I’m already hosting pihole, but i know there’s so much great stuff out there! I want to find some useful things that I can get my hands on. Thanks!

  • ryncewynd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12128·
    3 years ago

    Self hosting nothing changed my life.

    So much free time and less stress once I abandoned self hosting 😅

  • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
    861·
    3 years ago

    As far as changed your life, there are not too many that i really love, that made a massive difference to how i do things. But there is one:

    Paperless_ngx

    ALL of my paper work, receipts, transcripts, tax, shares, council rates. Everything goes in there. We no longer have paper lieing everywhere (well, my wife is another matter, still keeps grocery shopping reciepts…). when i get soimething in the mail, i used the paperless app to “scan” it, upload it, then bin the paper.

    An actual life change that i didn’t know i needed.

    • haulyard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      3 years ago

      Is it possible for the scans to be stored as files that are readable should paperless crash and I’m not around to get it up and running, or are files stored as weird non-standard file formats?

      edit: looks like scans are saved as pdf’s. Thanks for the insight!

    • MaggiWuerze@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      3 years ago

      How is your work flow from scanning to paperless? Does it support some kind of upload folder?

      • AnAnxiousCorgi@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 years ago

        Yeah paperless supports an upload folder. My scanner has an ability to scan to a network drive, so I scan things onto a shared drive on my homelab box, paperless consumes the scanned PDF and places it into the paperless “inbox”.

        • MaggiWuerze@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          Cool, that’s really easy. I’ll have to bring that up with my gf. She’s basically hoarding printouts and stuff (she’s a teacher) and this might help her in getting it a bit more organized

      • hogofwar@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        3 years ago

        Yep, supports upload folder, normal upload in the application and also automatically importing from email based on folder/label

    • constantokra@lemmy.oneEnglish
      3·
      3 years ago

      Why is this better for you than using a folder structure with a decent naming convention? I’ve tried to get started a couple times, but I just haven’t managed to get what’s better about it. I know i’m missing something, and I feel like if I knew what it is i’d be more likely to out in the work to transition.

      • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
        10·
        3 years ago

        well, there are a few things:

        1. using the app to take photos (in a scan sort of mode, where it trims it to be at right angles), really quick and easy, no matter where i am.
        2. remote access - i can view all of my documents where ever i am.
        3. easy & sophisticated search. I have my documents assigned to people (me, wife, child, etc). I also assigned them to things like payslips, tax, shares, legal documents, education docs, receipts, etc. it also helps to automatically tag them to some degree of accuracy
        4. Automatic dating, it is quite good at picking out the date of the document, as seperate to the upload date. and it is easily updatable if it is wrong
        5. OCR - the documents content is searchable!
        6. Ease of tax time. I have some financial year views that make it really easy for me to do my tax (Australia), and i dont need to go hunting for paper that has faded in the heat and is no longer legible.
        7. folders - the documents are placed in a folder structure of your choosing. if you change the details in the document meta-data, it will move it to the correct place.

        so, whilst a folder structure would work. this is SOOO much easier, and provides much more functionality as it is not just storage. it also has WAF!

        • constantokra@lemmy.oneEnglish
          3·
          3 years ago

          That was a really clear explanation, thanks. Decent remote scanning would be nice. I guess I just have to wrap my head around tags for some of the niceties to make sense, though I guess i’d be no worse off if I just used folders if that’s an option as well.

          • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
            3·
            3 years ago

            you’re welcome.

            I tend to use document types more than tags now. note that there are a number of meta-data fields:

            • correspondent
            • docuemnt type
            • tag

            i started with tag, but now mostly use a combination of the doc date, type and correspondent. Then use the search bar for specific documents.

    • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
      1·
      3 years ago

      That looks really cool. At the moment I scan everything with OneDrive, and sync it with my NAS. However, it doesn’t have e.g. OCR features, it’s pretty basic. Will have a look, thanks!

      • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        definitely try it out. You can auto-ingest from the scanner folder and it will do all the rest of the sorting for you. I go in every few weeks/months and look at the recent documents to sort and fix up any meta-data/sorting.

          • palitu@lemmy.perthchat.orgEnglish
            1·
            3 years ago

            awesome. i think that the initial install “just works”, then you can start to tweak it. just make sure you mount actual directories, not docker volumes, otherwise you cannto see the files on the disk.

            • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
              1·
              3 years ago

              Thanks for the suggestion! I tried to do that and have the files reside on a mount (on my NAS) but that didn’t work, resulted in a “chmod” error. So, instead I’ve created a shell script that runs every night and creates a backup & copies the resulting zip file to my NAS :)

              By the way, when using docker volumes, you can see the actual files as well. In my case (RPI4) they are located here: /var/lib/docker/volumes/paperless_media/_data/documents

  • Acid@startrek.websiteEnglish
    681·
    3 years ago

    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

    • HamSwagwich@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      3 years ago

      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.

          • RxBrad@lemmy.worlddeleted by creatorEnglish
            14·
            3 years ago

            It just takes a really long time to restore from those backups. And weirdly, they’re scattered all over the place…

            • Sabin10@reddthat.comEnglish
              3·
              3 years ago

              Depends on your source and connection but I managed to recover 8tb of movies in a couple weeks.

