Self-Hosted Main

Using navidrome and jellyfin daily, and komga a lot!

Started as a hobby with an old i5 laptop (sans keyboard and screen), running Jellyfin. I wanted to learn more than just using Debian as a desktop.

Now my home lab consists of...

• 2x PiHoles (synced using unison and entr)
• 2x Jellyfin (1 for my use as a media server and 1 on a Unifi Cloudkey, which I am using for another little pet project).
• 2x Nextcloud (1 for my business and colloborating with clients on the various projects I get from them, and 1 I am modifying to build myself an online school)
• Gitea
• My own software to do round the clock transcoding of videos using a GPU including videos I create myself in Kdenlive or Shotcut.
• My own software to do managed downloading of content from a well known website
• Transmission
• Unifi (not on Unifi Hardware, the hardware was more useful for my other project mentioned above)
• Calibre-Web
• My own software to do daily incremental archives of my various production servers in the cloud.

I love selfhosting at home, and I recommended it for anyone who wants to learn.

Yes, I have fudged up a few times and had to nuke and start again, but with each time I get better and better at what I am doing.

I am now planning on moving my Gitea and the main Nextcloud instance into the cloud, as my poor little fibre line is not coping with the traffic.

Selfhosted services I couldn't do without anymore are :

At Home

• Homer
• Home Assistant
• Vaultwarden
• Paperless-ngx

At work

• Promotheus/Blackbox/Grafana
• Netbox
• Gitea
• Vaultwarden
• Mkdocs Material

I went the opposite direction: I did use local clients and migrated from those to self-hosted solutions with web interfaces.

Notes for example: I used to keep notes locally until I discovered first BookStack then Trilium. Trilium does everything I need, but simply having a link to its web interface on my dashboard and editing notes in there is so much more convenient than keeping a local client updated on all my devices and setting up sync.

For the same reason, I prefer using one self-hosted webmail client (currently simply NextCloud Mail) over installing Thunderbird on all my devices.

Same with Vikunja, I am perfectly happy with the functionality and web interface, I find it more convenient than installing many local clients.

Last but not least, FreshRSS has completely changed the way I consume information from the internet. And again, having an amazing web interface, being able to freely switch devices, without having to maintain/sync several local clients, is extremely convenient.

And that's just productivity apps, my whole entertainment setup depends on my media centre: Audiobookshelf, Jellyfin, Navidrome. There is no way I could run this (and freely switch devices) without these self-hosted solutions.

I run my entire home automation, DVR, streaming system, voice command system, local file backups, etc; from my self hosted setups. I also built all the systems and since it is self-hosted it all works when the internet goes out except for a couple of things I one-time read from the cloud (like guide data lookup, media data, etc).

On top of that there is value in doing it just to learn if it is anywhere near your career field, which for me it is (software & electrical engineering).

I'm using a lot less tools that I've installed, now I need to remove some of this tools. I use Synology drive/photos, Plex/Jellyfin/Arr environment, mealie, paperless-ngx, resilio to share big files to my friends, freshrss, linkwarden, vikunja and Joplin.

Maybe I will remove home assistant (I'm not using it, I control devices with voice Alexa), snapdrop/gokapi/pingvin (localsend+resilio+Synology fractures cover this better).

I'm considering replace Joplin+vikunja for obsidian, but im not sure if I want to have mobile with syncthing all the to Sync my mobile with pc, maybe it will drain more battery.

My services all serve a purpose.

I host a portfolio website. It gets me exposure even though I’m not actively seeking other employment.

My wife runs her own travel agency so her website is also required.

Pihole is used daily to block ads on our network.

Wireguard is on our mobile devices (phones, laptops) so we always have a secure connection on untrusted wifi, ad blocking, access to our documents that live on our file server. I’m at MCO right now waiting for a flight with full confidence that my connection is secure.

Nginx proxy manager to route the website traffic.

Rclone is used to regularly backup the file server that holds our documents.

Minecraft server because happy toddler = happy life.

I used to selfhost bitwarden (vaultwarden) but changed to paying $10/yr to relieve myself of the added stress that it brought for security/backups.

