Stop Putting Your UniFi Admin Password in an Env Var

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:01 -0800

There’s a command line in the gofi post I wrote ten days ago that has been quietly bugging me ever since I hit publish:

gofips -H 10.20.30.1 -k --get > hosts.conf

Look at that -k. That’s me telling the tool “don’t bother checking the TLS certificate.” And the part you can’t see is worse: my UniFi admin username and password, sitting in environment variables. Both of those were compromises I made to get the thing working. Neither of them sat well.

gofi - a Go library for Ubiquity Unifi control (written by AI)

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:01 -0800

Here’s a thing I’ve quietly hated for years: managing static IP assignments and DNS names for the little fleet of gear on my network. Every homelab has it — the Pi in the garage, the shop printer, the sensor node in the attic, the pool controller. You want them at known addresses with known names. And the “old-school” way to get that is to stand up a DHCP server and a DNS server and keep them in sync. Since my network has tens of BrightSign devices in addition to my hobby robotics devices, this becomes actual work.

Gofi on Greg Herlein

Stop Putting Your UniFi Admin Password in an Env Var

gofi - a Go library for Ubiquity Unifi control (written by AI)