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!
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.
Oh nice, thanks!
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!
It creates searchable PDFs, so no weird format locked to paperless-ngx
Thanks for the insight!
The files are stored in a directory and you can define the default path with an environment variable ( file-name-handling ). If you need a more fine graint solution you can also use storage paths and select it on file level ( storage-paths ). I’m using syncthing to sync the folder structure to my other devices.
And if you try paperless and don’t like it, docspell is another great option.
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!
Without even opening I had this in mind.
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.
well, there are a few things:
- 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.
- remote access - i can view all of my documents where ever i am.
- 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
- 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
- OCR - the documents content is searchable!
- 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.
- 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!
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.
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.
Commenting here to save this and also to create engagement.
did you know that you can save a post, by clicking the star?
also, appreciate the engagement :D
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I also am creating engagement.
Man that was some solid engagement!
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I also am creating engagement.
i thoguht you may be a bot as there are 20-odd replies the same, but my guess is you are using an app which is a bit dicky.
can you delete all the repeats?
Tried, app wasn’t letting me delete either… Funny that it was on this specific post.
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Saved for futures reference
Yo this shit is awesome. Going to be setting this up asap.
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How is your work flow from scanning to paperless? Does it support some kind of upload folder?
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”.
i dont have a scanner, but do use the email function to get my work payslips.
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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
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.
I really hope you have that backed up
He/she probably has all his/her movies backed up in the internet ;)
It just takes a really long time to restore from those backups. And weirdly, they’re scattered all over the place…
Depends on your source and connection but I managed to recover 8tb of movies in a couple weeks.
I have a duplicate server off site that I back it up to
Same here, 192tb, but sonarr, radarr, plex, and the source that shall not be named (I respect the 2 rules).
It’s not about outlay, I can watch what I want, when I want, how I want, without anyone tracking, even wrote my own video player interface in python so the mouse buttons handle all the settings.
Completely ruins you for normal media :/
Other than Disney stuff, you can’t really guarantee on your kids favorite show or movie always being available on a streaming service you’re already paying for. Jellyfin has been great for those moments. Used to use Plex, and it’s very good software, but I got tired of the non-free aspects. Made me feel like I was subscribing to one more streaming service.
But also kind of with Disney stuff, too
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
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
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.
And it’s so nice having zero dependence on the cloud. If the internet drops out, everything still works, including the mobile app.
Not necessarily, I have devices that are cloud dependent. Locally in NZ there aren’t a lot of options, all smart plugs are cloud dependent. Also things like weather integrations will stop working.
It’s up to you to make it cloudless, but Home Assistant is the only solution I know of out there that even allows this possibility. I refuse to use anything in my home that requires a third party app or cloud connection (aside from initial pairing so I can flash it with ESPHome or some other local-only firmware). Admittedly it complicates things, but the payoff is so worth it.
I use Home Assistant as well, but Apple HomeKit (and the new Matter protocol) can also be cloudless I think.
Yup, HomeKit can 100% work without internet. It’s a requirement of being HomeKit certified. I block internet access to all my HomeKit devices and they work just fine.
Yeah you are right, think all other alternatives require the cloud. I’ve just started with HA so I’m still pretty new to it. I’ve found some good Zigbee plugs on Aliexpress that pair well with ZHA. Over time I can replace the un-flashable cloud based smart plugs from TP Link and Brilliant.
Look for z-wave or zigbee plugs. You’ll need to buy a hub, but unless NZ has banned the protocol, it should get you smart switches, outlets, thermostats and more.
Yeah, I’ve recently bought a HA SkyConnect & some plugs from AliExpress and they work well. Whenever I’ll be in Australia I’ll get some Ikea stuff too. Locally the only Zigbee option is Hue which I find too expensive.
Theres plenty of Tasmota based plugs out there. Cloudfree.shop would probably ship to you.
Unfortunately not. I mostly get my stuff from Aliexpress; I’ve found some good Zigbee plugs there.
New Zealand is awesome, but not if you want to have many online shopping options :)
There should be plenty of zigbee stuff in the market, right? Ikea and Phillips stuff are mostly zigbee and can work with homeassistant + zigbee dongle (zha). Some tuya switch and smart plugs are zigbee too and can pair directly to homeassistant + zha without using a cloud account.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
Swede here. You need Ikea.
I’ll second this, it’s a great thing to have around and there is always something to tinker this. It’s basically a new hobby though if you like automation and monitoring things so budget your time and money accordingly haha.
