Hi there! This is a video that I made that I’m hoping can act as a beginner friendly entry level point to the world of self hosting and running a homelab. Just thought I’d share in case anyone is interested, and I hope it can be a resource to share with noobies. I don’t claim to be an expert at all so I’d also love some feedback. Thanks!
That’s a welcomed thing, often it’s daunting to do it from scratch when all guides assume you’re a masters student in computer science lol
Yeah as someone that was just getting into it not that long ago I definitely kinda struggled through it even though I’d feel pretty confident saying I’m a bit more technically literate than most. Figured I’d try to help others with the process as much as I can! I appreciate the validation lol
Thanks! I’ve been wanting to set up something like this
You’re so welcome friend I wish you the best of luck :)
I seriously considered it and quickly ran into a technobabble of networking, no clear direction on plex vs jellyfish, no clear idea of what hardware to buy, etc.
We should have never lost the capability to have LAN parties for all games.
You’re spitting rn
This is a 32 minute video that starts with a text card and robo voice. Is there any kind of summary? I don’t have a home server and don’t know what I’d do with one if I had it tbf. I have several vps and other hosted servers and find them much less hassle than a home server. But, maybe I’m missing out on something.
The main difference is that having a home server means You are in complete control over Your data. You can run home server and isolate it from the internet, running only on local network. Great for privacy and You are not relying on some external provider being reliable and available.
It also has it’s downsides. You have to maintain the server, keeping it up-to-date. Checking if some components need upgrading or replacing - which is mainly about having healthy drives so You do not loose all Your data.
The main difference is that having a home server means You are in complete control over Your data. You can run home server and isolate it from the internet, running only on local network. Great for privacy and You are not relying on some external provider being reliable and available.
I my a laptop for that, no remote access, I mean what services would I want to run and what would the clients be?
Such a weird argument, but how about this one: show me a laptop that holds 80Tb or so in RAID? You can do that on a home server and stream to and from it at a gigabit (when you are at home). If you are home more than remote, storing that data in a data center will be both costly and slow to access.
Yeah for 80TB you’d want either a server or a NAS and at that point I’d have to weigh the cost against a rental. Still though, how will you back it up? What’s going to be on it anyway, e.g. video editing? You’re more in professional workstation territory than home server. If it’s datahoarder type stuff (archived sitcoms or whatever) then yeah ok I guess. Certainly a DIY box with a say 6x 24TB desktop HDD’s will cost less than a few years of renting Hetzner boxes with that much drive space. Those drives are very cheap now, $300 each on newegg. But still, this is very much a niche use, nowhere near “everyone should have” territory. Unfortunately it’s still not enough data to think seriously about a tape drive.
Hmm it looks like a 160TB Hetzner server (10x 16TB drives, Intel W-2245 CPU with 128GB ram and also 2x 960GB SSD) is $150/month in the Hetzner auction. Could you build and run a comparable home server for less, say spreading the cost over 3 years? Probably yes but it would take some effort. And how much do you pay monthly for that two-way 1gbit internet pipe? Can you really open public ports on it and serve files in much volume at that speed?
Persist with the video! The text-to-speech is only for a couple of quick screens - the rest is very personal, and they cover a bunch of use cases.
If you really don’t want to, the server OS they recommend around two-thirds of the way through is YunoHost, a beginner-friendly way to run services as containers on any capable spare computer. The YunoHost website has a bunch of use cases that are also covered in the video.
Every video guide should be only suppliemtary to a complete text article
Having my own server is sooooo cool. There are so many services I’m running for my friends and family that are just incredible. That includes this piefed instance! Which is public if anyone wants to register here
Started my own home server about a year or so ago. Currently hosting Immich for me and my gf. Jellyfin for archiving movies shows and downloaded YT videos. Forgejo for local git where I backup my work. Homeassistant to manage lights in the appartment and some other small stuff. Linkwarden to archive important websites and links I might need in the future (docs for work, how-tos for the server itself so I dont loose all that setup kbowledge). Syncthing to sync files between multiple devices - which is awesome, easy to setup and pair folders. Seafile to share files.
It has been great, it draws around 20-30W idle.
I am currently in search for Obsidian and Bitwarden self hosted alternative that can be run in docker container - if anyone has some ideas I am all ears.
Instead of Bitearden you can use Keepass and share db file with syncthing
Vaultwarden is what you’re looking for.
Trilium is nice as an obsidian alternative
Joplin is a good Obsidian alternative.
