Self-Hosted Main

I am hosting useful apps and it’s a hobby! So it’s never boring or something I get sick of.

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

Privacy is only going to be a more important part of your daily life going forward. So absolutely I'm enjoying selfhosting. Not relying on third-parties and/or death-by-a-thousand-cuts subscriptions is also very beneficial. Learning new skills along the way has also been a little bonus/cherry on top.

TL;DR: Selfhosting is basically a digital 'bug-out bag' for me. For when stuff goes south, you'll not be caught with your pants down.

Music server for my father. He will get a new iPhone and want to download his old songs. He don’t know anything about the subscription based service so I will make one for him!

And that's a little bit sad, right? The only "Job to be done" self-hosting is a solution for me is ... file management. Nothing else.

But everything is a file - Unix folks

It's a little bit of both for me.

I do host things for fun. Otherwise I wouldn't be running my own instances for Lemmy and for Mastodon. I don't need to host services like an IPFS Podcasting node or a PeerTube relay server for Jupiter Broadcasting, but I like giving back to the podcasting community (and theirs in particular, mostly).

Other things could fall into both categories but are a significant improvement on my Quality of Life. Automations fired by Home Assistant make it so things like my bedroom being warm during the winter is possible without having to remember to preheat it before I sleep. Services like AdGuard Home and PiHole help me control segments of my network and prevent ads and other malicious sites from being opened on my LAN. Hosting my own password manager through Vaultwarden and my file and photo syncs through a combination of NextCloud and Syncthing, though it has availability drawbacks should my server ever crash, lets me maintain more control over my data than I otherwise could have.

Plenty of other things are nice-to-haves and not need-to-haves, but they're worth spinning up to try out and see if they fit into my lifestyle. If I didn't enjoy self-hosting, I wouldn't have started to do it in the first place.

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.

I'm building a home lab to learn. The fact there's functionality and privacy is a good learning driver, but entirely the purpose. I suppose eventually there may be ROI, but that's not a focus at this time. :)

Both, docspell has eliminated all of the filing cabinets in my house (the only thing left is the fireproof/resistant safe for things like birth certificates, SSN cards, etc.). Outline is my note taking and documentation tool, Jellyfin is where most of my media lives now, ChannelDVR gives me access to TV via Jellyfin, etc.

But I also really like playing with random open source projects and seeing if they have any use to 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.

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.

Self-hosting is great for people who don’t want to pay for software, services, music, movies, etc… but are willing to pay with time.

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.

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.

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

There's many, but the most improvement is plex with the whole servarr stack automating nearly everything behind the curtain. Plus notifiarr with trash guides library improvements.

Besides that, home assistant also improves my life quite a lot.

I'm running quite many apps. Just some:

Linkding to collect bookmarks Mealie to collect recipes Nextcloud syncing to photoprism Syncthing to backup the phone on the fly (downloads, app backups, GPS logs to replace Google time-line)

I buy DVDs at the thrift store for $1 and put them on my Emby server. I could (but don't) just torrent all the things, like most people, but that isn’t fun. Finding a movie I like reminds me of going to Blockbuster as a kid. At the same time, I like the modern conveniences and features of the "Netflix" type software. It's just a better all-around experience than what I get with DVD alone.

As T1 diabetic, hosting my own CGM (Nightscout) and using its companion apps has led to me lowering and maintaining my HbA1c to prediabetic values.

I use my Nextcloud at my employment all the time. It's a great way to get scripts I have written deployed on client machines.

I use my Exchange server for all my alerting and subscribed mail lists. Plus I have the Proxmox mail filter in front of that which is really good at keeping the spam away.

I have self deployed Bitwarden and have come to depend on that very quickly. Pihole and Zabbix are other tools I use as well as having tftp and anon ftp servers up. So yes, my homelab is part of what allows me to work effectively.

Can you tell me a bit more about how you use syncthing with nextcloud ?

Paperless, immich. seafile, nextcloud, minecraft, home-assistant, pihole, jellyfin - they all improve my or my family's life.

I often have the issue it worth it debate with myself…

I use a turnkey version of Tracks for todo purposes- but is not life changing.

Also use plex for my music and movies (but also subscribe to 3 services but as these services removed content Plex has a place). Trying to buy my music on the smaller digital platforms or on second hand market - but fewer CDs available for newer content! 🤔.

On the plus side- your post has made me interested in paperless and obsidian.

Although being heavily on Apple not sure if there is a huge benefit over simple notes

Mostly for the sake of it as a hobby. I love learning more about selfhosting services as well as networking. I’ve spent countless nights setting up some networking stuff that doesn’t benefit my use case whatsoever, but could be useful to know if I ever were to work in that sphere.

yeap, agreed ...for me nextcloud, wordpress,qbittorrent for a little bit of yoho yoho and a backup container to nfs...few zabbix monitoring containers is all i have got on my pi cluster.

I do plex and sonar It has saved me some bucks

The only reason for me to selfhost is that I dont like to use some services which are proposed by market. Like I use firefly-iii as there's just no alternatives convenient for me. I use wireguard because there's no vpn to get things done in way I want. The same with ghostfolio, paperless-ngx and drone. There's just no alternatives to match my requirements so I'm forced to selfhost

I actually host nightscout, that's the one that is mainly useful for me personally. Technically nightscout advocates against self-hosting but it actually seemed simpler for me to self host than figuring out and keeping track of which providers will give me enough for free to run it since it keeps changing.

