I’m already hosting pihole, but i know there’s so much great stuff out there! I want to find some useful things that I can get my hands on. Thanks!
Edit: Thanks all! I’ve got a lil homelab setup going now with Pihole, Jellyfin, Paperless ngx, Yacht and YT-DL. Going to be looking into it more tomorrow, this is so much fun!
As far as changed your life, there are not too many that i really love, that made a massive difference to how i do things. But there is one:
Paperless_ngx
ALL of my paper work, receipts, transcripts, tax, shares, council rates. Everything goes in there. We no longer have paper lieing everywhere (well, my wife is another matter, still keeps grocery shopping reciepts…). when i get soimething in the mail, i used the paperless app to “scan” it, upload it, then bin the paper.
An actual life change that i didn’t know i needed.
Is it possible for the scans to be stored as files that are readable should paperless crash and I’m not around to get it up and running, or are files stored as weird non-standard file formats?
edit: looks like scans are saved as pdf’s. Thanks for the insight!
It creates searchable PDFs, so no weird format locked to paperless-ngx
Thanks for the insight!
The files are stored in a directory and you can define the default path with an environment variable ( file-name-handling ). If you need a more fine graint solution you can also use storage paths and select it on file level ( storage-paths ). I’m using syncthing to sync the folder structure to my other devices.
Oh nice, thanks!
Commenting here to save this and also to create engagement.
did you know that you can save a post, by clicking the star?
also, appreciate the engagement :D
I also am creating engagement.
Man that was some solid engagement!
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I also am creating engagement.
i thoguht you may be a bot as there are 20-odd replies the same, but my guess is you are using an app which is a bit dicky.
can you delete all the repeats?
Tried, app wasn’t letting me delete either… Funny that it was on this specific post.
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Why is this better for you than using a folder structure with a decent naming convention? I’ve tried to get started a couple times, but I just haven’t managed to get what’s better about it. I know i’m missing something, and I feel like if I knew what it is i’d be more likely to out in the work to transition.
well, there are a few things:
- using the app to take photos (in a scan sort of mode, where it trims it to be at right angles), really quick and easy, no matter where i am.
- remote access - i can view all of my documents where ever i am.
- easy & sophisticated search. I have my documents assigned to people (me, wife, child, etc). I also assigned them to things like payslips, tax, shares, legal documents, education docs, receipts, etc. it also helps to automatically tag them to some degree of accuracy
- Automatic dating, it is quite good at picking out the date of the document, as seperate to the upload date. and it is easily updatable if it is wrong
- OCR - the documents content is searchable!
- Ease of tax time. I have some financial year views that make it really easy for me to do my tax (Australia), and i dont need to go hunting for paper that has faded in the heat and is no longer legible.
- folders - the documents are placed in a folder structure of your choosing. if you change the details in the document meta-data, it will move it to the correct place.
so, whilst a folder structure would work. this is SOOO much easier, and provides much more functionality as it is not just storage. it also has WAF!
That was a really clear explanation, thanks. Decent remote scanning would be nice. I guess I just have to wrap my head around tags for some of the niceties to make sense, though I guess i’d be no worse off if I just used folders if that’s an option as well.
you’re welcome.
I tend to use document types more than tags now. note that there are a number of meta-data fields:
- correspondent
- docuemnt type
- tag
i started with tag, but now mostly use a combination of the doc date, type and correspondent. Then use the search bar for specific documents.
How is your work flow from scanning to paperless? Does it support some kind of upload folder?
Yeah paperless supports an upload folder. My scanner has an ability to scan to a network drive, so I scan things onto a shared drive on my homelab box, paperless consumes the scanned PDF and places it into the paperless “inbox”.
i dont have a scanner, but do use the email function to get my work payslips.
Yep, supports upload folder, normal upload in the application and also automatically importing from email based on folder/label
That looks really cool. At the moment I scan everything with OneDrive, and sync it with my NAS. However, it doesn’t have e.g. OCR features, it’s pretty basic. Will have a look, thanks!
