–2018)

It started with PlexGuide — one of the first tools to automate deploying Plex and the arr stack using Ansible and Docker. The original innovation was using **Amazon Cloud Drive* as unlimited backend storage. You could stream your entire media library from the cloud through Plex, with rclone handling the mount and mergerfs combining local and cloud storage into a single path.

The team included Admin9705, doob187, salty (saltydk), smashingtags (Michael Ashley), and other contributors who built and maintained the platform.

When Amazon killed their unlimited cloud storage plans, PlexGuide pivoted to Google Drive with service accounts (GDSAs) for scaling storage.

PGBlitz (2018–2020)

PlexGuide was rebranded to PGBlitz. Same team, same Ansible architecture, new name. Google Drive replaced Amazon as the cloud backend. The project grew a significant community — thousands of users running media servers powered by PGBlitz's automation.

Then it fell apart.

Admin9705 and doob187 had a falling out. doob left the project. Shortly after, Admin9705 ghosted the community entirely — no communication, no handoff, no maintainer. PGBlitz was effectively dead.

The Fork Wars (2020–2021)

With PGBlitz abandoned, the community scrambled:

  • PTS / MHA-Team: SamiKins, salty, and other community members forked PGBlitz as the MHA-Team/PTS-Team. They tried to continue development, but the Ansible codebase was aging and the momentum was lost.

  • Dockserver: doob187 started fresh with Dockserver — a complete rewrite that dropped Ansible in favor of Docker Compose templates. It added Traefik v2 with Authelia for authentication and used a local-persist Docker volume plugin for storage management.

  • Cloudbox / Saltbox: Meanwhile, a separate lineage existed. Cloudbox was another Ansible-based media server tool (not directly from the PGBlitz tree). When Cloudbox was archived in March 2025, Saltbox — maintained by salty (saltydk), who had also worked on the original PlexGuide — became its successor. Saltbox remains actively maintained today.

Sudobox — The GUI That Never Shipped (2021–2023)

While the Ansible-based projects were forking and the community was fragmenting, there was one project that promised to solve everything: Sudobox.

Announced in January 2021 on the Plex forums, Sudobox promised what everyone had been asking for — a web GUI for managing your media server. No more Ansible playbooks, no more YAML editing, no more SSH. Just open a browser, click Deploy, and your app runs.

The community got excited. The installer repo got 23 stars from people waiting. They built a real GitHub organization with a JavaScript backend, a companion service, a CLI tool, a full MkDocs documentation site, and an installer with a polished screenshot. They had demo videos on the Plex forums.

Then it stopped. The backend was last touched in March 2023. The documentation in March 2022. The installer in 2022. The website became a landing page with three words: "Working outside the box."

Sudobox was the right idea at the right time — but it never shipped. The community went back to Ansible and Docker Compose and command lines, still waiting for a GUI that would actually work.

HomelabARR CE (2025–Present)

Michael Ashley (smashingtags) — who had been part of the original PlexGuide team — took Dockserver's Docker Compose foundation and built what Sudobox promised but never delivered.

HomelabARR CE is the GUI that actually shipped:

  • A web GUI — React-based dashboard with a 157+ app catalog. No more editing YAML files or running Ansible playbooks. Browse apps, click Deploy, watch it happen.
  • A CLI menu system — interactive terminal interface for users who prefer the command line.
  • No plugin dependencies — removed the local-persist volume plugin requirement. Everything works with standard Docker out of the box.
  • Proper CI/CD — GitHub Actions pipelines, automated Docker image builds, Dependabot updates, CodeQL security scanning.
  • Comprehensive documentation — full wiki with migration guides for every major platform (Saltbox, Cloudbox, PGBlitz, Dockserver).
  • One-line install — sudo wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smashingtags/homelabarr-ce/main/install-remote.sh | sudo bash

CE is free, open source, and MIT licensed. It's the community edition — designed to be the easiest way to get a media server running.

HomelabARR PE (Professional Edition)

Tired of building on other people's foundations, Michael rewrote everything from scratch in Go. HomelabARR PE is a completely independent codebase — not a fork, not based on anyone else's work.

PE is a single binary that embeds:

  • A native Go backend with 50+ REST API endpoints
  • A React 19 dashboard with shadcn/ui components
  • SnapRAID + MergerFS storage management for mixed drive sizes
  • Native Go file sharing (SMB/NFS without Docker overhead)
  • 137+ Docker Compose app templates
  • Real-time WebSocket monitoring

PE is the commercial product. CE is the free funnel. Both are built and maintained by one person from a server rack in Georgia.

The Thread That Connects Everything

Every project in this lineage stores app data in /opt/appdata/. Every one uses Docker containers. Every one manages the same apps — Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Jellyfin, qBittorrent.

The difference is how you interact with them. PlexGuide and PGBlitz used Ansible. Dockserver used Docker Compose with no GUI. Saltbox still uses Ansible. HomelabARR CE gives you a web browser or an interactive terminal menu. HomelabARR PE gives you a single binary.

The community split because of people. The technology evolved because of need. HomelabARR exists because someone who was there from the beginning decided to build the tool that should have existed all along.

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