I started doing it for the lols; slowly it became part of my daily activities. I use Nextcloud, SearxNg; Hassio; and Jellyfin mainly.
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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And that's a little bit sad, right? The only "Job to be done" self-hosting is a solution for me is ... file management. Nothing else.
But everything is a file - Unix folks
Both. I have things that I host simply for fun, but most of my homelab is for experimentation.
I practice with different technologies so I can try to learn how they work.
I've found that I use all the stuff that I host except file management. I really need to get on that one.
Double layer for ads. PiHole for stuff that has no extensions/shitty extensions (iOS).
Navidrome for not having a copy of my music library on everything. Not paying for Spotify and having to use a stupid blackbox shared library to access stuff that I paid for.
AirMessage/Bluebubbles because Apple sheep herds love the color blue.
pfSense for remote access RDP.
I'm probably going to add Piped for Yattee soon.
For me its like:
Im using a service and I like it. I exceed some limit. I have to pay. No *free* (hosted) alternative. Looking for a selfhosted alternative.
I currently only hosting Cal.com, Listmonk, Some Scrum Planning Poker, Authentik and self programmed software.
I host it to have my own data under my own roof.
- Nextcloud (everything from pictures, over tax stuff to my keepass database)
- Matrix server (even more important with every government on this planet pushing against encrypted messengers)
- PiHole, that i can also use via DoH from my phone
- Traccar instance to keep an eye on my car, when it's in for service / maintenance / when i'm abroad
- ...
I've worked in the hosting industry. I've witnessed an internal breach, where an employee abused access over a few corners and fetched files matching a certain pattern from all customer VPSes (Virtuozzo container based VPSes have their root filesystem accessible from the host)
I went through a long phase of fiddling around. Trying out multiple hypervisors, operating systems, docker containers, etc.
I have settled on the following and only do software updates now. I found stuff I want, have it all set up, and now I want it all to just work. I have daily automated backups so if something gets borked, I just restore. Also use Debian and Debian based for everything. Least amount of headache (for me) and rock solid.
- Proxmox host and Proxmox Backup Server
- VM's - pfSense, Home Assistant and Debian 11 for docker containers
- Pi-hole, Cloudflared, Vaultwarden and Stirling PDF in LXC's
- Docker Containers - UniFi Controller, InvoiceNinja, PiGallery2, LinkAce and Jellyfin
- NAS - OpenMediaVault with Syncthing
- Cloudflare Tunnels and Tailscale to have access to everything when out
Yes and yes. I do actually use a bunch of stuff but a lot of it is for experimenting. I regularly use Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, PiHole, Nginx, among a few others but for experimenting, I recently set up a container will Mullvad vpn so I can use that vpn networking for my qbittorent container.
Both.
I think its a fun hobby but I tend to only use apps that will serve a function for me. So, I dont have to many. On my setup I have piHole, a CUPS server, boinc, a QNAP NAS, openmedia vault that backups the NAS, Home assistant, and my most used Komga.
I've self-hosted for over two decades and most of the apps you mentioned I've not heard of or used. I self host email and my web apps and system services I wrote. I do it because I like it.
Selfhosting a VS Code server was one of the best decisions to increase my productivity.
Both, i like setting up the network and trying out selfhosted services.
Definitely improved my daily routines:
- Paperless-ngx, connected to my email. All my bills and purchases are backed up. So easy to find documents/warranty documents.
- Nextcloud, for backing up my phone and personal life. Too much data for cloud providers and pivate.
- Plex/Jellyfin, easy way to watch all my Linux iso's without paying 10 different streaming services. Still subscribed to two steaming services though (family).
- Adguard, lifesaver to browse the web without going crazy.
- Immich, awesome photo viewer with mobile app.
- Syncthing, awesome tool to sync data. Use it to sync my Obisian notes to all my devices.
- Kasm/webtop, have my own OS in browser to access from any web browser securely.
- Restic, tool to backup everything to Backblaze. You can use any storage solution.
- Wireguard VPN, to easy access my services and have adblocking on my phone and laptop outside of my LAN.
Obisian
Hey, may I ask what application you use on your smartphone to view the markdown notes?