Vaultwarden is pretty game changing. No more reusing passwords and they aren’t in the cloud.
This is a rare one for which i wouldnt bother self hosting; i trust the centralized server provider, i can take an offline backup of my passwords and it only costs $10. And im the sort to run my own email server because i don’t trust the cloud providers.
I second your opinion about not selfhosting Bitwarden. About email, have a look at Proton mail. All the emails are encrypted in the server and are decripted client side with your password only when you open them.
Why though? Just host it in your private network and use a VPN for occasional syncing.
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This is a great one and to add it also allows for secure notes, 2FA and sending files securely.
I second this, bonus points if you get a domain through Cloudflare and use their tunnel service to access shrike away from home!
yeah, password manager for me. love it. I am looking at using the home assistant addon to manage it now, it may make life a little easier.
This was going to be my suggestion!
PiHole!
One of the easiest installer I’ve ever seen. Significantly less ads to be shown especially one on non-browser.
This was my gateway into the selfhosting world. I don’t think I would’ve kept going if it didn’t make such drastic difference to my browsing experience.
I feel like this one needs to be higher up. It so immediately and instantly changes your browsing experience (especially on a phone), that I VPN into my own home network when I’m out just to stay on the PiHole.
Plus, when you get further along in your selfhosting journey you can use the custom DNS to re-route domain names so you never need to leave your network to use your own services.
Any reason to use PiHole over something like Adguard DNS?
For me, at least, is a custom CNAME DNS record. I’ve both internal (point to device directly) and external (via reverse proxy) domains. I use a CNAME record to point the external domain back to the internal one for my local split DNS. Technically it can be applied on Adguard; not as easy as PiHole though.
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
- 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.
My experience has been that Nextcloud can do 1000 different things, and it sucks at all of them.
That’s a little harsh but I definitely agree it doesn’t tend to offer a better or equal alternative to any free options available. You’re giving up a certain level of ease of use.
I tried setting up nextcloud. Just ended up creating a samba share instead.
Been using nextcloud for about 5 years, right now I use it for storing files and nothing else, and it still kinda sucks at that.
Gonna use paperless for any documents I have in NC, after that there won’t be much left in there, just some old dot files. Maybe I’ll get rid of it entirely
Ive run NC in one way or another for years now, and switching to a docker-compose stack was an absolute gamechanger for upgrades and break fix ease.
I had a lot of trouble setting up nextcloud in the past but if you go with the Docker method, it’s really easy.
Carnet to replace google keep notes
Is that a nextcloud plugin?
It’s a nextcloud app: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/carnet
and then there’s an android app for your phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spisoft.quicknote
Yes, Nextcloud. It’s not perfect, but it has made my life easier for the last few years
Nextcloud is the Wordpress of cloud storage. You can customize it to do literally everything. You can even write your own plugin if necessary. But unlike Wordpress, the default setup is quite locked down (you can’t just drop php files somewhere and have it accessible to reduce security risk) and you’ll actually have to follow certain formats and standards when writing a plugin, unlike the free-for-all every-man-for-himself nature of wordpress plugin development.
It’s a lot of pain to set up, but Nextcloud with OnlyOffice is just great for editing documents collaboratively and in realtime on the web. Actually one of the things that works better than O365’s web editors.
The problem with OnlyOffice is that it doesn’t allow for editing from Android, because then you’ll have to pay, which is why I switched to Collabora Office.
Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway
Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway
Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway
Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway
Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway
Why dont you use NC app on phone and then also onlyoffice app that opens your files? Browser is slower anyway
Actual Budget I use to track my finance.
Duplicacy for backups to OneDrive and Backblaze
Photoprism as Google replacement
Immich is also a great Google Photos alternative. Though it is in active development and things may break, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by it.
My problem with Actual Budget is it’s only a singular currency. I deal with Euro, Dollar, Romanian Lei, British Pound. Having to manually convert each to Dollar, and then have a bit of discrepancy due to price fluctuations made it a no go for me. Have not found a good self hosted finance tracker that works for me yet.
At the moment I am unfortunately using a proprietary one called Cubux.For what its worth, Firefly supports multiple currencies, hell I even see a few crypto currencies in the list haha.
That sounds complicated. If you don’t mind sending everything over an app Revolut can perhaps help out?