Honestly Plex/Emby/Jellyfin whichever you prefer is a gamechanger because if you have a large library of content then it just cuts the cord from the subscription services.
I’ve always been happy to pay for them until I went on holiday last January and realised that none of my services were working due to going to a country that was out of the way and the only way to access them was to use a VPN.
So having my own Netflix is a great thing.
Tailscale while doing the above is also really cool
Yep. 100% agree. I have a 175TB server. Sure it was expensive to set up initially, but I have all shows and movies I want, always. From all the different services I would have to subscribe to, I imagine I have recovered my initial outlay and I never have to worry about media being removed from the service or it going out of business.
I have things that aren’t even available if I wanted to subscribe. Best thing you can do for yourself.
No commercials, always high quality. Available anywhere, at any time.
I really hope you have that backed up
He/she probably has all his/her movies backed up in the internet ;)
It just takes a really long time to restore from those backups. And weirdly, they’re scattered all over the place…
Depends on your source and connection but I managed to recover 8tb of movies in a couple weeks.
I have a duplicate server off site that I back it up to
Probably an ignorant question but the content you use is pirated right? Should I wonder about legal issues since I would keep it at home and connected to Internet? Protected of course I just don’t see too deep into the issue
If you don’t explicitly set a DNS to allow access from outside the local network, all your stuff is private and confined within your local network. As it is with all, let’s say, wifi stuff that goes on in your home.
Edit. What @notorious said
Home Assistant. It’s a rabbit hole, but it’s great. I’ve got motion enabled lights, thermostats for “dumb” heaters, and I track device usage (tablet, xbox) of my kids.
And it’s so nice having zero dependence on the cloud. If the internet drops out, everything still works, including the mobile app.
Not necessarily, I have devices that are cloud dependent. Locally in NZ there aren’t a lot of options, all smart plugs are cloud dependent. Also things like weather integrations will stop working.
Look for z-wave or zigbee plugs. You’ll need to buy a hub, but unless NZ has banned the protocol, it should get you smart switches, outlets, thermostats and more.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
It’s up to you to make it cloudless, but Home Assistant is the only solution I know of out there that even allows this possibility. I refuse to use anything in my home that requires a third party app or cloud connection (aside from initial pairing so I can flash it with ESPHome or some other local-only firmware). Admittedly it complicates things, but the payoff is so worth it.
I use Home Assistant as well, but Apple HomeKit (and the new Matter protocol) can also be cloudless I think.
Yup, HomeKit can 100% work without internet. It’s a requirement of being HomeKit certified. I block internet access to all my HomeKit devices and they work just fine.
Self hosting nothing changed my life.
So much free time and less stress once I abandoned self hosting 😅
I always compare self hosting to PC gaming: it has some very specific benefits, but you don’t even comprehend, how many downsides you will encounter you cannot even start to anticipate. If one doesn’t like the pain a little bit theses hobbies aren’t any good and I totally understand everyone giving up on them.
Self hosting is much closer to gaming on Linux than Windows imo, but it’s a great analogy nevertheless.
I’ve been pc gaming for dozens of years and last few years I have near zero problems.
Maybe a combination of popular and newish hardware combination and dozen years of technical experience.
Linux gaming on the other hand… (except maybe deck)
haha, I have the same experience tbh, but I still get the obvious “I don’t want to update my drivers or fiddle with settings and controls, I just want something that works”, responses. I don’t even recognize these topics as “pain” anymore, but this probably just shows how high my tolerance has become in the last decades.
It’s disappointing that this is the highest voted comment on a thread in the selfhosted topic…
I don’t know. I think it speaks to something that we sometimes forget. Self hosting is great, but there’s a bit of time and commitment that’s needed for almost everything. Most people are used to single click, always works apps. Doing your own building, diagnostics, troubleshooting, and deployment can be a headache that’s too much for some people.
It’s really the phrasing “average joe”. I would genuinely give the average Joe a strong recommendation to not self host.
A beginner wanting to learn to be more techy and willing to put in hours for troubleshooting etc? Sure go ahead. But thats definitely not the average Joe.
