this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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I just recently started playing around with an old pc as my homeserver and am curious of any recommendations for lesser known self hostable foss software that you would recommend

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The piece of string is very long!

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

You may need to work backwards, identify a service as a need and then figure out which software to run.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is an awesome resource! I already have what i need (file, torrent, gitea server), but im looking for software to try out just for fun.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I get ya but when you scroll that list you can see why it's a hard topic to reply to. There is a lot of fun to be had!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
  • Caddy - Reverse proxy
  • Owncast - Twitch alternative
  • Jellyfin - Home video streaming application
  • Joplin - Note taking app that syncs
  • Syncthing - syncs files from my LineageOS (Android) phones to PC
  • PiHole - AD blocker
  • Minetest - open source voxel game engine (basically Minecraft)
  • Veloren - open source adventure game
  • Invidious - frontend for Youtube
  • Libreddit - frontend for Reddit (about to stop working)
  • Proxitok - frontend for TikTok
  • Nitter - frontend for Twitter
  • Rimgo - frontend for Imgur
  • Libremdb - frontend for IMDB

Edit: Fixed PiHole from saying "VPN" blocker to "AD" :-D

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Here are some I find really useful:

  • Jellyfin (media interface)
  • paperless-ng (document store with OCR, tagging, search, etc.)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (10 children)
  • dokuwiki
  • draw.io
  • gitea
  • woodpecker (ci/cd)
  • minio
  • postgres
  • freshrss (rss server and reader)
  • firefly3 (finance / budgets / expenses)
  • calibre
  • Pi-hole (primary on a pi, secondary on docker host)
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[email protected]
https://lemmy.ml/c/selfhost

(still don't know how to link communitys here)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For a real hands off approach take a look at Yunohost or CapRover. Both are very easy installs and will give you a gui to manage your applications and other self-hosted services. It's a great way to dip your toes in. The only difference is that with yunohost, they bundle most of the self-hosted services with their own local-sso implementation, so you only need one login for all your services. This is nice if you want a set it and forget it solution. With CapRover, you basically just have a nice gui to manipulate docker installs, so if you find it a bit too restricting, you could just manipulate the docker installs yourself via command line.

Both are great entry points!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here are a few I like:

  • Jellyfin - a media server software that allows you to organize and stream your personal media collection.
  • NextCloud - a self-hosted file sync and sharing platform. Not as good as Google Drive (of course), but it can do the job.
  • Bitwarden (with a Rust-written alternative named vaultwarden) - a password manager for storing and autofilling login credentials.
  • Matrix - an open network for secure, decentralized communication. WhatsApp, but in the Fediverse.
  • PiHole - a DNS sinkhole that blocks ads and other unwanted content.
  • Mycroft - an open-source voice assistant. You can make your own Google Home with it.
  • OctoPrint - web interface that allows you to control 3D printers. Pretty handy if you have one!
  • Gitea - a lightweight self-hostable GitHub
  • Home Assistant - an open-source home automation platform. Can integrate a lot of other things in your house, including some of the things I mentioned above.
  • The X-arr initiative - a collection of tools for managing and organizing media libraries. Pretty good if you deploy your own media server:
    • Sonarr - Select TV shows and it will automatically download episodes for you.
    • Radarr -> movies
    • Lidarr -> music
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

These are the ones I use most actively, on my FreedomBox:

  • bepasty for moving around or sharing temporary files
  • Quassel for staying connected to IRC servers
  • Radicale for synchronizing my calendar and tasks.
  • Syncthing for files I want to have available between my laptop, desktop, phone.
  • Tiny Tiny RSS for following blogs.
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  • Portainer server and agent for monitoring all docker hosts in one place
  • Traefik as reverse proxy
  • Dashy (complex) and Homarr (simpler) as dashboards
  • Gluetun for VPN access for containers and proxy for everyone on the network
  • Radarr/Sonarr for managing Movies and TV shows
  • Navidrome for music
  • Audiobookshelf for audiobooks
  • Transmission/qbittorrent/rtorrent/deluge as torrent clients
  • Pinhole for DNS
  • Technitium for more advanced DNS and DHCP (might replace all piholes with this or blocky in the future)
  • Plex/Jellyfin for media streaming
  • JellyfinVue - awesome frontend to jellyfin
  • Bazarr - for subtitles
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Caddy is simpler for the reverse proxy. Just sharing for people that get scared when they try to set up Traefik.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Ngnix-proxy-manager is even simpler :) But along with the automatic router creation using labels, I've found traefik to be the most robust of all three.

