I am Eric Belanger, based in Victoriaville, Québec. My comfort zone is Linux servers, virtualization, networking, backups, automation and self-hosted services.

View my resume Read my technical blog LinkedIn Contact me

What I want to demonstrate

I care less about buzzwords and more about environments that actually work: properly installed, documented, monitored, backed up and restorable when it matters.

Maintainable Linux infrastructure

Administration of Debian, AlmaLinux and other GNU/Linux systems, with a preference for simple, readable and reproducible solutions.

Backups and recovery

I think of backups as part of disaster recovery: off-site copies, encrypted disks, BorgBackup, Veeam, restore tests and written procedures.

Why free software and self-hosting?

I support free/open source software and the Free Software Foundation, not only as a principle, but because openness makes systems easier to understand, audit and keep alive. I like knowing who that server really serves when a service depends on someone else’s public cloud.

In my homelab, I experiment with services such as PeerTube, Nextcloud, Gitea, Miniflux, Owncast, Syncthing, Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT and Mosquitto. The goal is not to self-host everything at all costs; it is to understand trade-offs, reduce dependency on Big Tech and keep the ability to operate locally.

Representative technical work

How I like to work

Document

An undocumented solution is hard to maintain. I like clear procedures, useful diagrams and reproducible commands.

Test restores

A backup that has never been restored is an assumption. I value recovery exercises, ideally outside of production networks.

Choose understandable tools

I prefer systems that can be explained, troubleshot and rebuilt under pressure over a magical but opaque stack.

About this website

This website is intentionally simple: static pages written in Markdown, edited with Obsidian, generated with Jekyll, without complex server-side processing or required cookies. The color palette is inspired by Nord Theme, with light/dark mode following the browser preference.

The homepage also has roots in LittleLink, and older pages used a Sakura base. For photos, I experiment with Darktable, GIMP and sometimes Sequator.

Personal side

I also keep an unapologetically geeky side: electronic music, games like Rocket League, photography, technical curiosity and an interest in what happens under the hood.

Contact

To discuss Linux infrastructure, self-hosting, documentation or professional opportunities.