We have many apps that are used daily and improve our lives, the family wiki is trillium, family photos on Photoprism, NAS storage for each person for their documents etc. navidrome for music, various for media consumption, oobabooga for a private chatgpt, automatic1111s stable diffusion UI for graphic design. Some finance logging tools I wrote to manage our finances. A series of cameras viewable that cover the house. Tasmota on dozens on smart plugs/lights/sensors etc. a zigbee network for door monitoring. Pihole. Homer as the dashboard to reach everything. Plus various others. For me it’s the golden age of self hosting, so many mature products now. I’m also pretty ruthless, if there’s something we don’t use it’s deleted.

Both!

I love Jelkyfin and Jellyseer, so does my family. It’s huge for us. Sonarr/Radarr/Bazarr enable the awesomeness.

Home Assistant is the fucking bomb. I can’t even describe how good. Married up with Shelly relays our house is ridiculous, it’s so much damn fun. And takes care of a lot for us.

Pi-Hole. Good lord. I will never live without it.

Unifi Controller. I have 5 APs ( a couple outdoor rated ones in enclosures outside even). Love the seamless roaming and multiple network controls. Guest, IoT, etc.

Vaultwarden. Outstanding password management tool. And no perpetual subscription? swoon

Project Send. Use it infrequently but it’s great.

IT Tools. Some fun little utils that are handy.

ESPHome. Custom IR Blasters, DIY Irrigation Controller. No cloud - perfection.

And yeah I’ve got the backend stuff. Nginx(SWAG), Whats Up Docker, SWAG Dashboard, Homepage, Authentik. But I’m into this stuff. Bachelors and Masters in comp sci. Worked with computers since I was 7 with my 300 baud - BAUD - modem. Worked in IT since I got a job doing warranty work on Packard Bells in high school for a local shop. This stuff is my jam.

It really has improved my daily life. I may be a bit of an outlier since I'm also a developer and selfhost apps I've made.

Multi-scrobbler

I love music and have been recording (scrobbling) what I listen to for over a decade. I created this app to make the scrobbling process set-and-forget across all the platforms and locations I listen to music.

Tautulli Digest

This little app I wrote consolidates "newely added to plex" discord notifications and posts them all at the same time. Makes my discord server much less noisy.

Context Mod

A homegrown reddit moderation bot platform I developed. I selfhost u/ContextModBot and a slew of other moderator bots. This is probably the biggest advantage I get for self hosting. The bot uses a lot of bandwidth and can be CPU-intensive when doing image hashing and pixel comparisons. If I was hosting this on AWS I'd probably be paying hundreds of $$$ a month.

Web Hosting

Between Context Mod and a few other image and text web services used between my friends I do a modest amount of website traffic. Not the end of the world if I hosted in the cloud but still saving me some money for sure.

Home Assistant and Frigate

More common around here. HA has been a QoL upgrade from managing a bunch of different rando "smart home" apps. I also moved away from a Ring doorbell to an Amcrest AD410 with Frigate + Coral for human detection that records events straight to my NAS. No more paying subscription for storage and worrying about amazon peeping on my video.

I have Wireguard setup in a small instance in AWS. No longer need NordVPN. Other services I host in my homelab.

I have Trilium replaced Evernote. I use it daily. It's my source of everything. It's lack of a mobile client, but I'm fine with using the PWA

My Jellyfin is not meant to replace Netflix, but absolutely necessary. I used it daily

Tdarr is also needed, but not always

Transmission: Download movies to use with Jellyfin, obviously

Motioneye: Use it with a Webcam to monitor my room

Ntfy: Since I use a macbook and an android phone, this is a good way to send messages among devices. Also, motioneye will send motion detection messages using this service. I used to use Line/FB message bot to send notifications, but it's kinda messed up with normal messages

Webtop: need to move files around sometimes. Using a desktop is more reliable. I tried filebrowser, but with large file moving, it falls short

Code server: development on the cloud. Normally, I don't need it much, but when travelling, I can use it with a tablet, so there is no need to bring my laptop

Caprover: I use this to deploy most of my app. Also, this is my own CI/CD pipeline for my projects

Samba: SMB shares. Needed for Tdarr. Usually, I use SFTP instead.

