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?
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 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.
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
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.