What can the 'average Joe' start hosting, that will change their life?
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.
Oh nice, thanks!
And if you try paperless and don’t like it, docspell is another great option.
How is your work flow from scanning to paperless? Does it support some kind of upload folder?
Yep, supports upload folder, normal upload in the application and also automatically importing from email based on folder/label
i use the app, it is essentially a photo which is resized/shaped to be a rectangle.
Without even opening I had this in mind.
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:
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!
Saved for futures reference
Yo this shit is awesome. Going to be setting this up asap.
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.
Same here, 192tb, but sonarr, radarr, plex, and the source that shall not be named (I respect the 2 rules).
It's not about outlay, I can watch what I want, when I want, how I want, without anyone tracking, even wrote my own video player interface in python so the mouse buttons handle all the settings.
Completely ruins you for normal media :/
Other than Disney stuff, you can't really guarantee on your kids favorite show or movie always being available on a streaming service you're already paying for. Jellyfin has been great for those moments. Used to use Plex, and it's very good software, but I got tired of the non-free aspects. Made me feel like I was subscribing to one more streaming service.
But also kind of with Disney stuff, too
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
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.
I’ll second this, it’s a great thing to have around and there is always something to tinker this. It’s basically a new hobby though if you like automation and monitoring things so budget your time and money accordingly haha.
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.
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.
Yeah I've definitely reduced the load.
There's a lot of things that are just unnecessary.
As others have worded it, it's a hobby. Self hosting is only necessary for a very small number of people, less than one percent of people on here, but it's a fun hobby, and I've learned a lot about software and networks from messing with self hosting stuff.
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.
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.
Why though? Just host it in your private network and use a VPN for occasional syncing.
Vaultwarden is super easy. I've not had a single problem with it and I've been running it for a couple years.
This is a great one and to add it also allows for secure notes, 2FA and sending files securely.
I second this, bonus points if you get a domain through Cloudflare and use their tunnel service to access shrike away from home!
yeah, password manager for me. love it. I am looking at using the home assistant addon to manage it now, it may make life a little easier.
This was going to be my suggestion!
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:
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.
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?
This is exactly what I need. Let me do some research on this.
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/
i use miniflux, anyone have used both and can tell me if I'm missing out on smth :)
Any mobile app you use it with?
On iOS, I've had good experience with NetNewsWire and Reeder
Actual Budget I use to track my finance.
Duplicacy for backups to OneDrive and Backblaze
Photoprism as Google replacement
Portainer - For docker containers.
AdGuard Home on 2 separate Raspberry Pi Pico W.
HomeAssistant on its own hardware. Home automation
SearXNG - private search.
Whoogle - private search.
Shaarli - Bookmarks.
youtube-dl - downloading videos.
PaperlessNGX - document storage.
Trilium Notes - notes app
These are the ones I can't live without. All docker containers running on a NAS.
Why do you need to host 2 search engines?
Indeed, well:
Because I can
First time seeing shaarli, looks similar to Linkding —something I use all the time!
Can vouch for shaarli. I use it every single day of my life
You mean Raspberry Pi Zero W, right?
I did, was in a rush while posting.
Just personal choice, both are similar.
Why do you need to host youtube-dl?
I guess it’s not so much “hosting” as having it on your home NAS with some scripts to backups channels and videos that you like. At least that’s what I do.
Thought I should make a point to mention youtube-dl is dead, yt-dlp is the replacement and it works great. Even has a command line flag to make its options work the same as the options in youtube-dl so it can be a drop in replacement for existing scripts.
I have multiple desktops and laptops, multiple phones and I travel a lot. So rather than having everything copied to each device, the videos are in one place accessible from any device.
Does PaperlessNGX have an android app?
Yes, it's even good
There are 2 3rd party apps on fdroid
An RSS reader (I use Miniflux), ended up being extremely useful
Exactly a couple of things that we (me and the wife) use really often:
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.
*ruin your year
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.
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.
Nextcloud to replace Google drive/docs. Jellyfin or plex for media. The arrs to aquire media (if you have the patience). A blog? A game server to play with friends.
I suggest using docker and docker-compose as it makes everything way easier. It does still take time and it can be frustrating but it is very rewarding.
Crosspost from the duplicate
Years ago I selfhosted Nextcloud and found this interaction just as clunky as using google drive. Now I'm just using SFTP which has much less overhead and it integrates beautifully with just about any file manager on Linux. Then again, using it on windows is a pain as far as I know.
Do you happen to know if it can be installed on Docker for Windows?
While there is a docker version for windows (server I believe) the last time I checked it could only run windows containers (so basically none). The Linux support never got out of beta. I think now they are just saying use windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) for that.
I have been quite happy with docker on a Linux virtual machine hosted on a windows server (I know not the "normal" way to do it but since I am a windows Server admin at work it worked best for me).