Not sure if you already knew but Bitwarden does have a self hosted option, the docker-compose stack runs great and they have been working on a singular image that just needs a DB. It all runs great depending on what you need and supports the actual bitwarden team.
Obsidian and Bitwarden self hosted alternative that can be run in docker container.
Well not 100% sure about Docker but Tiddlywiki is pretty easily hosted! It’s got some quirks, but in the end it’s just an HTML file (or slightly more complex if hosted as a website), so it should stay relevant for a long time. I enioy making notebooks with it for various things!
Nextcloud has a pretty decent passwords manager and I think firefox plugins for it. I personally use SyncThing to sync KeePass databases and use the nextcloud passwords app for low-risk things we share, like streaming service passwords. :)
I use Bitwardens self hosted option, VaultWarden, that I run in a docker. works fine. I use it with the bitwarden CLI since I’m using QuteBrowser on all my machines. I then run a weekly backup of my vaultwarden to an external ssd.
Beauty of it is that it will also work with Bitwardens extension on chrome or firefox. So if I’m on another machine and I need access to my PW’s I can just install the extension, add my self-hosted vaultwarden, then remove it when i’m done.
I’d urge u to retitle to:
How I host my home server
I had PTSD over that phrase, and how many naïve self starters got doxed, swatted, murdered, thrashed, DoS, pwnd, bitlocked, sued, deISPd, excomm.d, raided, wormed, subpoenaed, etc., etc…
And with fascist laws being enforced, basic guides need extreme darknet praxis updates.
So lost.
I would be interested to see a figure of people with home servers that have had that happen to them. DoS & pwned yes, especially 15+ years ago before there were good resources, TLS, reverse proxies, or authentication front ends.
I would be very interested to see any stat whatsoever of selfhosters that have gottened murdered specifically because of their server.
It is extremely important to note that in those days, people just opened their, often out-of-date, servers completely to the internet via a DMZ or port forwarding, let ssh be open to the internet, didn’t harden ssh at all, and most people didn’t use a VPN for downloading.
That is literally like saying that people who light wall torches in their wooden home burned their house down, so let’s not use lightbulbs or electricity.
Thanks for using peer tube
I have my own server and it’s great, but the real product these streaming services sell isn’t access to content—it’s discoverability and recommendations. We need a better solution for that!
Yeah I use jellyseerr with jellyfin and they work great together
I need to learn more about the *arr stack.
Tbh, I pretty much never use site recommendations. I almost always learn of shows and movies via social media and memes
My entire life is Linux and self hosted, aside from Email. I may get to that one day too. Love my Plex server, even with the more recent baloney the company’s apparently been up to.
I should be using Jellyfin but once I get home from work I don’t want to tinker any more, I just wanna play a game or dick around.
Agree with the message in the video, these companies should be told to pound sand the minute they do a single anti-consumer thing.
I set up jellyfin recently. Haven’t tinkered with it any more than plex to be fair
Is there a way around the problem that plex only feeds from ex fat/nt drives but Linux has permission issues networking such a drive? I wanted to have one computer where I’m doing all the formatting and the other being the standalone plex server with them both connected. Samba is being a pain.
Curious about your problem. I’m using NFS instead of samba now, but legitimately never faced any problems doing what you’re describing previously.
There’s two problems. I’m new at setting up the network so no doubt that is mostly my problem. I’m just switching over to nfs now.
But the exfat drive that only works on plex (can’t upload from ext4) is the weird bit I don’t get. Are you storing everything on ext4 for plex? If so how did you trick plex library into seeing it?
I just have my old PC’s running Linux connected directly to the tv or projector.
I use a super basic webdav server or free arr matey streaming sites.
I sometimes sftp into devices.
That’s my setup.
I want a future where communities self host their media and circumvent media companies like Netflix and Disney. Local film clubs, TV clubs, hobbyists, etc. can come together and host as a collective bringing down costs and making this more accessible.
Like ham radio ppl
Who’s making the media?
Okay, so you don’t even need a socialist system for this, just a moderately sane government. Even here in Estonia, the government hands out funding for cultural projects. Now this is still a capitalist society, so you likely can’t get full funding for a big project.
In an actual socialist economy, the government will give you full funding for projects. The actors and everyone else working on a movie or TV show have guaranteed income that’s enough to live their lives, guaranteed living accommodations, etc, so they’re more likely to do it as a passion project, but they could still be paid as extra motivation. Funding is still required for equipment, etc. Unless you go fully money free as a society, in which case you ask the government to assign equipment to you.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine a reality outside our own.
imagine it for us then. what would this model look like and be sustainable?