My biggest advice to a beginner would be to buy a spare budget router, plug it into your ISP router, plug your pc into the new router and do all your messing around in your own network.
Break the internet because of bad configure? No stress, it’s only your little network, your flatmates/family aren’t yelling at you.
Can’t figure out what you did wrong and want the internet back to search? Just plug your pc back to the untouched ISP router so you get internet again
Was it r/cordcutters? So good not self hosting even dumb things especially when friends and family use it. I’d rather just fork out for the bill myself.
Vaultwarden is pretty game changing. No more reusing passwords and they aren’t in the cloud.
This is a rare one for which i wouldnt bother self hosting; i trust the centralized server provider, i can take an offline backup of my passwords and it only costs $10. And im the sort to run my own email server because i don’t trust the cloud providers.
Why though? Just host it in your private network and use a VPN for occasional syncing.
I second your opinion about not selfhosting Bitwarden. About email, have a look at Proton mail. All the emails are encrypted in the server and are decripted client side with your password only when you open them.
Hosting a wedding has a pretty good chance to be life changing
I did this and it led to hosting a baby within my wife. Was pretty steep learning curve and now have zero downtime.
So, if I understand correctly it at least had life changing consequences.
Parties.
For me it’s 100% Nextcloud. It was a pain to get working at first (and I’m dreading the day it breaks, if that happens). But it is so much more than just a self-hosted Dropbox solution:
- Maps
- Calendar
- Markdown editor (I’m using this to try and replace Google Drive for collaborative document editing with my friends; most of what we need can be achieved with Markdown formatting)
- I haven’t tried it but there is a Talk plugin that allows for video conferencing in browser;
- a bunch of other stuff I’ve never played with like mind maps, PDF conversion, music player, etc.
My experience has been that Nextcloud can do 1000 different things, and it sucks at all of them.
That’s a little harsh but I definitely agree it doesn’t tend to offer a better or equal alternative to any free options available. You’re giving up a certain level of ease of use.
Been using nextcloud for about 5 years, right now I use it for storing files and nothing else, and it still kinda sucks at that.
Gonna use paperless for any documents I have in NC, after that there won’t be much left in there, just some old dot files. Maybe I’ll get rid of it entirely
Ive run NC in one way or another for years now, and switching to a docker-compose stack was an absolute gamechanger for upgrades and break fix ease.
Carnet to replace google keep notes
Is that a nextcloud plugin?
It’s a nextcloud app: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet
and then there’s an android app for your phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spisoft.quicknote
Yes, Nextcloud. It’s not perfect, but it has made my life easier for the last few years
Swinger parties?
I had exactly the same thought 😆
If you spend some time learning how docker/podman works you’ll be able to host practically anything!
Docker I can’t wrap my head around. I keep trying to spend a night and sit down and play around with it. But I hit a block, get distracted and never get anywhere.
Use chatgpt to help you keep going, it’s very helpful
edit: Thought I’d expand on this more. Treat ChatGPT like a fellow engineer who never gets annoyed at answering your questions, and will never tell you that you’re dumb (haha). Tell it what yo’ure trying to do, copy paste your commands into it, copy paste the error messages if you have any. Literally, inundate it with questions and info and it’ll help you understand what you’re doing and help you unblock yourself. It’s a great tool.
Don’t know why you got downvoted. Chatgpt has helped me too wrap my head around programming/scripting - in my case jinja2 in home assistant.
It might not always be correct, but it helped me getting started!
I think the thing that’s really stopping me from using that is that every time I get curious and go poking around to see what the fuss is, I run into some sort of paywall situation, or maybe it’s just a long queue that you need to join to get access, something like that. All I know is that you can’t just casually fire it up and take it for a spin.
Either I’m finding the wrong thing, or the people who already swear by it paid some fee or got an early access code ages ago. It also doesn’t know when it’s lying, and already got a lawyer in trouble for trying to let ChatGPT do his job, apparently it slapped together a brief, an argument before the court, that referenced a bunch of case law that didn’t actually exist.