The reason that you cannot run Linux containers on windows by default is that docker is no full fledged virtualization Software it sill uses the kernel of the host system. And a Linux container needs a Linux host system.
For me it’s a HomeAssistant instance. Great product that has some very tangible use cases that can benefit ones household in terms of being able to implement nice automations etc, and also a great hub in that it supports such a broad range of products and services. As an Apple user in particular its one of the great ways to get non HomeKit certified devices working with Siri/Homekit on my other Apple products.
It also makes installing addons a breeze including other products people have mentioned here such as AdGuard Home (as a PiHole alternative) and the like.
A few years ago I’d say it wasn’t for the average Joe, but I think the product has really matured and is much simpler than it used to be. There’s a strong community out there too.
For multimedia I’d say Plex personally, but Jellyfin would be another option. Good way to manage personal media libraries.
Parties.
Just until someone starts vomiting in places other than the toilet. In many cases it‘s better to be invited than to be the host ^^
So one can vomit on their server in return.
WireGuard, helpful for accessing stuff on your internal network that you don't want to expose while you're out.
Tailscale is an easy way to get this setup too
+1 for Tailscale if one wants to get a private VPN up and running quickly.
And there is the opensource selfhosted implementation of that as well of course! https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
Home Assistant is nice! Have it integrated with some smart lights and smart plugs. Makes it easy to monitor and control everything locally.
We have it set up in our room so that one widget controls the lights, one controls the fans, one controls the monitors, then there's a master button that we use to turn off everything that doesn't need to be always on whenever we leave the room.
Want to play with some fancier stuff with it too, but that alone is incredibly convenient.
Do you have a recommendation for smart plugs and/or bulbs that work well w/Home Assistant and have decent security?
I use Phillips Hue bulbs and Kasa outlets. I try to avoid WiFi when I have ZigBee and Z-Wave but the outlets have been flawless for me for years, and on sale their incredibly cheap. Dunno about security.
Do you have a recommendation for smart plugs and/or bulbs that work well w/Home Assistant and have decent security?
Honestly? I just grabbed the cheapest stuff I could find online, hah. Everything I use is basically a mishmash of whatever was on sale at the time. Home Assistant has worked with every device I've hooked up so far, and even when they're different brands I've been able to group them up nicely in Home Assistant's interface.
Can't speak to security, unfortunately. While it's certainly an important concern, my budget has been pretty limited to whatever I can find in multipacks for under $30 ¯(ツ)_/¯
I recommend you stay away from anything that requires any kind of portal to setup. If you have to download an app and create an account in order to pair the device or get it setup then don't use that equipment. There's a near endless array of sensors and things you can get now that work using Z-Wave, ZigBee, and even HomeKit that work DIRECTLY with HA, meaning that they don't require commands to be sent up to the cloud via the Internet and then come back down to your device.
I wish Home assistant was more conducive to running on Kubernetes. I tried it but so much of the local discovery doesn't work without being in the same LAN as all your IoT devices.
There's an easy answer to that...don't use IoT devices. I recently rebuilt my HA setup into a VM running on Proxmox, added a Zoos USB to ZWave dongle and then replaced every device that needed a network connection with a Z-Wave device. I have nothing left that needs, or can even connect to, the Internet and all of my routines / automations are fully local. I can turn my Router off and the only thing it will impact is remote access and voice control.
Looks like it's not all that hard, jsut have to give home assistant some additional permissions to networking at a lower level of the stack
Oh yeah totally agree with you. Got a Google Coral stick the other day after waiting for OK prices and it's a really nice game changer if you have cameras around the house. Managed to get notifications when my cats are nearby, all through Home Assistant.
I started with Plex, but I would say it wasn't until I spun up Nextcloud and got it running that I really would say my life changed. My entire family now has Nextcloud accounts, a family calendar, instant upload of pictures from my phone, all my recipes, and I even have OnlyOffice document server running for editing documents in Nextcloud.
A NAS or Nextcloud or some other way of having files available remotely.
Having a big box with a lot of storage that you can put things on from anywhere is so incredibly useful.
Do you think it's safe for the average joe to forward ports in the router to access things from the outside?
2 words: Cloudflare tunnel. Ez-PZ
Cloudflare tunnels are a great alternative to port forwarding
I use Zerotier
The one that was lifechanging for me is audiobookshelf. I LOVE having full ownership and control over all of my audiobooks, and the ability to enjoy them on any device I choose.
I have a PiHole, my own EdgeRouter that is behind the Verizon router, a UPS, a wired switch, a SiliconDust HD HomeRun to convert my cable to a stream, my Hue controller, my Camera DVR, and a Pi4 hosting network storage.
It all fits neatly in a 6U closet rack. I use the EdgeRouter to host a VPN I can connect into to manage things for the house, and also use it to dial out to a VPN, so I can connect the TVs in the house to a VPN abroad.
