Omw, a replacement for Vikunja and Joplin? Sign me up!

Start with Pi-Hole. Use Linux (I started with Debian) to install Docker/Docker compose, Use Docker to install Portainer, and Portainer to install Pi-Hole, and literally everything else. Run it on any e-waste you have. There’s a thousand guides, it’s easy (comparatively), immediately useful and you’ll learn right quick about redundancy when you break it. Oh you’ll learn so much when you break your only instance of Pi-Hole. Watchtower messes up the updates while you’re at work and SO wants to use Facebook… You’ll learn. Also, don’t do automatic updates for a long time.

You should also learn how to read documentation and Docker’s is stellar, it’ll help you when you’re trying to implement some solo project with minimal documentation… You might hear RTFM which translates to “have you read the documentation?”.

Chatgpt is a fine rubber duck as long as you’re doing standard things on standard platforms. Explain your problem to ChatGPT as best you can and troubleshoot with it. Everything should be a place holder, give it zero details you don’t have to. Then follow the stupid steps it gives you. If it asks you if you made sure the port is what you told it you expect the port to be, go fucking check. It’s a robot, it doesn’t care how good you are just do the thing. If none of that works come here with all the checks you’ve already done so someone here doesn’t ask you if you made sure the port was 8096 in the compose file and you typed it as “8906:8096”. You will mess up simple stuff, it’s fine we all do/did, LLMs are great at covering the basics.

You’ll want to use Podman, Dockge, LXCs, what have you eventually. But Docker/Portainer are the standards. Everyone that can use Podman/Dockge/… can use Docker/Portainer, not the other way around. You’ll get more help doing standard things on standard platforms.

You learn what Docker is, how it works, what a compose file is, how they work, what maintenance is like. Then branch from there, after Pi-Hole what’s the most impactful to you, media? Jellyfin, plex & *arrs+gluetun, what’s your poison? All available through docker. Keep adding services until you cant stand the upkeep, you expand beyond your hardware, or you know you have all you want.

Docker is least effort to learn to do this stuff, you may want to out grow it eventually, but I don’t think you’ll ever not use docker/podman for something. Even when you have everything set up as a NixOS box, there’s likely gonna be a docker/podman host running something somewhere, probably a third redundant pihole.

Then tinker with what you have. Docker is good but has limitations, what is Proxmox, what’s an LXC? In summer I wish everything was on Docker so updates are painless (comparatively). In winter I’m glad I’m in proxmox and can tinker away.

My entire homelab used to live on a rPi4 running Debian, and docker doing almost everything on your list. My current pair of n100 minis can do everything on your list. I think (I’ve not tried game servers).

It doesn’t take much. Start with Debian, Docker, Portainer, Pi-Hole.

When something catastrophically breaks, it’s generally not worth chasing the solution. Good teaching moments later but by then you’ll have snapshots to revert back to. Anyway when things break catastrophically, and they will, give yourself an hour to fix it, and then just start again. It reinforces install procedures, you’ll have an idea on how you could have done it better anyways, and it’s just not worth the heart ache.

Sames, I have a bunch of users(2) all streaming jellyfin fine over tailscale, except one house which buffers sporadically over the day. There’s no rhyme or reason to the when, or the what that needs to be buffered. As in it’ll buffer direct plays/HEVCs/AV1s, or it’ll play them fine. Some times it’ll buffer at night, sometimes during the day, sometimes neither or both. Worse, I’m getting all my information via users, so maybe theres a common thread, but they haven’t found it.

Their internet speed is fine. It could be WiFi being saturated in their area. It could be the relay being a very old rPi3 just isn’t up to it (The pi, captures their requests through Pi-Hole and proxyies their traffic over tailscale). It could be the laptop they’re using as a client isn’t up to it. Or it could be some setting somewhere.

It’s annoying whatever it is.

Not too close. My Proxmox server is basically set up, I can’t fit anything more on it, so it’s just back end and tinkering now. I’m comfortable with Proxmox.

That said, new box and a large windfall I’d have a look at Unraid. After donating to Proxmox at least that much first.

If Proxmox didn’t exist (and TTeck didn’t exist) I think I would have at least tested Unraid. I was comfy in Debian with Docker as a virtualisation host before moving to Proxmox anyways.

I’m sure it’s good, I would like to give it a go. I’m happy where I am though.

Thanks, I’ll check it out. Speedy could be interesting for games that used the CPU speed as a clock speed.

The LinuxServerIO peeps make fantastic images. When my server was docker only they pretty much built my homelab. I’m sure my docker hosts still have a bunch of their stuff, *arrs are probably all them.

Cleanuparr/Huntarr just got upgraded to a late-summer project.

Edit: they’ve been running a couple days now. They’re good.

I’ve been on full maintenance mode for spring/summer, those are the times to be going placed and doing things. Autumn I’m going to write my winter goals for the server.

I have another n100 box that I’m going to dedicate to immich, I have 7 users now, so when they all upload on a night my current n100 has a little bit of a cry.

Security is always a big one. I’m currently relying on tailscale (limited to necessary lxcs), reverse proxies, Https, and app ‘sign ins’. Not bad (it’s bad) but not good either.

For new projects, I want to integrate Audiobookshelf with Hardcover. I’ve got a project installed but it didn’t work on my first attempt so I gave it up for winter.

I’d like to set up a virtual DosBox, accessable by a browser, for my 1000s of dos games. Again I’ve found a few projects, none worked out of the box so have been given up for winter.

Other than that all my front end services are working well. *arrs are becoming a pain for all the malware named as good files confusing rad/sonarr. Qbit knows not to download .exes, and the like, but sonarr doesn’t know to delete them and look again. Lazylibrarian accepts no shit though, if things aren’t going as expected LL very quickly deletes and goes again. I might try vibecode a script for that.