Obsidian, misspelled the app. There is a iOS and Android app.
I have paperless running in a docker container on my unraid machine but it seems like it takes longer to use then what I used to do.
I used to save all files to a folder system
Docs -> Year -> date-sender.pdf
Now it seems I have to manually do all of the coding. I thought that paperless, would learn who files are from and then categorize it for me, so that if I scan all my monthly bills and then 2 years later I need to find my internet bill for Dec 2019, I could just search for it and find it.
While the search will work, it only works if I scanned it, tagged it spectrum and put the date on it. Seems like its more work to me?
I run paperless-ngx in a docker container. Have it scan my email for attachments once a day. It automatically tags the email depending on keywords found in the email and sender.
If I scan a document to import I tag it manually.
But paperless-ngx also has ocr, so it will scan the whole page and save that data. So I can search for example 'samsung' and it will show me all documents where Samsung is in. Even if it is not tagged.
My docker-compose:
version: "3.3"
networks:
paperless:
name: paperless
driver: bridge
ipam:
config:
- subnet: 172.36.0.0/16
services:
paperless-redis:
container_name: paperless-redis
image: docker.io/library/redis:7
restart: unless-stopped
networks:
- paperless
volumes:
- ./redis:/data
paperless-db:
container_name: paperless-db
image: docker.io/library/postgres:13
restart: unless-stopped
networks:
- paperless
volumes:
- ./db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
environment:
POSTGRES_DB: paperlessdb
POSTGRES_USER: paperless
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: super-secure-password
paperless:
container_name: paperless
image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest
restart: unless-stopped
networks:
- paperless
depends_on:
- paperless-db
- paperless-redis
ports:
- 8002:8000
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD", "curl", "-fs", "-S", "--max-time", "2", "http://localhost:8000"]
interval: 30s
timeout: 10s
retries: 5
volumes:
- ./data:/usr/src/paperless/data
- ./media:/usr/src/paperless/media
- ./export:/usr/src/paperless/export
- ./consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume
env_file: ./docker-compose.env
environment:
PAPERLESS_REDIS: redis://paperless-redis:6379
PAPERLESS_DBHOST: paperless-db
The .en file you can find on there GitHub. But the over important part is to setup a language for it.
# The default language to use for OCR. Set this to the language most of your
# documents are written in.
PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE=nld
I have Wireguard setup in a small instance in AWS. No longer need NordVPN. Other services I host in my homelab.
I have Trilium replaced Evernote. I use it daily. It's my source of everything. It's lack of a mobile client, but I'm fine with using the PWA
My Jellyfin is not meant to replace Netflix, but absolutely necessary. I used it daily
Tdarr is also needed, but not always
Transmission: Download movies to use with Jellyfin, obviously
Motioneye: Use it with a Webcam to monitor my room
Ntfy: Since I use a macbook and an android phone, this is a good way to send messages among devices. Also, motioneye will send motion detection messages using this service. I used to use Line/FB message bot to send notifications, but it's kinda messed up with normal messages
Webtop: need to move files around sometimes. Using a desktop is more reliable. I tried filebrowser, but with large file moving, it falls short
Code server: development on the cloud. Normally, I don't need it much, but when travelling, I can use it with a tablet, so there is no need to bring my laptop
Caprover: I use this to deploy most of my app. Also, this is my own CI/CD pipeline for my projects
Samba: SMB shares. Needed for Tdarr. Usually, I use SFTP instead.
I got other services running too but just to test if they satisfy my need. If not, I will scale them to 0. Maybe after some time when they grow, they will be useful for me
Pi-Hole, Nextcloud, local storage and email are used constantly. All bring great improvements.
Ansible and Zabbix provide 'support' for these applications.
Media streaming is a 'nice to have' but not essential. Wireguard is seldom used but still very important.
Started as a hobby with an old i5 laptop (sans keyboard and screen), running Jellyfin. I wanted to learn more than just using Debian as a desktop.
Now my home lab consists of...
- 2x PiHoles (synced using unison and entr)
- 2x Jellyfin (1 for my use as a media server and 1 on a Unifi Cloudkey, which I am using for another little pet project).