I got other services running too but just to test if they satisfy my need. If not, I will scale them to 0. Maybe after some time when they grow, they will be useful for me

Oh, I definitely have self hosted services that affect daily life. I don't like when I'm not at home w/ pihole. I love paperless and mealie. Plex allowed me to move my DVD changers (400 each) to smart TVs and/or Fire Sticks which provide so much more in service. Every single user in the house can watch different content. It also allows recording of live content for later viewing. In the previous configuration, I never would have considered OTA content. I also have a service that backs up my Google Photos. I don't usually think about my NVR as a service but I don't want outsiders tempted to watch my cameras, even if I don't point them inside the house. Home Assistant has changed so much of my life and it'd be so much less without Node Red and VS Code Server.

I have to say, I do IT for a living so I go to great lengths to not turn my home systems into a second job. I have undone several systems over the years that just required too much work with much less value in return. Typically, I spend 10-15 minutes a week doing what I call "Care and Feeding" of my systems. Normally, this would be just updating dockers and VMs. I may add work to my schedule when my notes from the previous week suggest that I investigate a new service. I will stand it up and play around with it to see if I can get it to work in a fashion I like and is useable.

I'm only self hosting a few things but they are all actually getting used for things

• Shinobi (camera software)
• pihole
• valheim server
• truenas

Eventually I would like to replace other services for self hosted alternatives such as Google photos and onenote. But I am severely limited by my upload speed (only 20mbps). I also desperately need to add a bigger/better UPS and some sort of kvm over ip as my power has been going out at least a few times a year.

Was setting up paperless easy for a k8s cluster?

I selfhost because I'm a cheap SOB. I initially started self hosting circa 2001 when I taught myself Linux (desktop first, then server). As I moved around the world, I simply took my server with me, and once I found a cheap ISP, I was back at it. I've never had issues that weren't brought on by my incessant tinkering (well, I did have a fan fail, and caused my server to shut off once).

I'm a life long fan of learning by doing, so when I need something my server can't provide, I go shopping (opensource of course) until I find a work around, substitute, or different route to achieve my goal.

My drawback is that the majority of my backups aren't easily restorable. My data/images and files are safe, but restoring the web sites, databases, and other miscellaneous things are usually a do-over (I do have a new backup plan going, but haven't had to test it out fully yet - Jetpack and updraft for my Wordpress site.

Home Assistant is the single greatest thing in my home. Everything is smart and connected now.

Plex + all the arrs
Overseerr
Home Assistant

I know it's boring, but all of these get used every day and they make my life way better. Except that my plex install has a corrupt DB entry and I don't have the time/energy to blow up the database and re-setup my libraries. Restarting the cleaner fixes it for about 24 hours. Might just need to setup a cron job until I find some actual time.

I do it because renting the equivalent capacity from a cloud provider would cost me a hell of a lot more per month than the electrical bill I pay to keep it running.

Plus, having a server rack in my basement is cool :P

I think it depends on the person. My self hosting is lean and mean - I don't bother setting up any of the complex meta-self-hosting stuff, my services just run on docker with port forwarding.

Additionally all my services are things I absolutely use daily. Very rarely does a day go by that I don't listen to audio books on my AudiobookShelf server, and my wife uses our Plex daily to watch her favorite shows, which also allowed us to ditch a few streaming subscriptions

If there's a cloud app that offers good value for the money - I use that instead, afterall self hosting isnt free, you pay with your time (and electricity bill, but that's negligible)

If you find that the only worthwhile thing you host is your file management stuff, why not just ditch the rest? There's no gold medal for "most things self hosted", the point is to make your life easier, not harder

I am legally blind. I got into programming and linux specifically so that I can improve my life, even though I don't want to pursue an IT career professionally.

So, the short answer to your question is: most of my apps really do improve my daily life. And a good many of them I wrote myself.