      • Silviecat44@vlemmy.netEnglish
        01·
        3 years ago

        Is it useful without piracy though? It would still be expensive to buy all that media? And usually you can’t even download movies etc that you buy online. Am I missing something?

    • baked_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      3 years ago

      Probably an ignorant question but the content you use is pirated right? Should I wonder about legal issues since I would keep it at home and connected to Internet? Protected of course I just don’t see too deep into the issue

      • f1g4@feddit.itEnglish
        2·
        3 years ago

        If you don’t explicitly set a DNS to allow access from outside the local network, all your stuff is private and confined within your local network. As it is with all, let’s say, wifi stuff that goes on in your home.

        Edit. What @notorious said

        • Notorious@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          I think you mean explicitly open the port on your router, but even then that’s not true. Plex by default will proxy your traffic so that even closed off servers can be reached. It is pretty easy to disable remote access in the server settings though.

    • fuser@quex.ccEnglish
      18·
      3 years ago

      I was going to say that hosting a mail server will help you learn to control anger, but your idea sounds much healthier.

      • Cyanogenmon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        3 years ago

        Sys admin here.

        Hosting on-prem email at work took years off my life. Going to work on the other and report back

        • fuser@quex.ccEnglish
          5·
          3 years ago

          Ok. I’ll stand by and try restarting spam assassin again. Good luck!

  • sylverstream@lemmy.nzEnglish
    41·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • a1studmuffin@aussie.zoneEnglish
      21·
      3 years ago

      And it’s so nice having zero dependence on the cloud. If the internet drops out, everything still works, including the mobile app.

  • thoughtorgan@lemmy.worlddeleted by creatorEnglish
    34·
    3 years ago

    WireGuard, helpful for accessing stuff on your internal network that you don’t want to expose while you’re out.

  • agoramachina@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    292·
    3 years ago

    Home Assistant is nice! Have it integrated with some smart lights and smart plugs. Makes it easy to monitor and control everything locally.

    We have it set up in our room so that one widget controls the lights, one controls the fans, one controls the monitors, then there’s a master button that we use to turn off everything that doesn’t need to be always on whenever we leave the room.

    Want to play with some fancier stuff with it too, but that alone is incredibly convenient.

  • Reivax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    3 years ago

    I have a PiHole, my own EdgeRouter that is behind the Verizon router, a UPS, a wired switch, a SiliconDust HD HomeRun to convert my cable to a stream, my Hue controller, my Camera DVR, and a Pi4 hosting network storage.

    It all fits neatly in a 6U closet rack. I use the EdgeRouter to host a VPN I can connect into to manage things for the house, and also use it to dial out to a VPN, so I can connect the TVs in the house to a VPN abroad.

    I also have a Smart Garden powered by a raspberry pi, connected to a rain barrel, a water pump, some solenoids, and some moisture sensors.

  • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    211·
    3 years ago

    If you spend some time learning how docker/podman works you’ll be able to host practically anything!

  • slackj_87@lemmy.worldEnglish
    201·
    3 years ago

    Vaultwarden is pretty game changing. No more reusing passwords and they aren’t in the cloud.

  • KNova@links.dartboard.socialdeleted by creatorEnglish
    201·
    3 years ago

    For me it’s 100% Nextcloud. It was a pain to get working at first (and I’m dreading the day it breaks, if that happens). But it is so much more than just a self-hosted Dropbox solution:

    • Maps
    • Calendar
    • Email
    • Markdown editor (I’m using this to try and replace Google Drive for collaborative document editing with my friends; most of what we need can be achieved with Markdown formatting)
    • I haven’t tried it but there is a Talk plugin that allows for video conferencing in browser;
    • a bunch of other stuff I’ve never played with like mind maps, PDF conversion, music player, etc.
  • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    192·
    3 years ago

    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.

      • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        3 years ago

        Yes its basically selfhosted Google Photos instance kinda thing. There is a great story the Dev shared once, he was paranoid about backing up things to Google or Apple cloud as they have history of sharing it with Feds. So Dev won’t like his family pictures on such platforms, so when him and his partner were to have a baby, he started working on immich, so by the time baby arrives he’ll have a safe platform to backup family pictures.

        • dirtbiker509@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          3 years ago

          Wow!! Immich looks great. I’ll be getting that going asap. I actually just started paying for Google drive just to have more space for photos and videos. I’ve always wanted to move over to using my server but I just couldn’t find a great Google photos alternative. This looks perfect.

          • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            3 years ago

            Glad to know, I was able to help ya avoid that cost. We should be thanking the Dev’s baby, as it helped us all to protect our privacy and our pockets 🤣.

    • kenyard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      3 years ago

      Plex is a far better and user friendly version than jellyfin or emby in my experience especially if you want to share to friends. Granted it’s not open source and has gone commercial route so there is the risk it will continue there. But for now I wouldn’t push to move. If jellyfin can get some more app support and continue to develop and be ready for when Plex messes up then it will take off.