- 2x Nextcloud (1 for my business and colloborating with clients on the various projects I get from them, and 1 I am modifying to build myself an online school)
- Gitea
- My own software to do round the clock transcoding of videos using a GPU including videos I create myself in Kdenlive or Shotcut.
- My own software to do managed downloading of content from a well known website
- Transmission
- Unifi (not on Unifi Hardware, the hardware was more useful for my other project mentioned above)
- Calibre-Web
- My own software to do daily incremental archives of my various production servers in the cloud.
I love selfhosting at home, and I recommended it for anyone who wants to learn.
Yes, I have fudged up a few times and had to nuke and start again, but with each time I get better and better at what I am doing.
I am now planning on moving my Gitea and the main Nextcloud instance into the cloud, as my poor little fibre line is not coping with the traffic.
It really has improved my daily life. I may be a bit of an outlier since I'm also a developer and selfhost apps I've made.
I love music and have been recording (scrobbling) what I listen to for over a decade. I created this app to make the scrobbling process set-and-forget across all the platforms and locations I listen to music.
This little app I wrote consolidates "newely added to plex" discord notifications and posts them all at the same time. Makes my discord server much less noisy.
A homegrown reddit moderation bot platform I developed. I selfhost u/ContextModBot and a slew of other moderator bots. This is probably the biggest advantage I get for self hosting. The bot uses a lot of bandwidth and can be CPU-intensive when doing image hashing and pixel comparisons. If I was hosting this on AWS I'd probably be paying hundreds of $$$ a month.
Between Context Mod and a few other image and text web services used between my friends I do a modest amount of website traffic. Not the end of the world if I hosted in the cloud but still saving me some money for sure.
Home Assistant and Frigate
More common around here. HA has been a QoL upgrade from managing a bunch of different rando "smart home" apps. I also moved away from a Ring doorbell to an Amcrest AD410 with Frigate + Coral for human detection that records events straight to my NAS. No more paying subscription for storage and worrying about amazon peeping on my video.
For serious business :
- Jellyfin
- Paperless-ng
- Mealie (only MY receipes)
- Home assistant (cool stuff with domotic)
- Yourls
- ruTorrent
- ytdl_api_ng (download videos directly on my server)
- pihole (bye bye most of ads)
- gitea
- seafile (more reliable than nextcloud)
- overleaf (easier to install on docker that install a LaTeX distribution on all my computers)
- Deemix
- Custom backup report
- Custom uptime report
For the lol :
- Aria 2 (no real usage for me)
- Nextcloud (bad desktop client, gave up, still useful to share some files)
- Wikijs (to lazy to maintain documentation)
- Memos (can't replace google keep)
- Portainer (I manage things manually)
- Webmin (for some dangerous things only)
I almost disabled everything else.
It's a little bit of both for me.
I do host things for fun. Otherwise I wouldn't be running my own instances for Lemmy and for Mastodon. I don't need to host services like an IPFS Podcasting node or a PeerTube relay server for Jupiter Broadcasting, but I like giving back to the podcasting community (and theirs in particular, mostly).
Other things could fall into both categories but are a significant improvement on my Quality of Life. Automations fired by Home Assistant make it so things like my bedroom being warm during the winter is possible without having to remember to preheat it before I sleep. Services like AdGuard Home and PiHole help me control segments of my network and prevent ads and other malicious sites from being opened on my LAN. Hosting my own password manager through Vaultwarden and my file and photo syncs through a combination of NextCloud and Syncthing, though it has availability drawbacks should my server ever crash, lets me maintain more control over my data than I otherwise could have.
Plenty of other things are nice-to-haves and not need-to-haves, but they're worth spinning up to try out and see if they fit into my lifestyle. If I didn't enjoy self-hosting, I wouldn't have started to do it in the first place.
Mostly for improving my administration skills. I am a Linux Systems Administrator and gaining experience with Docker will almost certainly help me in the long term. The self hosted and Nginx proxy, has also contributed.
