Selfhosted

Docker and the docker-compose yaml files. They'll be invaluable. Compose files allows you to create custom networking and run multiple containers.

Super useful and what most people use to run simple docker workloads.

You don't have to understand how to create containers, just understand how they work and the commands to use them effectively.

I was actively avoiding Docker too after I tried (and succeeded) getting Home Assistant running in Docker many years ago.

It seemed like a confusing mess when I did it back then and the resulting Home Assistant container ran like a dream for many years until it didn't and I had no clue how to get it working again.

I ended up just throwing Home Assistant OS on thepi and it was very very simple to set up.

Anyway that was then. This is now.

I bought a mini pc in February and installed Proxmox on it.

Initially I just wanted Home Assistant, Plex and some kind of way of populating Plex with media.

I just ran VMs with bare bones programs installed in Windows. Problem is this took a lot of RAM and was flakey.

Cut to now, where I have a Home Assistant VM, a Linux VM and an OMV VM for my NAS.

The Linux VM has a bunch of Docker containers running that do everything my Windows bare bones VM did, but better.

I can access the containers via Portainer and update them with a button press. I cannot access the VM GUI because I passed through my GPU which knackered the console in Proxmox, and that is absolutely fine, if I need to do anything in the VM I have SSH.

My Linux VM uses less RAM than my Home Assistant VM, which is amazing considering what is running on it.

Docker is where it's at! Takes a little learning but with Portainer installed it's all in one GUI instead of SSH in to create text files and folders.

Yesterday I wanted to give Immich a try. So I found a tutorial on YouTube, went into his notes and found his GitHub and in there, his Docker Compose file.

I LITERALLY JUST COPIED IT AND PASTED IT INTO PORTAINER AND PRESSED GO AND HAD IMMICH RUNNING IN MINUTES.

Now the caveat here is that I've had a few months of playing with Docker now. I've tried to get Immich running a couple times and failed in the past few months. But I watched this guy paste his code in and press go, then start talking about how it works, so I was pretty confident he had taken the time to have a working compose file.

Wall of text to say get acquainted with Portainer and try installing and playing with some stuff. Bear in mind that it probably won't work to start with and don't rely on it until you've proven it out, but tinker with it until it's working. Eventually you'll get a feeling for it and it will become simple to you.

It’s a fair response. Some uf us aren’t flush with time.

I’d survive SSH for installing Portainer and then you can run most of it from its GUI. If you use Docker Compose it will be super easy to make changes to your setup as well. Just change the file and redeploy your badboys.

I’m a recent dad absolutely strapped for time, but I still managed to set up a headless Debian server with close to zero Linux knowledge. There are so many amazing guides out there, especially on GitHub.

Good luck whatever you go for.

You can use any port for SSH—or you can use something like Cockpit with a browser-based terminal instead of SSH.

I am trying to avoid having to having an open port 22

If you’re working locally you don’t need an open port.

If you’re on a different machine but on the same network, you don’t need to expose port 22 via your router’s firewall. If you use key-based auth and disable password-based auth then this is even safer.

If you want access remotely, then you still don’t have to expose port 22 as long as you have a vpn set up.

That said, you don’t need to use a terminal to manage your docker containers. I use Portainer to manage all but my core containers - Traefik, Authelia, and Portainer itself - which are all part of a single docker compose file. Portainer stacks accept docker compose files so adding and configuring applications is straightforward.

I’ve configured around 50 apps on my server using Docker Compose with Portainer but have only needed to modify the Dockerfile itself once, and that was because I was trying to do something that the original maintainer didn’t support.

Now, if you’re satisfied with what’s available and with how much you can configure it without using Docker, then it’s fine to avoid it. I’m just trying to say that it’s pretty straightforward if you focus on just understanding the important parts, mainly:

• docker compose
• docker networks
• docker volumes

If you decide to go that route, I recommend TechnoTim’s tutorials on Youtube. I personally found them helpful, at least.

Well you could run these services in your server (only if you have enough spare bandwidth, ram and cpu) to help the comunity to circumvent censorship in some countries, like Russia or Iran. Here you have more information for tor and i2pd.

Dockge is really just a nice GUI for Docker compose. It still creates docker-compose.yml files and you could always switch back to just managing that way with no impact. It can convert Docker run commands to Docker compose, usually it’s pretty close but may need a little tweaking. It also shows the terminal output from the container, which is helpful for troubleshooting. It feels more lightweight to me and does only what I need, nothing more.

I had been managing my own Docker compose files for a while, so Portainer may do some or all of this also, but it always felt a little bloated, so this was a good fit.