Self hosting nothing changed my life.
So much free time and less stress once I abandoned self hosting π
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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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.
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.
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.
PiHole!
One of the easiest installer I've ever seen. Significantly less ads to be shown especially one on non-browser.
This was my gateway into the selfhosting world. I don't think I would've kept going if it didn't make such drastic difference to my browsing experience.
Swinger parties?
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.
Not necessarily, I have devices that are cloud dependent. Locally in NZ there aren't a lot of options, all smart plugs are cloud dependent. Also things like weather integrations will stop working.
Theres plenty of Tasmota based plugs out there. Cloudfree.shop would probably ship to you.
Unfortunately not. I mostly get my stuff from Aliexpress; I've found some good Zigbee plugs there.
New Zealand is awesome, but not if you want to have many online shopping options :)
Vaultwarden is pretty game changing. No more reusing passwords and they aren't in the cloud.
This is a great one and to add it also allows for secure notes, 2FA and sending files securely.
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.
Vaultwarden is super easy. I've not had a single problem with it and I've been running it for a couple years.
Running a Tor exit node could certainly be life changing. Not sure in a good way, guess it depends which country you live in.
Parties.
DNS. It's always DNS
for better or worse it is, (though I don't recommend newcomers to boot up a bind server to manage their dns, pihole is probally the best starting point)
Indeed, dnsmasq would be much easier to handle than BIND OOTB. I have personally not come across a reason to use BIND for myself, and struggle to see its appeal out of the enterprise/enterprise-like labs, but I don't really know much about homelabbing either
In my (our) case we use bind to run an authoritative resolver for our domain (I am sysadmin for a uni computer society, we have our own (physical) servers)
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 youtube-dl?
I guess itβs not so much βhostingβ as having it on your home NAS with some scripts to backups channels and videos that you like. At least thatβs 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.
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.
Actual Budget I use to track my finance.
Duplicacy for backups to OneDrive and Backblaze
Photoprism as Google replacement
Immich is also a great Google Photos alternative. Though it is in active development and things may break, I've been thoroughly impressed by it.
Outline for your own VPN. You can even try it for free in tandem with Google cloud
Hi Average Joe π just start with a simple PiHole installation. From here on, the options are endless
Hosting a wedding has a pretty good chance to be life changing
An RSS reader (I use Miniflux), ended up being extremely useful
- Almost every piece of software worth selfhosting has an RSS feed for updates (e.g., every GitHub releases page has an RSS feed). I started selfhosting a good deal more after setting up Miniflux.
- Like omg there is this whole internet out there outside of Reddit/Twitter/etc that does RSS. The vast majority of blogs have RSS (e.g., Wordpress and Substack). I wish I had discovered RSS decades ago, so many websites I've forgotten because I would check updates manually and eventually just forget. I even host a personal Nitter instance so I can follow Twitter people in Miniflux.
Whats a good way for me to take the dive into self hosting without getting myself in trouble security wise? I would love something that is basic to build off of as I experiment with it to teach myself the more advanced stuff.
Late reply, but tailscale is really easy to use and is secure for experimentation.
Exactly a couple of things that we (me and the wife) use really often:
- AdGuard Home is IMHO so much easier to use, although it has been a while since I've used Pi-Hole.
- CouchDB for the Obsidian LiveSync plugin
- Immich for a self hosted Google Photos alternative
- Nginx Proxy Manager for exposing all of my services
- Vaultwarden is invaluable for us
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 donβt think thatβs true. Even when Bitwarden server is down you can still access your Bitwarden vault, use and export all passwords. You canβt 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.