But in my day to day life? PiHole has reduced the number of ads I see, I believe. And I am migrating the sites that I watch for work from Follow That Page, to self hosted Change Detection. Storing recipes in Mealie might be helpful. Oh, I also want to set up that bookmarking tool that saves pages for me.
I buy DVDs at the thrift store for $1 and put them on my Emby server. I could (but don't) just torrent all the things, like most people, but that isn’t fun. Finding a movie I like reminds me of going to Blockbuster as a kid. At the same time, I like the modern conveniences and features of the "Netflix" type software. It's just a better all-around experience than what I get with DVD alone.
As T1 diabetic, hosting my own CGM (Nightscout) and using its companion apps has led to me lowering and maintaining my HbA1c to prediabetic values.
Self-hosting is great for people who don’t want to pay for software, services, music, movies, etc… but are willing to pay with time.
I selfhost because I'm a cheap SOB. I initially started self hosting circa 2001 when I taught myself Linux (desktop first, then server). As I moved around the world, I simply took my server with me, and once I found a cheap ISP, I was back at it. I've never had issues that weren't brought on by my incessant tinkering (well, I did have a fan fail, and caused my server to shut off once).
I'm a life long fan of learning by doing, so when I need something my server can't provide, I go shopping (opensource of course) until I find a work around, substitute, or different route to achieve my goal.
My drawback is that the majority of my backups aren't easily restorable. My data/images and files are safe, but restoring the web sites, databases, and other miscellaneous things are usually a do-over (I do have a new backup plan going, but haven't had to test it out fully yet - Jetpack and updraft for my Wordpress site.
Plex + all the arrs
Overseerr
Home Assistant
I know it's boring, but all of these get used every day and they make my life way better. Except that my plex install has a corrupt DB entry and I don't have the time/energy to blow up the database and re-setup my libraries. Restarting the cleaner fixes it for about 24 hours. Might just need to setup a cron job until I find some actual time.
I use my Nextcloud at my employment all the time. It's a great way to get scripts I have written deployed on client machines.
I use my Exchange server for all my alerting and subscribed mail lists. Plus I have the Proxmox mail filter in front of that which is really good at keeping the spam away.
I have self deployed Bitwarden and have come to depend on that very quickly. Pihole and Zabbix are other tools I use as well as having tftp and anon ftp servers up. So yes, my homelab is part of what allows me to work effectively.
Can you tell me a bit more about how you use syncthing with nextcloud ?
I'm not a fan of the Nextcloud Client, so I just snyc the User-Directory of Nextcloud via Syncthing to my PC/Smartphone/etc.
I do it because renting the equivalent capacity from a cloud provider would cost me a hell of a lot more per month than the electrical bill I pay to keep it running.
Plus, having a server rack in my basement is cool :P
Paperless, immich. seafile, nextcloud, minecraft, home-assistant, pihole, jellyfin - they all improve my or my family's life.
There's many, but the most improvement is plex with the whole servarr stack automating nearly everything behind the curtain. Plus notifiarr with trash guides library improvements.
Besides that, home assistant also improves my life quite a lot.
I'm running quite many apps. Just some:
Linkding to collect bookmarks Mealie to collect recipes Nextcloud syncing to photoprism Syncthing to backup the phone on the fly (downloads, app backups, GPS logs to replace Google time-line)
I often have the issue it worth it debate with myself…
I use a turnkey version of Tracks for todo purposes- but is not life changing.
Also use plex for my music and movies (but also subscribe to 3 services but as these services removed content Plex has a place). Trying to buy my music on the smaller digital platforms or on second hand market - but fewer CDs available for newer content! 🤔.
On the plus side- your post has made me interested in paperless and obsidian.
Although being heavily on Apple not sure if there is a huge benefit over simple notes
Mostly for the sake of it as a hobby. I love learning more about selfhosting services as well as networking. I’ve spent countless nights setting up some networking stuff that doesn’t benefit my use case whatsoever, but could be useful to know if I ever were to work in that sphere.