The traefik syntax and configuration using yaml is really initutive. I can link a good guide here if someone wants it. The official documentation isn't that good.

One of my favourite guides explaining the configuration files for traefik.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nginx proxy manager is simple, but I can't manage to make it work with https on porkbun. Nginx-proxy works just fine and it's probably the simplest i've seen.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

From the things I use:

  • Uptime Kuna, for monitoring the availability of websites/services
  • Gitea, for hosting code
  • PicoShare, for sharing files
  • Maddy, for email
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

How has your experience hosting your own email been? I often hear that the big providers (Google, Microsoft, etc.) will simply drop your sent mails.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also host my own mail and there's been little issues.

Microsoft is a pain in the ass if you're in an IP space they don't like like DigitalOcean. Which is ironic because they have the worst spam filter by far in the industry.

If you want to get through to everyone you will have to:

  • Use a "good" TLD ( not .to, not .xyz, ...)
  • Don't use cloud platforms that are regularily used for spam (mostly DigitalOcean)
  • Use SPF
  • Use DMARC
  • Use DKIM
  • Use a PTR record
  • Don't make an open relay by accident
  • Use proper ports and certificates
  • Register an abuse account at the big players (Google, Microsoft, ...)
  • Don't use an dynamic IP
  • Keep it up to date
  • Minimize downtime

I can't recommend mailcow enough, it makes setting up a mail server a breeze.

https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized

Use the MXToolbox to verify your server(s).

https://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I really like Memos. It's a micro blogging site that is minimal, but has a lot of neat features. I'm using it as a replacement for DayOne's journal app.

And I'll second Veloren. My kids and I are having a blast playing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Jellyfin is a great FOSS alternative to Plex for TV/Movie playback.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I actually was looking around for rss readers, but havent found one that can save entire articles and serves them offline. Does this support that?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (29 children)

You may be way ahead of me on this, but I highly recommend using docker for this endeavor(or podman), as it really allows you to try a lot out without making a mess of your system.

I run pihole, syncthing, and gitea locally(among less interesting things.)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One of my most used softwares on my server is calibre and calibre-web. It allows me to self host my own book server with a very nice looking front end

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is the workflow with this? Also what kind of frontend client can be used for reading? I'm curious to try but haven't got the time to set this up so far.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

So I use calibre as my backend client essentially. My library is managed through there, and I load my books in there as I get new books. It’s a bit clunky, but it’s reliable for what it does, and can even be set to auto tag your books and grab new covers for them

Calibre-web is what I mainly use to interact with it in my day to day uses. It’s a very clean front end that connects to my calibre server, and even has account management if that’s your thing. It’s hosted as a website, so I can access it from anywhere in the world. When I click on a book, I can either read it in the browser, or I can download it. Usually I just download them to my tablet and read them there as you would any other pdf/ebook. It’s a super clean way to manage a ton of books

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thanks, i think this will be my next project. By the way it migt interest you that you can self host the entire gutenberg project using kiwix

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Ohh that is very interesting. I really like hosting media like that. I feel it’s very important to share knowledge with people in what ways you can, especially literature

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nextcloud, Bitwarden (vaultwarden is the name of the OSS server), Adguard Home / Pihole and Paperless-NGX might be some things which can have a pretty big impact in your daily life.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Personally, as well as NextCloud, I'd host instances of LibreX, CloudTube, PiHole, Gitea, XMPP, and CryptPad.