I actually use Revolut as my main bank account. :) Fantastic service but unfortunately it can only track stuff spent within Revolut. I use Cubux because I can track all of my bank accounts, and have a shared overview of my wife’s and I’s finance. Both of us have all of our accounts connected there. They made it incredibly easy to use, just unfortunate that it’s not open source or self hostable.
I’m using PhotoView instead of Photoprism, my RPI4 could handle it better. Just an alternative :)
Does it also have face detection?
Actual budget looks really nice. Until now I’ve just been using MoneyFox, but I’ll definitely try out Actual budget
I used YNAB which worked great but I want to move as much as I can over to my own server. The development is going really fast at the moment.
Welp, I went down the wonderful hole of Actual today. Thank you for that!
Let’s see if it takes over from my xls. I’m liking it. It’s quick and I see lots of potential.
An RSS reader (I use Miniflux), ended up being extremely useful
- Almost every piece of software worth selfhosting has an RSS feed for updates (e.g., every GitHub releases page has an RSS feed). I started selfhosting a good deal more after setting up Miniflux.
- Like omg there is this whole internet out there outside of Reddit/Twitter/etc that does RSS. The vast majority of blogs have RSS (e.g., Wordpress and Substack). I wish I had discovered RSS decades ago, so many websites I’ve forgotten because I would check updates manually and eventually just forget. I even host a personal Nitter instance so I can follow Twitter people in Miniflux.
I should get back into RSS. I used to follow a ton of web comics way back in the day, but once google RSS shut down I never picked it back up. I’ll look into Miniflux, thanks.
Nextcloud to replace Google drive/docs. Jellyfin or plex for media. The arrs to aquire media (if you have the patience). A blog? A game server to play with friends.
I suggest using docker and docker-compose as it makes everything way easier. It does still take time and it can be frustrating but it is very rewarding.
Crosspost from the duplicate
Years ago I selfhosted Nextcloud and found this interaction just as clunky as using google drive. Now I’m just using SFTP which has much less overhead and it integrates beautifully with just about any file manager on Linux. Then again, using it on windows is a pain as far as I know.
Do you happen to know if it can be installed on Docker for Windows?
probably, docker is docker, should work independently of the host OS
Thanks, figured as much. My main issue is Docker is annoying on Windows and trying to give it sufficient storage and configuring that with Docker has always been something I just never figure out.
While there is a docker version for windows (server I believe) the last time I checked it could only run windows containers (so basically none). The Linux support never got out of beta. I think now they are just saying use windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) for that.
I have been quite happy with docker on a Linux virtual machine hosted on a windows server (I know not the “normal” way to do it but since I am a windows Server admin at work it worked best for me).
The reason that you cannot run Linux containers on windows by default is that docker is no full fledged virtualization Software it sill uses the kernel of the host system. And a Linux container needs a Linux host system.
Here is a forum thread from the docker forum. You might find some valuable insights there: https://forums.docker.com/t/docker-run-linux-container-in-windows-2019/128196
WSL2 is Linux on a virtual machine. Docker for Windows is running in a VM.
I’m also a weirdo though, I’m using podman instead (and may switch to nerdctl).
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Docker is definitely worth the time investment.
If OP wants to go one level deeper: Ansible.
Does ansible make sense for a single server? I like the concept but I don’t know if It makes sense for my purpose.
It makes sense in terms of reproducibility.
Imagine if your server gets compromised, you accidentally break it, or you just want to move to a cheaper provider or a different server. Do you want to have to tweak it all over again, and fix bugs that you figured out how to fix 6 months ago and you don’t remember?
I’d rather have some yaml files that do it for me. And it’s a new skill as well.
Running a Tor exit node could certainly be life changing. Not sure in a good way, guess it depends which country you live in.
I did that for a while to try and learn about filtering malicious traffic from the network. Doing that long term would definetly change my life, but very much not in a good way. It’s a endless whack-a-mole game and the winning prize is that your ISP doesn’t give you a call weekly.
It took couple of weeks until the ISP first called and told me that I have malicious traffic coming from my IP. I explained the situation and their representative was very understanding and handled the thing as well as he ever could. I tried to adjust filters, blocklists and all the jazz which was pretty much a full time job already and I still couldn’t make it work on a sufficient level. I got another couple of calls from ISP (again, handled spectaculary considering I was pushing several hundreds Mbps dirty traffic out in the wild) and eventually they just plainly said that they’re forced to kill my connection if situation doesn’t improve. I ran a node without exit for a while but as that’s not a interesting thing to run I eventually shut it down to free resources for more interesting things.