I do plex and sonar It has saved me some bucks
The only reason for me to selfhost is that I dont like to use some services which are proposed by market. Like I use firefly-iii as there's just no alternatives convenient for me. I use wireguard because there's no vpn to get things done in way I want. The same with ghostfolio, paperless-ngx and drone. There's just no alternatives to match my requirements so I'm forced to selfhost
I think it depends on the person. My self hosting is lean and mean - I don't bother setting up any of the complex meta-self-hosting stuff, my services just run on docker with port forwarding.
Additionally all my services are things I absolutely use daily. Very rarely does a day go by that I don't listen to audio books on my AudiobookShelf server, and my wife uses our Plex daily to watch her favorite shows, which also allowed us to ditch a few streaming subscriptions
If there's a cloud app that offers good value for the money - I use that instead, afterall self hosting isnt free, you pay with your time (and electricity bill, but that's negligible)
If you find that the only worthwhile thing you host is your file management stuff, why not just ditch the rest? There's no gold medal for "most things self hosted", the point is to make your life easier, not harder
I actually host nightscout, that's the one that is mainly useful for me personally. Technically nightscout advocates against self-hosting but it actually seemed simpler for me to self host than figuring out and keeping track of which providers will give me enough for free to run it since it keeps changing.
I'm a big proponent of self-hosted apps, but I am not a fan of docker/containers so it's definitely not just for the sake of running containers for me.
Using free online services is convenient, but if ALL you use is online services then someone else or some company controls you. I like to self host as much as I possibly can. If we don't, cloud computing will take over, and home/consumer computer hardware will eventually die off.
plex is my main purpose for self hosting and always has been. Also i'm a sr systems engineer, so my selfhosting environment is also for experimenting with things for my career. I was trying make my media accessible to friends since 2009 or so, back when the Boxee came out. I've made use of the *arrs. overseerr, so my people can just request content from there instead of piling up a wish list to dump on me out of the blue.
outside of media, these prove useful for life and my career (that aren't just supporting the homelab)
I use synology for my storage and i like their email server / webmail.
syncthing i use for keeping my emulator saves in sync across all my devices, as well as some documents.
vaultwarden
privatebin (vault warden has this feature... but i don't want my vaultwarden directly exposed)
usememos is my favorite quick note app. i like obsidian but i can't get behind it until it's web friendly. I know someone built a docker image of obsidian that runs from a webtop but egh it's ugly. The ipad app is nice though. There are some other options that are closer to obsidian, but I just really like usememos.
slash is nice link shortener which lets you view metrics for the links you create. I think it's made by one of the team members that made usememos.
resumeRX. I apply for different types of roles so i have several different resumes I need to tailor for different positions.
immich. just because i refuse to pay for apple/google photos storage and using enough space to be forced to keep using them.
phpipam/netbox. i like documenting my network but not in a spreadsheet.
duplicati. local and cloud backups
drawio. just a self hosted version of the web drawio. can't be making diagrams containing sensitive information on some random publicly hosted server.
actualbudget. it's helpful, but I still wish there was a better option for this. I know there is firefly III. actualbudget is cleaner and easier to navigate.
metube. i'm' always needing to download youtube videos for some reason or another.
gitlab
planka (my wife and I both use this... basically trello)
Home assistant. I've got a lot automated. Mostly for fun, but still makes my life easier. My window shades, lights, fans, bathroom fans, TVs, presence sensors, A/C, garage doors, fridge, cameras, doorbell are all in node-red. My windows all close and lights turn off if my wife and I are both away unless there is a guest. etc. the windows open if it's stormy (I love storms). bathroom fans come on when the humidity hits a threshold, my garage lights come on if a person or car is in my driveway, but not a squirrel or bird, etc.
The only reason I got a homeserver was jellyfin. I spend way too much on storage since then... make it stop.... I also got an Nvidia shield for that reason. Couldve watched netflix, amazon and disney for years for that money, but I dont regret a second here and use it daily since. So yeah it did improve my daily life.
I don't like selfhosting because of the maintenance and complexity. But I get to use Plex, Transmission with a VPN, wakeonlan out of home using Tailscale, etc. So really useful overall.
yeap, agreed ...for me nextcloud, wordpress,qbittorrent for a little bit of yoho yoho and a backup container to nfs...few zabbix monitoring containers is all i have got on my pi cluster.