If it's fun you're after, though, why not try hosting a Minecraft server? And how about XMPP or Matrix, to keep in touch with friends?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Home Assistant! You can host it inside a VM.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I attempted to use different home assistant softwares, but i always ended up deciding that i will wait till offline voice recognition is a bit more usable (not being a native englis speaker its a rougher experience). I will pobably try it again soon though.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Home Assistant, despite the name, isn't an Assistant like Alexa or Google Home, it is actually a home automation integrator. It connects to practically everything, and then workflows can be triggered off the states of your IOT stuff. In my house, I use it to, among other things, turn down/off the light when grid power goes down and I'm running on battery power, as well as send me a notification that I've lost grid power.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

pihole/adblock monero node/support monero network p2pool/mining pool for monero wireguard/vpn Tor relay, i have thought of using an old pc to support Tor

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I have two instances of BookStack. A public-facing one for bird stuff, and one for home stuff. I also self-host an instance of Plausible Analytics as a privacy-respecting alternative to Google Analytics.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

On my 2 raspberry pi's I am running Pihole Pivpn Syncthing Photoprism Unify controller Heimdall (webpage that has all my servers....locally accessible, or non local via wireguard connection via pivpn) Might be more can't remember! Prob more from other suggestions on here over next few days 😂

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Might I suggest Dashy/Homarr? Heimdall has been abandoned I think. I went from Heimdall to Organizarr to Dashy/Homarr.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

conduit is a lightweight Matrix homeserver. If you tried running synapse and found it to be an utter mess, conduit is much better!

mpd is a music server daemon with many clients. It scans your music (either stored locally or on a network) and creates a database (either stored locally or accessed from another mpd server on the network).

minidlna is a ~~DLNA~~ReadyMedia server which is a plug and play media server. Many hardware devices (e.g. AVRs) which don't support anything else do support DLNA, so you can e.g. serve music or video directly to your AVR instead of needing a set top box like an Apple TV or Roku.

If you have a problem with collecting machines like I do, set up DNS with dnsmasq. It's pretty easy to get started, all you need to do is write your /etc/hosts file (and, likely, disable the DHCP server). Additionally, if you have a problem with collecting machines like I do, invest in some kind of config management so it's easy to handle all the different things you're running.

Also, if you want to actually learn, I would strongly recommend against using Docker containers for everything. Besides being stuck with what the developers prefer, all the work of installing things is already done. Build things from source (optional), configure all the pieces yourself, work out all the dependencies and actually learn how things work. That's the fun, at least in my opinion. That's why I have yet another SBC with no OS to fiddle with this weekend: I'm looking to migrate from OpenWRT to real Linux so I can do everything myself instead of relying on OpenWRT's scripts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, if you want to actually learn, I would strongly recommend against using Docker containers for everything. Besides being stuck with what the developers prefer, all the work of installing things is already done.

I really disagree on this point. You should use docker or podman (preferably Podman) to containerize your applications on your server to keep them ephemeral and separated from the host OS wherever possible. This improves security, makes setups reproducible, and eases backup and restore procedure. If you want to build from source do so with a containerfile/docker file to keep your build environment fresh and clean.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Syncthing to replace Google drive and Photoprism for Photos. Both have a great functionality and run well on my 12yrs old home server with 2gb of ram.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I've got a pretty booring setup compared to most 🤣. Ubuntu Server running the following in docker,

  • Plex
  • Audiobookshelf
  • Komga

Audiobookshelf has come a really long way. The version out now is heaps and bounds better than what it was 1 year ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'm using the following:

Plex for music/anime/tv/movies, calibre webserver for ebooks/manga, qbittorrent web+Prowlarr to search for and download content, SyncThing to keep things in sync between my server and desktop, and I'm also file sharing with nicotine++

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

This reminds me that I need to learn how to use SSH so I can put files on a server.

I have been doing everything the hardway, but I have a few capable older computers I want to put to work.

Self-hosting is going to be my new hobby, I know it.

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