No matter what, it’s not so casually accessible as people make it out to be, I don’t know what’s up with that.
I had that at the start for a day or two but then it stopped. I a chatgpt open in a tab on my phone. I haven’t had any issue asking questions in months
I’m assuming you’re referring to ChatGPT not being casually accessible. If you’re signed up on a free account, you get access to GPT-3.5 which is pretty decent. If you pay the $20 a month you get access to GPT-4 which is even better, and I prefer to use this - but the free model is also fine for learning podman/docker.
Sign up, if you gotta be on the waitlist, get on it. You can also use Google Bard or Microsoft’s Bing chat AI as well. The MS Bing one is GPT-4 backed. Either way, they will help you learn stuff. Don’t be discouraged, push through and embrace these awesome generative AI tools, they unlock superpowers for you :)
Try phind.com, it’s free for now, and uses gpt-3.5 unlimited or gpt-4 limited to 25 requests per… 4 hours I think. Never ran out. It’s specialised for devs. So far the output is the best of bing AI, and Copilot chat that I’m testing.
The important concepts aren’t that complicated.
Instead of nesting a computer (VM’s) the operating system makes the program think it’s on its own dedicated computer (isolated file system space, cpu, and memory shares). A Dockerfile is just a basic script to construct one of these computers by commands and files.
The real reason people get excited is because they can ship a Docker “image”. It’s a layered filesystem which really is just like saying there’s a system tracking who puts what files in what place and so it’s easier to just send the whole setup to someone then try to document how you should set all that stuff up to run their software.
This is “dummier” proof than the pre-existing convention of just using a package manager to do this for you.
Instead of learning docker itself, look for a project you really like that offers a docker-based install and deploy that. It’ll usually take less than 20 lines of terminal commands. It’s a good start that gets you to feel the usefulness of docker, and the basics that you’ll need for most deploys.
To understand it you’ll need to know roughly what an OS is. Very roughly speaking an OS provides a program with a way to access files, connect to the internet and launch other programs.
What docker does is make something a bit like a ‘virtual’ OS with its own filesystem, network and task manager, and then start running programs in it (which then may launch other programs).
Since you’re not making a VM which must simulate all of the hardware, this is a lot cheaper. However since a docker container gets its own filesystem, network etc. it can do whatever it wants without any other programs getting in the way.
Among other things docker containers make installation a lot easier since a program will only ever see its own files (unless you explicitly add your own files to the docker container). To a large extent you also don’t need to worry about installing any prerequisites, since those can just be put into the container.
Making a docker container is a bit (a lot) like installing a fresh OS, just putting the stuff you need in it and then copying the whole OS whenever you want to run the thing again. Except it’s been optimized such that it takes about as much effort as launching a program, as opposed to a VM which needs dedicated resources and are generally slower than the machine that hosts them.
Does this mean Docker instances are large in size? I haven’t used it either but I’ve been meaning to get into it. If I can use stuff like nodemon in it, it’d be great.
The images can get big, but they’re fairly clever about it so it is manageable. Performance wise they don’t take up more CPU and RAM than a regular application.
There’s an (unofficial) image running nodemon on dockerhub about 250MB in size. The official NodeJS image is about 300MB (presumably they’ve preinstalled a bunch of stuff). You could start with the official image and install nodemon on it, that would probably be most future proof (no way of knowing if the unofficial image keeps getting updates, if any).
I think the more intuitive model (to me) is instead of thinking of it as a lightweight virtual machine, or a neatly packaged up OS, is to instead think of it as a process shipped with an environment. That environment includes things like files and other executables (like apt), but in of itself doesn’t constitute an OS. It doesn’t have its own filesystems, drivers, or anything like that. By default it doesn’t run an init system like systemd either, nor does it run any other applications other than the process you execute in the environment.
That’s fair, but is that environment any different from just a virtual OS? I mean it doesn’t have its own filesystem and drivers etc, but that’s precisely because they’ve been made virtual.