        • MaggiWuerze@feddit.deEnglish
          11·
          3 years ago

          Only if you want to access it remotely without VPN to your home network. Nothing in Plex forces you to use their servers and you could run it in a network without internet connection

          • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            3 years ago

            here you are wrong. The very first step in Plex is having a user account not local but on Plex (of course that is going to their servers). So the very 1st step shows it is not fully selfhosted. Neither it is fully private.

      • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        True for users who are already setup with Plex, for them there is no reason to switch as of now, but for a person starting from scratch and setting up things for the first time, it makes a lot of sense to get Jellyfin instead of going Plex. As Plex is moving away from their core of making user’s media available for streaming, and rather focuses in pushing its own streaming content (I know we can toggle that behavior off but it is headache fot new comers, and it should be off by default and if a person likes they can turn on Plex’s streaming content, default should be the user’s content)

      • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        if you want to share to friend

        Not if they need their own Plex Pass for so many features. The only thing Jellyfin lacks is user self password resets and transcoded downloads. I don’t really see any other advantages in Plex

        • backpackn@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          Does jellyfin handle audiobooks? For some reason I found the service lacking a couple of years ago, but can’t remember why.

          So I got Plex pass and really enjoy it. The Prologue app gives you an audible-like interface for audiobooks that I love. Plexamp for music and Plex Dash to monitor the server. Audnexus matches audiobooks to Audible listings for the metadata. Plex movies and tv match to get metadata, trailers, behind the scenes, cast list, and rotten tomatoes reviews. If Plex ever gets too commercialized/restricted for some reason I’ll switch, but for now I couldn’t be happier.

          • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 years ago

            As far as I know there is basic audiobook support. But I have no clue, because I don’t use it. If I used Audiobooks I wouldn’t be using Jellyfin for them anyway

    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      3 years ago

      Does duplicati have to do periodic full backups?

      I’ve used borgbackup / borgmatic. One full backup and only incrementals thereafter.

        • aname@lemmy.onedeleted by creatorEnglish
          0·
          3 years ago

          Where are your remote backups? In your secpnd house?

          • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            3 years ago

            No as I shared I only use a remote machine (which is my old laptop converted to NAS) (2nd house is a dream as of now 🙈)

            On a serious note as Duplicati backups can be encrypted, you can use remote Machine, backup to a machine in 2nd house as Syncthing works over relays for remote locations as well, or you can also send encrypted backups to cloud like Gdrive, Dropbox, etc.

            • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              3 years ago

              Noob here, duplicati is awesome, but I saw some posts about corrupted backups etc so i switched to cmd kopia

              • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                0·
                3 years ago

                This reminds me of my posts on reddit 3 months prior, it all started with Noob here🤣, so even I am a noob. Or you can say you are on Lemmy and not reddit, so I wont call you or myself a noob anymore, as noobs are still on reddit😉.But we all learn bits with time. I read those posts too, but gave it a shot anyway and its been 4 months of using Duplicati, still running without any issues.

                I do randomly test it as well, but copy/pasting my stuff and then deleting it from original location, and use Duplicati to restore and works well everytime. I did those tests every 7days for 1st month, but after that it has been 3 months where I do similar tests randomly either 20 days or monthly. And still doing good.

                Key part to remember while Duplicati is Versioning, I keep atleast 5 versions of backup (daily backups), and the things I backup are mainly Photos or password manager data. So even if I get a corrupted back up and even lose my system. I’ll still have the 4 other backups which ain’t very old, as its daily backups with 5 versions so, 1 backup per day for last 5 days. So 90% chances are I won’t lose the data, but in case even if I do it would negligible.

                • rambos@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  3 years ago

                  Hehe. I cant feel like not noob in this community lol. Honestly I still use duplicaty along with kopia for most critical files and they go to google drive encripted. Kopia does backup of all files to another drive and B2 cloud. Duplicaty is so perfect to use, such a shame someone brought fear in the room 🤣

    • DidacticDumbass@lemmy.oneEnglish
      0·
      3 years ago

      Would you rate CasaOS over something like ProxMox? I know there is a difference in purpose, since ProxMox is about virtualization and CasaOS is about easy hosting of docker instances.

      Do you have an opinion on what is better in the long run for self-hosting?

      • fedonr@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        Is you like to run Multiple OS/VMs on single machine, then Proxmox is your goto, hands down.

        CasaOs is more for people like me, who runs a single OS baremetal and like to have multiple docker instances on that same OS. Basically you need a baremetal Debain or supported Linux OS on which you install CasaOS.

        CasaOs is more like portainer on steroids, as it offers you Appstore like interface to get one click Docker container installation. But also offers you control (for more advanced users) where if you like you can manager containers and can have terminal/ssh access along with option to change default volume maps set by CasaOS.

        One such similar thing to CasaOS is UmbrelOS, please do avoid that, as it only offers one click installations of docker containers with default volume maps (with no way for you to change it) And it lacks all the advanced features to manage containers like in CasaOS. Atleast CasaOs keeps those options hidden away, so once you become a little advanced you can access it.