I also have a Smart Garden powered by a raspberry pi, connected to a rain barrel, a water pump, some solenoids, and some moisture sensors.
Smart garden sounds amazing! My girlfriend would love that... Maybe I'll set that up with her!
Yes I actually have two of them. My backyard has three outdoor moisture sensors, so it can know if it's moist enough. It has a drop irrigation system connected to regular plastic pressure for tubing. It has two zones that can be controlled with two solenoids. It also has a 12V pump. All of that is powered by a 12V power supply and controlled by a four zone relay board. Remember to turn the power off to your outdoor sensors so that they don't destroy themselves when you're not sensing. You can also add a flow sensor to measure your water consumption.
I’d recommend you to look up *arr stack and Jellyfin. Good start is Trash guides. It will guide you step by step on how to properly set it up. It can completely replace Netflix and all other streaming services and its all free.
We recently set up a magic mirror (showing public transport connections/time/calendar/weather information) on a raspberry pi 3b. But it involved some more fiddling with electronics and software.
(Maybe an alternative would also be possible using small oled (128x64 pixel) screens)
Would be my suggestion if you are up for a challenge =)
We also used to host our own nextcloud, but decided to move it to hetzner as the pricing was unbeatable..
Else a pihole would also have been my suggestion. Maybe a Kodi mediacenter is also worth looking into.
What software did you use for the magic mirror?
It is open source if you are interested : https://github.com/MichMich/MagicMirror
In the end it is a scaffold on which you can install plugins which you like. The plugin community already provided many handy. Still it can be a challenge if you are not very "techy". Wish you the very best! You can do it :)
These are some things I recommend. Vault warden. (paswoord manager). Jellyfin. (a great web based media player).. Portainer
For me nextcloud was the biggest gamechanger. A raspberry pi and a SSD and suddenly I didn't have to store anything at Google drive anymore. And it's really beginner friendly, especially when using NextcloudPi
Google has features that I can't live without. Like Photos can add photos to an album based on face recognition - I have an album for my mother where my kids' photos get added so she can keep up with what's happening even though she lives far away from us. She posts comments that we read to the kids so they feel grandma is at least a bit involved in their lives. What's also important is that it's easy enough for her to use, she's not very good with tech at 77. So, as much as I would love to get away from Google's ecosystem, it'd be very difficult for me to give up this feature.
A CCTV system. That directly affects the safety of yourlifee
Home Assistant.
This is like an open source "hey Google"?
It's a program you host yourself that can connect to dozens (hundreds?) of different smart device interfaces. Instead of having different apps to control you smart lights, plugs, switches, vacuums, etc., you can connect everything thru Home Assistant and make completely different devices work together.
PhotoPrism is a really big one for me. You will need some computing power and storage, but being able to run your own Google Photos is amazing. Including AI features like object and face detection (if you want).
syncthing works on every device and substitutes for cloud storage services. pictures taken with a phone end up quickly in the shared folder on my desktop. etc.
Let me throw in Paperless NGX, https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx
What do you use for scanning?
Device is a HP Pro 9010 Printer/Scanner with a local SMB folder set up as scan target. Paperless monitors the share and picks up everything someone (I) put in there. Scanner, PC, phone, anything which can connect to the SMB share. Dead easy and works reliably.
I have a ton of papers around the home. This looks like this can really help. Thanks
For a while it's just data in, which it handles really well. But it really started to shine for me when I needed to find some of the documents. OCR and their search works very well for me.
There are also some interesting thoughts in here: https://skerritt.blog/how-i-store-physical-documents/
I can't for the life of me get this running, the web server just throws errors about the Redis server being unavailable, using their script to generate a docker-compose file.
What's the error?
Can you run docker-compose logs
Here's mine: https://cloud.zell-mbc.com/s/Ac5KQTTxcWNYbNs
I tried to add file it to this post but formatting got completely messed up, hence a link.
Before you run docker-compose you need to change the paperless-app volumes to fit your requirements and set up the variables in .env
Vaultwarden!!! There's lots of nice things that may or may not be good for you depending on your needs. But vaultwarden is straight up essential.
I self host like 20 services, but I'm way too scared to host my own password manager.
If I have any issues and the data for any of my services gets wiped, I'll be annoyed but I'll be fine. If I was self hosting Vaultwarden and my data got wiped, it'd be extremely frustrating.
Vaultwarden keeps an encrypted file local to the device you access it from, like your phone, and if the instance goes down you're still able to access them but not add new ones. This let's you export the file into a replacement instance.
Had this happen to me and I lost all my servers data, but regardless of a sever it keeps a local file which I imported to my new homelab
Was a bit of a concern to me but I have vw-backup running that backs up my vaultwarden config, and I use duplicati to send the backups to b2 storage so even if my entire nas blew up and was a total loss I would be able to get the data.