In this context I’d say systemd is an application, not the OS, though the distinction gets iffy I know.
Because I associate an OS with more then just an environment. It often has several running apps for instance, often a GUI or shell (which many containers don’t have), are concerned about some form of hardware (virtual or physical), and just… Do more.
Containers by contrast are just a view into your filesystem, and some isolation from the rest of the environment through concepts like cgroups. All the integrations with the container host are a lot simpler (and accurate) to think of as just simply removing layers of isolation, rather then thinking of it like its own VM or OS. Capabilities just fit the model a lot better.
I agree the line is iffy since many OS’s leave out a few things of the above, like RTOS’s for MCUs, but I just don’t think it’s worth thinking of a container like its own OS considering how different it is from a “normal” Linux based OS or VM.
Docker is much easier than it seems, imagine a single app with all it’s dependencies all the way down to the os level being all wrapped up in a virtual filesystem so it can’t see anything else. Only the kernel is shared.
So if “Awesome Webapp Jeroboam” needs a different version of python than you have installed and and old version of ffmpeg for some utility it needs, along with the apache webserver where you prefer nginx, no problem, all that mess gets wrappped up in a container and you don’t have to worry about it.
Stay away from Plex, if you like to go with Free and Open source.
I’ll start with Jellyfin, and Arr family (sonarr,radarr,prowlarr or Jackett), Vaultwarden and immich
Edit: Learn to spin up docker instances first, as above services would be easier to manage in docker containers and for back ups I prefer Duplicati. And if you run it 24x7 add AdguardHome or PiHole to the mix
Edit1: if you are extremely new to docker instances and find it hard to learn, just spin up CasaOS and you’ll be good to go as it makes spinning up docker containers so easy.
immich
Did they just nick the Google Photos UI?
Yes its basically selfhosted Google Photos instance kinda thing. There is a great story the Dev shared once, he was paranoid about backing up things to Google or Apple cloud as they have history of sharing it with Feds. So Dev won’t like his family pictures on such platforms, so when him and his partner were to have a baby, he started working on immich, so by the time baby arrives he’ll have a safe platform to backup family pictures.
Wow!! Immich looks great. I’ll be getting that going asap. I actually just started paying for Google drive just to have more space for photos and videos. I’ve always wanted to move over to using my server but I just couldn’t find a great Google photos alternative. This looks perfect.
Glad to know, I was able to help ya avoid that cost. We should be thanking the Dev’s baby, as it helped us all to protect our privacy and our pockets 🤣.
Does duplicati have to do periodic full backups?
I’ve used borgbackup / borgmatic. One full backup and only incrementals thereafter.
Plex is a far better and user friendly version than jellyfin or emby in my experience especially if you want to share to friends. Granted it’s not open source and has gone commercial route so there is the risk it will continue there. But for now I wouldn’t push to move. If jellyfin can get some more app support and continue to develop and be ready for when Plex messes up then it will take off.
if you want to share to friend
Not if they need their own Plex Pass for so many features. The only thing Jellyfin lacks is user self password resets and transcoded downloads. I don’t really see any other advantages in Plex
Transcoded downloads are a pretty big deal unless you want to stream 4K blue ray HDR to your iPhone.
Downloads, not streaming.
Does jellyfin handle audiobooks? For some reason I found the service lacking a couple of years ago, but can’t remember why.
So I got Plex pass and really enjoy it. The Prologue app gives you an audible-like interface for audiobooks that I love. Plexamp for music and Plex Dash to monitor the server. Audnexus matches audiobooks to Audible listings for the metadata. Plex movies and tv match to get metadata, trailers, behind the scenes, cast list, and rotten tomatoes reviews. If Plex ever gets too commercialized/restricted for some reason I’ll switch, but for now I couldn’t be happier.
As far as I know there is basic audiobook support. But I have no clue, because I don’t use it. If I used Audiobooks I wouldn’t be using Jellyfin for them anyway
FreshRSS, news and websites fetched your way. You can even create feeds for websites that don’t provide one
Quick question, don’t want to highjack the thread. This looks interesting, but I don’t understand why I couldn’t just install it on my regular laptop running fedora. Why does it need it’s own server?
