I’m writing this partly because I think others might be interested, partly because I want to know what others think of my setup, and partly because I’m going to upgrade my hardware and need to review my setup so that I can re-create it on the newer hardware.
I have an old 2009 iMac at home that wasn’t being used anymore, so I installed Ubuntu server 2022.04 LTS. I have two printers, so I installed the CUPS manager, which allows my to print wirelessly from iPad, iPhones and my MacBook Air. For media, I run PlexMediaServer (video) and Navidrome. For content, I run Transmission, which I can manage from a web browser. For e-books, I use calibre which I access via a web browser (on my iPhone or a Kobo). For coding, I’ve installed Nginx, MariaDB and PHP.
My router has a built-in VPN, but I’d like to install WireGuard on the server. I’d also like to be able to collect and manage my family’s photos. For now, I use MacOS Photos, but since we rarely plug our phones into the computer to sync them, they are usually only backed up to iCloud.
What else should I consider?
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If you are using Docker at all, with wireguard, I use WG-Easy - dead simple to use and works quite well. Immich is up and coming and making waves in the self hosted community as well in terms of being a viable replacement for Google Photos so that may be an option, or you can always drop in Nextcloud or Owncloud and sync your photos that way with the bonus applications which come with either suite.
Do you have personal experience with Nextcloud or Owncloud? I have tried the former and it's been a general nightmare. I'm using Docker and have a dozen or more other containers that all work just fine, but even once I got Nextcloud installed and working it had all kinds of permission problems or just wouldn't install things from its own built-in app store. Never did get any kind of document collaboration working.
I've had some trouble with NextCloud as well. For me it just feels sluggish and bloated.
Someone in another thread here said "NextCloud can do everything, but it doesn't do anything particularly well" and that seems to mirror my experience with it for the most part.
Of all the self-hosted containers I've set up NextCloud gave me the most trouble
I use the nextcloud docker image and I've never had any of those issues…
I should just start over and try again, probably did something silly that screwed things up.
Nextcloud (or docker for that matter) are rather complex.
Permission problems are every day life in linux, you always have to sudo or - if you change that - someone else can vaporize your server and steal all your data. Linux is infinitely more secure because it is a nightmare to use casually with a complex setup. Some windows script kiddie is gonna die inside your directories and never be found again.
Writing a script that you need to make executable first? Chowning files that are made by docker? Having to use a specific user inside docker (in case of nextcloud especially)?
All these things are incredibly frustrating but given the sheer complexity of nextcloud, it’s actually working rather good imo. So does linux.
I‘m not shitting on linux, docker or nc. I love them all but saying they’re not working just says they’re not plug and play yet. Other examples: most things snap are a mystery for me. Freakin permissions.
For photos, Immich is recommended a fair bit.
If you listen to audiobooks in addition to your e-books, there is audiobookshelf. You could also consider a recipe manager, like Tandoor or Mealie, or Home Assistant if home automation seems fun.
The top of Immich's home page says "Do not use it as the only way to store your photos and videos!" Is that hyperbole or a realistic warning?
ABSOLUTELY.
Never use one source for critical data! One backup is no backups! No backups is playing with the entropic forces of the universe!
- Have at least three copies of your data - primary, backup, and offsite backup.
- Store the copies on at least two different media types.
- Keep at least one of those copies offsite - what if your house or datacenter burned down?
If you don't care about recovering your photos, by all means use an actively changing project as your sole means of data storage!
Yeah, that goes for any data though. The question was more if Immich is really so unstable that it might just shred your images because it had a bad day. And to that I can say: no, it won't. Yet, photos are very important to many people, so they put that warning there.
My practical answer: Nah, it’s probably not going to nuke your files.
My software engineer answer: Never trust us to not make a mistake. It doesn’t take much to accidentally nuke a directory.
Nice start and solid choices so far!
Definitely recommend looking into Docker, it'll make cross-platform conflicts and migrations near effortless. Repurposing unused hardware is great, but can also be inefficient or bulky, so a hardware upgrade might be in your future eventually. ;)
If you are interested in automating any media retrieval and/or organization, which I gather you might given you have Plex, look into the *arr ecosystem: Sonarr for TV, Radarr for movies, plus others for books and music and pretty much anything else you can imagine!
My setup is based on Docker and a Synology NAS as the hardware. I recently set up a Minecraft server so my nieces and nephews have somewhere to play together, but may need to move that to my PC as the NAS is not very RAM or CPU heavy.
Re: VPN and Wireguard, I was looking into doing the same on my unifi router, but came across Twingate (through a networkchuck video) and decided to try that instead, being a bit of a networking noob. It's almost too easy…you can share individual resources or whole networks with user and device control over each. I think you get 5 users and 10 resources in the free plan. I'd recommend looking into it.
I had been pondering Nabucasa for external Home Assistant access but am very happy I found this. Now my wife can have remote access to HA and Plex and I can access the whole network remotely.
It's great that it works for you! For me every recommendation of networkchuck that starts with 'and its free! You just have to sign up for…' is a pointer to search for 'open source alternative for…'.
That is how I found out about a Raspberry Pi with pihole and piVPN installed on the same device, using this manual. Pihole blocks ads, with piVPN you can log into your home network using the wireguard protocol.
I thought it was easy to set up, but of course it depends heavily on the time you can and want to invest. So Twingate can be the right solution for you, but I am often impressed by the excelent free software solutions that are out there.
I’m planning to start with a self-hosted option, but if I get tripped up, that sounds like a good plan B.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package VPN Virtual Private Network
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
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