I also use duplicati to send a copy of the config to a vps so I can spin up a DR instance of vaultwarden if needed so I've got 3 copies of the data.
Lemmy is pretty fun to host. Doubly so if you host a private instance with low latency; you'd basically be defederation proof.
How hard is it? Did you use the official guide? I looked into Mastodon and it was a bit too custom and annoying to spin up.
The Ansible install does make things a lot more simple, but it's still pretty involved if you're new to self-hosting in general. For example, you might need to set up an SMTP relay if you can't port forward a workable port, and you also will probably want to change your Nginx configs to allow uploading larger images than a single megabyte.
Lemmy setup about is as easy as you could make it. The ansible approach is very simple on Ubuntu. You need a host with ports 443 and 80 open and ssh key login for the server. Happy to help if you need it.
Trillium notes and Bitwarden.
The note is packed with features and it can build maps from your tags aromatically. It helped me easily recall things
Bitwarden, because password need to be secured.
I don’t trust myself to not lose my entire Bitwarden vault in a house fire or failed hard drive
Try Keepass. FOSS where the passwordDB is just an encrypted file. Sync with nextcloud/syncthing for concurrency, copy off to a thumb drive for backup and drop off at a freinds house, keep on your keys, etc.
I believe Vault/BitWarden caches all passwords on all devices. So you can create a backup anytime. Even when the instance is down.
Even if you lose your server in a housefire, you will still have the Bitwarden DB that is saved on your devices. Basically every device is another duplicate of the database. Pretty hard to lose everything.
Agreed, VaultWarden is nice in theory but too easy to lose it all
For me, it was a wiki/knowledge base - I've had dozens over the years as I've tried to find the 'right' one, but I'm currently a fan of @bookstack@fosstodon.org. My brain's not always the most reliable, and so my wiki becomes my 'external brain'. A lot of people are using things like Obsidian/Notion/etc in the same way.
I'm using obsidian at the moment, but bookstack looks pretty nice. I'll have to look at that more and see if it would be a good replacement. Can I ask what made bookstack your current driver?
The shelves->books->pages metaphor sort of works for me. It lets me categorise my thoughts in a way that works for me. The lead dev is also really communicative, and it's been really easy to deploy and run. I've been meaning to try and find some time to contribute some hacks to it.
Ideally, I'd love a way to make Bookstack and Obsidian work together...
That's such a good idea. I may have to look into this. Thank you
I might decide to try this for bookmarks. My current problem is I collect all info in various bookmarks. Like open source tools > media/office/bookmarks , royaltyfree > music/pictures/movies, cloud services > storage/VPS/dedicated, temp shares > files/images/video etc etc etc
It ends up with a lot of duplicates because some things fit into multiple categories, I'm at over 3k bookmarks now.
I am curious if it might work well to use bookstack for that instead. Thank you for the idea.
May I suggest you benotes for that?
Really happy with it, hast folders, subfolders, tags and search. Still on development, but I like it enough to recommend it every time someone looks for a way to sort their bookmarks
SearxNG for search: https://docs.searxng.org/
You can try it using a public instance if you like, but since installing it is easy and painless, just go for it.
So, if you don't know yet what you're doing, I wouldn't host anything critical yet, but I'm using:
And so far, very few troubles. It's a layer on top of Debian to ease self-hosting. Comes by default with email and XMPP server. You can add Nextcloud and many other services as you wish.
Doesn't looks like this is available for Linux? I have older hardware running Mint that this would be perfect for. Am I just missing it?
It IS literally a Linux distribution, based on Debian with a layer on top of it for easy admin and managing applications. So you don't install it on Linux, you just install it.
I'm hosting syncthing on my server to sync obsidian notes between my pc and phone, even when one of the devices is offline. I find it very useful. Also, nextcloud, jellyfin, qbittorrent, monero node and netdata for monitoring my server
+1 for Syncthing. Very reliable between my multiple Macs and NAS.
Syncthing and Jellyfin are amazing
I appreciate the jellyfin mention.
ActualBudget. If you don't already budget, ActualBudget is a remarkably nice budgeting tool that will change your financial life for the better. actualbudget.com/
Thanks, been meaning to start budgeting again after I stopped during the pandemic.
I was using YNAB before.
Gave Actual a try but unfortunately YNAB is much nicer to use
Echoing the above comment, I've been looking for a good self hosted budgeting tool for ages. From what I've seen, this looks a great option, will give it a go.
Also interested, after all the *arr apps I would say:
Also a neat web tool for messing with data there is cyberchef.
Thanks to this post I realized there is really only one or two services I really use or need haha (ZNC and the other one is a web tool for a popular ttrpg ->pm).
All of this and more is inside docker containers so if you don't know that I would highly recommend it.