Well you can install it locally and get the web interface via localhost, but if it’s a proper server you can access the news from your sources from anywhere and you can also use 3rd party apps in your phone to get a different interface via the API
FreshRSS is just a PHP app so you don’t even need a VPS - you could even install it in a regular shared hosting account.
Oh ok thanks. I do like the idea of access from anywhere… I’m guessing a VPN would be needed on the server and phone? Or is this a whole big thing?
Check out tailscale, the best tool ever to access a server without opening ports or doing hard stuff
Or Cloudflare tunnels
yeah but I kinda dislike cloudflare. Tailscale is based on wireguard which is cool
Cool, I’ve heard of it but never really looked into it. I’ll give it a try.
Hey I got FreshRSS self hosted and everything is up and running smooth. Only thing is, for the websites without RSS… how did you get the RSS for those?
I made a blog about this. Make sure to follow it via RSS too ;)
https://joelchrono.xyz/blog/newsboat-queries-and-freshrss-scraping/
Thanks bro
Actual Budget I use to track my finance.
Duplicacy for backups to OneDrive and Backblaze
Photoprism as Google replacement
Immich is also a great Google Photos alternative. Though it is in active development and things may break, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by it.
My problem with Actual Budget is it’s only a singular currency. I deal with Euro, Dollar, Romanian Lei, British Pound. Having to manually convert each to Dollar, and then have a bit of discrepancy due to price fluctuations made it a no go for me. Have not found a good self hosted finance tracker that works for me yet.
At the moment I am unfortunately using a proprietary one called Cubux.For what its worth, Firefly supports multiple currencies, hell I even see a few crypto currencies in the list haha.
Welp, I went down the wonderful hole of Actual today. Thank you for that!
Let’s see if it takes over from my xls. I’m liking it. It’s quick and I see lots of potential.
Exactly a couple of things that we (me and the wife) use really often:
- AdGuard Home is IMHO so much easier to use, although it has been a while since I’ve used Pi-Hole.
- CouchDB for the Obsidian LiveSync plugin
- Immich for a self hosted Google Photos alternative
- Nginx Proxy Manager for exposing all of my services
- Vaultwarden is invaluable for us
Thanks for teaching me about LiveSync, not being able to sync my notes with mobile without an obsidian account has been annoying, but none of the web based interfaces look at nice or as usable as obsidian. Being able to sync everything between desktops and mobile will be really handy.
While Vaultwarden is great I would not suggest selfhosting your password manager unless you do regular backups. Losing all your password cause your server went down is a great way to ruin your day.
I don’t think that’s true. Even when Bitwarden server is down you can still access your Bitwarden vault, use and export all passwords. You can’t save new passwords but using existing ones should work perfectly fine. So, when your server is down/broken, export your vault, fix server and get new Vaulwarden instance up and import your vault again. Thats it. I still find it safer to selfhost it than getting my passwords leaked.
Nevertheless, are backups crucial. But it is relatively easy with vaultwarden-backup and the free object storage of AWS, Oracle and so on.
*ruin your year
It’s very easy to back up and encrypted vault to the cloud. Also all bitwarden clients save your info locally, so you wouldn’t lose your vault unless everything you had logged into it with was destroyed simultaneously.
It’s been a while since I last checked Vaultwarden (back then it was still called bitwarden-rs). If they added an export feature, then that definitely makes things easier. The export feature in the client isn’t enough IMO. Last time I tried it, it didn’t export attachments. So if you for example have your SSH key saved in Bitwarden, well then good luck if you loose access to the vault :P
I would look at this https://youtu.be/uaixCKTaqY0 in regards to nginx proxy manager. It might not apply to you but worth knowing at least.
PiHole!
One of the easiest installer I’ve ever seen. Significantly less ads to be shown especially one on non-browser.
This was my gateway into the selfhosting world. I don’t think I would’ve kept going if it didn’t make such drastic difference to my browsing experience.