If you have the time and knowledege to do that, I really encourage that, but for me it was too much to keep in the network while trying to maintain some sanity on my everyday life. I firmly believe that my goal of filtering malicious traffic out and keeping an exit node runnig is achievable goal, I just don’t have enough knowledge nor time to gain enough of it to keep exit node running.
And of course there’s legal issues as well and severity of them heavily depends on where you’re living, so really do your homework before doing anything like that.
I was thinking about doing this but you can be a suspect on a criminal case if Tor is relaying ilegall activities.
Therefore the “life changing” aspect of it
I started with Plex, but I would say it wasn’t until I spun up Nextcloud and got it running that I really would say my life changed. My entire family now has Nextcloud accounts, a family calendar, instant upload of pictures from my phone, all my recipes, and I even have OnlyOffice document server running for editing documents in Nextcloud.
Did you do anything special to get onlyoffice working? I’ve tried numerous times to add OO to my nextcloud, and it’s never worked for me. It’s the one thing I’m missing that would let me move my wife off of google.
I’d recommend you to look up *arr stack and Jellyfin. Good start is Trash guides. It will guide you step by step on how to properly set it up. It can completely replace Netflix and all other streaming services and its all free.
Self hosting nothing changed my life.
So much free time and less stress once I abandoned self hosting 😅
I always compare self hosting to PC gaming: it has some very specific benefits, but you don’t even comprehend, how many downsides you will encounter you cannot even start to anticipate. If one doesn’t like the pain a little bit theses hobbies aren’t any good and I totally understand everyone giving up on them.
Self hosting is much closer to gaming on Linux than Windows imo, but it’s a great analogy nevertheless.
I’ve been pc gaming for dozens of years and last few years I have near zero problems.
Maybe a combination of popular and newish hardware combination and dozen years of technical experience.
Linux gaming on the other hand… (except maybe deck)
haha, I have the same experience tbh, but I still get the obvious “I don’t want to update my drivers or fiddle with settings and controls, I just want something that works”, responses. I don’t even recognize these topics as “pain” anymore, but this probably just shows how high my tolerance has become in the last decades.
It’s disappointing that this is the highest voted comment on a thread in the selfhosted topic…
I don’t know. I think it speaks to something that we sometimes forget. Self hosting is great, but there’s a bit of time and commitment that’s needed for almost everything. Most people are used to single click, always works apps. Doing your own building, diagnostics, troubleshooting, and deployment can be a headache that’s too much for some people.
It’s really the phrasing “average joe”. I would genuinely give the average Joe a strong recommendation to not self host.
A beginner wanting to learn to be more techy and willing to put in hours for troubleshooting etc? Sure go ahead. But thats definitely not the average Joe.
My biggest advice to a beginner would be to buy a spare budget router, plug it into your ISP router, plug your pc into the new router and do all your messing around in your own network.
Break the internet because of bad configure? No stress, it’s only your little network, your flatmates/family aren’t yelling at you.
Can’t figure out what you did wrong and want the internet back to search? Just plug your pc back to the untouched ISP router so you get internet again
Was it r/cordcutters? So good not self hosting even dumb things especially when friends and family use it. I’d rather just fork out for the bill myself.
As others have worded it, it’s a hobby. Self hosting is only necessary for a very small number of people, less than one percent of people on here, but it’s a fun hobby, and I’ve learned a lot about software and networks from messing with self hosting stuff.
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
immich
Did they just nick the Google Photos UI?
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.
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.
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 🤣.
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.
It’s also not fully self hosted.
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
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
Transcoded downloads are a pretty big deal unless you want to stream 4K blue ray HDR to your iPhone.
Downloads, not streaming.
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)
A headache? All you need to do is tick a box when you first open the app. There it asks you how you’d like your home screen to look
hey my uncle died pressing that check box
Does duplicati have to do periodic full backups?
I’ve used borgbackup / borgmatic. One full backup and only incrementals thereafter.
After what happened to imgur and gfycat, definitely their own image hosting service.
What happened to Imgur?
Any suggestions for Docker?
I’m not sure this is what you’re asking because Immich is more like Google Photos instead of imgur, but that’s what I use.
Imgur is preparing to wipe old uploads that aren’t linked to an account…
In my case, that’s pretty much every image I ever uploaded to Reddit using Sync for Reddit.