A tax on corporate use of AI to fund an artist stipend, to provide a living wage for artists.
Sure.
The premise is to bring down costs, and not be free. This is a reality where we can share media we buy, because we own them again.
So you can kind of imagine the world 20-30 years back with VHS and DVDs. Just in the digital world.
Fewer people would buy the content, and less shareholders will be rich. Actors will also not go for multi million dollar salaries. But actors would still exist.
You can argue that this will bring down the number of movies, but most likely there will just be alot of small studios making movies instead of Netflix and Disney controlling the market from start to end.
There will be a much larger varaity in movies, and not that many reboots of past succes from the VHS/DVD age.
you can’t compare old VHS DVD market to digital one today. it’s completely different with no physical formats. with digital media, unlimited copies can be made with no cost. there’s no friction of having physical medium. youre also saying to go back to a system that completely failed.
even if small companies came about, they will have no budget if only a couple thousand copies are being sold and distributed for the whole community if sold at current prices. basic economics will just cause inflationary pressure and they’ll raise the price to fit the demand too. you need large companies to make large productions.
having a small companies also means nobody has a security blanket. you’ll be working in an industry where if your small studio produce a poor movie, your studio will fail and you’re out of a job.
The same people who already make the media. Just cut out the corporate middle-men & shareholders, who soak up all the profit and contribute nothing to the content.
There are a lot of independent creators out there too.
I just imagine a federated, YouTube-like platform. Except better in literally every single way. You are a member of your local community instance, and thereby connected with every other federated instance throughout the world.
Sounds suspiciously like Peertube
We can do this, once we transition to socialism, and cut out the corporations. Run nodes on the community-owned fiber for free access to the citizens.
What media do you think you’ll be getting under socialism with no corporations? Lol
Propaganda!
You must be joking. The people who make any money producing online content are a very, very small minority.
And if people didn’t have to work 60 hour weeks to barely make enough to survive, we’d get a lot more creative content. All that would change is there wouldn’t be some talentless suit exploiting it.
You wouldn’t be getting any tv shows or movies. You’d be getting YouTube style stuff……like you do now.
People put shows and movies on YouTube already. You’re just not getting corporate backed media on there.
I’m not sure what role you believe capitalists have in creating media, but it’s clearly disproportionate.
You think you’d be getting Avengers: Doomsday in a socialist/communist world?
Tv shows and movies wouldn’t be being created in that world, that’s the point you don’t seem to get.
How do you figure? China has been putting out some of the best big budget stuff in the world this past decade (games & movies), and AI is lowering the barrier to entry for special effects for low budget stuff.
Hosting email just saved the day! My ex got locked out of her email account and password resets were blocked. However she still had one “home” forwarding email configured as a recovery address, so we were able to redirect it somewhere accessible and unlock her email account!
That’s a pretty vague title. What kind of server? I run emby. I also run a ton of other servers.
did you try clicking the link? titles aren’t meant to convey all relevant info.
A 30 minute be video is a big ask when I don’t know what it’s going to be about
Hey @[email protected], your yawning emojis aren’t very convincing when I see that you are still actively following my account.
Telling that you haven’t considered that your comments might just be equally useless in the same circles we inhabit
Considering you are the sole downvote on all of my comments it’s doubtful we inhabit the same circles.
But if you want to spend your time following me around that’s less time you’re spending posting useless unhelpful comments, so that’s fine by me.
You’re the one apparently stalking and invoking me, sweetie.
🙄
How beneficial is connecting via ethernet instead of wifi? My wifi mesh pods only have 1 ethernet out port, so I use it for my desktop. Not sure if I could split it or not, but I imagine if I did it’d slow down my desktop’s internet connection, which I’d rather not do.
I can’t be sure since technology has so many different factors, but splitting a single Ethernet out into multiple with a network switch won’t really affect it much if at all. Cat5e cable/jack (common for most cables) gets 1 gigabit, so unless you have a gigabit connection and maxing out the connections already, you shouldn’t notice it.
As for WiFi, even though a lot of newer technology is great, it’s not going to beat Ethernet.
Good to know, thanks! I did just upgrade to a gigabit fiber connection, but you’re right that I’m not usually maxing that out.
A switch won’t slow anything at home.
It’s super cheap and literally plug and play.
Agreed. It’s time my occasional minecraft/PZomboid server got a nextcloud upgrade.
