building a roon ROCK server (and fixing the “welcome to GRUB” error)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:12:00 +0000

Last holidays I built a dedicated Roon ROCK server and like most good projects, it didn’t go completely to plan.

What started as a straightforward install turned into a frustrating “welcome to grub” dead end. But after a bit of digging (and almost giving up), I found the fix.

If you’re running newer Intel NUC hardware. ie; NUC13/14 this will save you a lot of time.

The Build

I ended up going a bit overkill… but for the price, it made sense.

i setup a family VPN that just works - split tunnel with private DNS

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:29:00 +0000

Most home VPN guides are written for nerds who want to tinker. This is no exception but is very much suited to a typical family.

Here’s what I did and why it’s become one of the best things on my home network.

The problem

I wanted three things:

Access to my home network from anywhere
Ad blocking and content filtering on all family devices, everywhere - not just at home
No impact on normal internet speeds or mobile data usage

The standard solutions all had tradeoffs. A full tunnel VPN routes all your traffic through home, which is slow and hammers your home upload. A Pi-hole only works when you’re on the home network. Commercial DNS filtering services cost money and you’re trusting a third party with everything.

how-to on blog.jessefitzgerald

building a roon ROCK server (and fixing the “welcome to GRUB” error)

The Build

i setup a family VPN that just works - split tunnel with private DNS

The problem