I’d like to break out my storage into a dedicate box. Probably get some e-waste to fill with drives. Currently I have a n100 running network, storage and virtualization, it’s a little cramped.

It’s probably smarter to break out networking first, build a little router/firewall box (the above n100 mini would be perfect). But, I don’t get along with networking, I find it challenging in an unsatisfying way. When I’m done banging my head against the wall and things work I’m just relieved I don’t have to do it again, instead of feeling accomplished. New projects are fun, Storage I get the feeling of accomplishment from doing the thing. Networking is a dark art full of black boxes I don’t understand that sometimes play nice together and mostly fuck my shit up.

I want to move over to IPv6, not for any other reason than it’s probably a good idea to progress to the 2000s. If I can move everything over to Hostnames however, that’d be the dream.

Moving from Docker to Podman is probably smart.

Lots to do over winter… I’m probably gonna build a fish tank instead

They expressed sympathy and anger for a white supremacist being killed, but not a school shooting that same day. Fuck 'em

GoDaddy(I think) for my domain, Cloudflare +Letsencrypt (DNS SSL challenge), Tailscale (to access applications remotely), AirVPN (for applications to access the web), Gmail (smtp, I want to migrate soon).

I host everything else.

I used proxmox to set up my ZFS pools and use bind mounts. It’s fine, I’m sure it’s a “grass is greener” thing.

Home labbing is a winter hobby, so in the summer months I hate the time spent updating all the machines when I could be outside.

If I had purely Docker set up, in winter I’d be complaining that “everything is too simple” and “I want more control” etc.

You can pry proxmox from my cold dead hands.

I do sometimes dream of running everything in Docker though for how easy it is to update. I’ve got the community scripts running and still it’s a bit of a maintenance job.

A TrueNAS + Docker machine is pretty tempting. If I were to migrate, that’s where I’d go.

Don’t start here. Get something tiny: some ewaste, a rPi3/4 or an n100.

Build a Pihole to block ads, malicious sites and trackers on your network

Risk free, tonnes of learning opportunities, huge utility, tonnes of documentation and guides to help.

Once you’ve built a couple Piholes (break and rebuild then) you’ll have an idea of what you might want to do next and what is achievable for you.

I don’t believe so. Maybe someone’s written a script on github, I haven’t looked.

A thing I like about lazylibrarian is that it just keeps rerolling until success. You probably miss good files just because LL couldn’t parse the folder structure or something, but it’s just set and forget.

Perhaps this could be modified to work. Like time is set to zero and file size to zero.

Not that I use LL, I just think it’s neat… From a purely onlooker POV.

Here’s my list, saved you a click. Ignore the *.iso, I added that for the seven seas peoples. Obviously, all I share are Linux ISOs

*.exe

*.sh

*.lnk

*.iso

*.zip

*.zipx

*.iz

*.izh

*.arj

*.scr

*.lnk

*.cmd

*.msi

*.bat

*.scf

Have your torrent client not download malicious file types like .exe, doesn’t solve the immediate problem but it helps in two ways.

First you don’t help spread the nonsense.

Second qbit will mark the torrent as complete and sonarr will then flag it for manual import with the reason no valid files to import. They’re easy and quick to spot and reroll that way.

Oooo this might be the path I take to finally get off IPv4. Cheers. I’ve already set up reverse proxies, but finally updating to 1999 technology seems like a good plan.

+1

I’m running a media/back up server for 4 households on a single n100 mini pc and a couple USB drives. It’s a “good enough”, low cost, high wife acceptance factor entry point into self-hosting. It’ll happily age into a firewall if I want to build a better box later on.

It’s revealing what I do/don’t need vs what I want. It’s teaching me what people use, what they don’t and where I might want to go in the future.

If I could go again I’d probably get a n100 2Bay Ugreen thing. Then it’d age into a local back up and I wouldn’t have to deal with USB drives.

I must have been having more basic problems than you. I found LLMs to present the most common solution, and generally the most common way of setting it up is the “right-way”, At least for a beginner. Then I’d quiz it on what docker compose environments do, what “ports: ####:####” meant, how I could route one container through another. All very basic stuff. Challenge: ask gpt

what does "ports:

-####:####" mean in a docker compose?

Then tell me it doesn’t spit out something a hobbiest could understand, immediately start applying, and is generally correct? Beginners, still verify what gpt spits out.

By the time I wanted to do non-standard stuff I was better equipped with the fundamentals of hobbiest deployment and how to coax an LLM into doing what I needed. It won’t write an Nginx config for you, or an ACL file, but with the documentation and an LLM you could teach yourself to write one.

Goes without saying I’d take the output of the LLM to Google for verification, then back to the LLM for a hobbiest’s explaination, back to Google for verification… Also, all details are place holders: don’t give it your email, api-keys, domains, nothing. Learn to scrub your input there and it’ll be a habit here is a bonus too.

Properly made software has great documentation and logs. If you know how to access those logs and read documentation (both skills in themselves)… Not to mention not all software is “properly made” some of it is bare bones and just works™. Works it do, absolutely not a criticisms for FOSS projects, I love your stuff keep making it, and I’ll keep finding ways to teach myself to use it.

For all its flaws. Low level tech support, rubber duck, command explainer is something LLMs do really well. Kept my early mistakes off the web and got me where I needed to be most times.

Thank you, saved. I’d still be a little but fucked, but not entirely.

I guess I should get on with learning/donating to this soon while the sun’s still shining with Tailscale. Slower, more gentle transition, fuck up in some dev environment instead of my actual server. Goddamn was tailscale so easy though.