Here's a largely-arbitrary mind dump:

• Windows, unfortunately, has the best on-screen magnifier, so I cannot entirely leave the platform.
• However, most GUI apps and web pages suck. They suck in many fascinating ways that are beyond the scope of this comment, but I have found that some tasks are quicker to perform from a CLI than from a GUI. For instance, managing documents. I can write a shell oneliner faster than I can load a GUI app for bulk file renaming or whatever other thing people tend to do. I can tell gnuplot to produce a graph much faster than I can draw one by hand.
• Until very recently there wasn't a Dark Mode for word processors. So I'd just write Markdown files in VS Code and then convert with pandoc.
• Math is much easier with scripting than with calculators
• Text to speech is a lifesaver. And sometimes you need to write your own whacky scripts to scrap webpages and read them out to yourself.
• I need to conform to academic referencing standards. Who's got time for that? Nobody. Computers can do that for me.
• Web scraping — some websites are so bad, the only way to use them is to scrape then convert.

But that's from an accessibility perspective and more programming than self-hosting per se.

Now from reading your OP, I think it is an attitude problem rather than a selfhosting problem. uBlock Origin and AdGuard (blocky, in my case) are not mutually exclusive. You just need to know how TF to use them. Since I use uBlock in Paranoid Mode (basically a lite uMatrix mode with filterlists), I don't need to block so-called tracker scripts at the DNS level. My DNS adblocker is only blocking ads. Ergo, things like shopping do not break. You are saying that it is easier to disable uBlock for shopping — but I can change DNS with one script. Just temporarily switch to 1.1.1.1 or something, and everything works. Where's the problem?

I'm not sure what your complaint is with Bitwarden. It is not exactly hard to back it up when it is running in docker, and easier still if you use vaultwarden (much simpler backend).

You say that you use 'Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, Authentik, Uptime-Kuma, Wireguard' and they are not improving your life.

I'll agree on the first two, but maybe that's just because I hate webuis with a burning passion. But how are Authentik and Wireguard not improving your life?

Do you know why I use wireguard? I'll tell you why I use wireguard.

A long time ago, I needed to go to hospital. I also had a university assignment due the same day as I was in hospital. Thought to myself, 'no problem, I'll just bring my laptop with me; I've got Google Drive Sync set up so I can work on my files remotely'. So I check in, boot up, log in, and what do I see? Old files. Old files from three weeks ago. Why? Because Google Drive decided to go on strike and, in true GUI App fashion, displayed a tiny error notification in the tray icon that you would need a microscope to see. Naturally, being half-blind, I didn't see it. So now I am, figuratively up shit creek without a paddle!

So what do I do? Well, I deploy "KVM over Mom". I ask my mom to drive back home — mind you, this is a 70-minute drive — and get her to bring my machine up. I walk her through getting into my machine and resurrecting Google Drive Sync. And then I spend 4 hours in the hospital queue finishing off my assignment.

That episode taught me a few things:

• Google sucks but I have to live with it
• KVM-over-Mom is not a viable long-term solution
• I need remote access
• Redundancy is good.

So, fast-forward a few months and I am using my dad's NAS as a jumphost/proxy into our home network, where I can use wake-on-lan and RDP to connect to my machine. I have also switched from Google Drive Sync to File Stream (as it then was) so that my files are automatically available in gdrive. And that latter bit saves my ass some months later when my dad's NAS has a disagreement with a kernel update and I can no longer remote in. We also have a hoard of Chinese bots hammering away at our internet-facing 16-year-old router, so that's not great either. Also, ssh tunnels are neat, but are annoying to configure.

Fast forward a few years and an Unspecified Virus of Unspecified Origin that temporarily obviated the need for remote access, I now use a VPN. In fact, me being a somewhat cautious person, I use several VPNs, for remote access into my home network. There is a vanilla wireguard "in case things with multiple moving parts break" tunnel and more convenient mesh orchestrators, although I have a hard time finally deciding between innernet and headscale.

And does having remote access to my home computer improve my life? Yes. Most definitely. My home computer and server have much more storage than does my laptop. And sometimes you just need access to your copy of Hanks Australian Constitutional Law 12th ed, what can I say....

The issue I see with many self-hosters is that they start with a solution looking for a problem as evidenced by the frequent "I am bored, tell me what to selfhost" posts we see on this sub. It is much better to start with a problem and try to solve it. Then you don't have to have an existential crisis over whether you are hosting too many replicas of postresql..

:wq

I self host because it is fun. I also run an active mail server, and a nextcloud server as my home fileshare. So, both.

I gave up on everything but my backups and a few syncs. You need both hardware security and software security to selfhost. And that requires maintenance.