The only reason I got a homeserver was jellyfin. I spend way too much on storage since then... make it stop.... I also got an Nvidia shield for that reason. Couldve watched netflix, amazon and disney for years for that money, but I dont regret a second here and use it daily since. So yeah it did improve my daily life.

I'm a big proponent of self-hosted apps, but I am not a fan of docker/containers so it's definitely not just for the sake of running containers for me.

Using free online services is convenient, but if ALL you use is online services then someone else or some company controls you. I like to self host as much as I possibly can. If we don't, cloud computing will take over, and home/consumer computer hardware will eventually die off.

plex is my main purpose for self hosting and always has been. Also i'm a sr systems engineer, so my selfhosting environment is also for experimenting with things for my career. I was trying make my media accessible to friends since 2009 or so, back when the Boxee came out. I've made use of the *arrs. overseerr, so my people can just request content from there instead of piling up a wish list to dump on me out of the blue.

outside of media, these prove useful for life and my career (that aren't just supporting the homelab)

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I use synology for my storage and i like their email server / webmail.

syncthing i use for keeping my emulator saves in sync across all my devices, as well as some documents.

vaultwarden

privatebin (vault warden has this feature... but i don't want my vaultwarden directly exposed)

usememos is my favorite quick note app. i like obsidian but i can't get behind it until it's web friendly. I know someone built a docker image of obsidian that runs from a webtop but egh it's ugly. The ipad app is nice though. There are some other options that are closer to obsidian, but I just really like usememos.

slash is nice link shortener which lets you view metrics for the links you create. I think it's made by one of the team members that made usememos.

resumeRX. I apply for different types of roles so i have several different resumes I need to tailor for different positions.

immich. just because i refuse to pay for apple/google photos storage and using enough space to be forced to keep using them.

phpipam/netbox. i like documenting my network but not in a spreadsheet.

duplicati. local and cloud backups

drawio. just a self hosted version of the web drawio. can't be making diagrams containing sensitive information on some random publicly hosted server.

actualbudget. it's helpful, but I still wish there was a better option for this. I know there is firefly III. actualbudget is cleaner and easier to navigate.

metube. i'm' always needing to download youtube videos for some reason or another.

gitlab

planka (my wife and I both use this... basically trello)

Home assistant. I've got a lot automated. Mostly for fun, but still makes my life easier. My window shades, lights, fans, bathroom fans, TVs, presence sensors, A/C, garage doors, fridge, cameras, doorbell are all in node-red. My windows all close and lights turn off if my wife and I are both away unless there is a guest. etc. the windows open if it's stormy (I love storms). bathroom fans come on when the humidity hits a threshold, my garage lights come on if a person or car is in my driveway, but not a squirrel or bird, etc.

I don't like selfhosting because of the maintenance and complexity. But I get to use Plex, Transmission with a VPN, wakeonlan out of home using Tailscale, etc. So really useful overall.

I started doing it for the lols; slowly it became part of my daily activities. I use Nextcloud, SearxNg; Hassio; and Jellyfin mainly.

Everything I self host I use each and every day (every other day, if I'm busy). I don't keep stuff hanging around just because.

I think you've stumble accross few of the huge issues with selfhosting

- Developing apps is too hard, you have all the difficulties of SaaS development but with the added difficulty of having to support people installing your app in various setups

- For the difficulty, the return on investment is low because the community is much smaller than what you can touch with a SaaS software

This causes the breadth of available apps to be quite shallow, and additionally, another factor threaten further that diversity is that

- people gets into self-hosting in one of two ways. Either to create illegal media-center (in which case they install Plex, Jellyfin, *arr, download client, etc...) or to manage their document in privacy (Nextcloud, etc..) seems like you are type 2. This causes most projects to focus around those hot topics, without exploring other things (this year alone at least 4 photos albums backup software started development..)

But this state of affair is not sad or inflicting, it is natural for such as a young community to take time to find itself, especially in this difficult setting (I know selfhosting is not new, but I call it young because only recently did it start becoming so popular). And there are solutions to those problem too. On my end, like many other talented people, I am working on technologies to improve this situation, and hopefully one day we will see a large diversity of application growing, with much more accessible setup for people to run.

What I forsee will be big in the future

- Once we crack federation (I do not think current state of the technology is good enough) social app (Video sharing, file sharing, social media alternatives, news site etc..) will be big

- Going back to news, once we improve the QOL of SH for public sites, news agglomeration is going to be big as well (for blogs and stuff)

- Any mobile/SaaS app could have a SH counter part, that will automatically gain benefits from not being in the cloud. Im thinking things like various task management, productivity tools, and of course, home automation is gonna be the bigger winner for being in the home already, therefore workable offline. An example of this is already happening with cooking/recpies apps (Mealie, Tandorii, Grocy, etc...) which benefit from being at home, private, and accessible from the family, and home-assistant.

- Finally, SH is going to supercharge the development of very niche software. It makes no sense to develop an entire SaaS offering for 100 users (ex. a software to manage your model train would be very niche) because you have to pay for a domain, servers, and so on... But a SH app could literally cost $0 to run (for the devs) while yelding minimal benefits (either from subs or donation).

Give it 2-3 years for those stuff to develop better. In 3 years this sub will be almost twice as big at 500k, and you will have 2-3 times the amount of apps available that's pretty much a garantee

Both. I have things that I host simply for fun, but most of my homelab is for experimentation.

I practice with different technologies so I can try to learn how they work.

Home Assistant, Mealie, and Blue Iris are my daily life improving apps. My kids really enjoy the Ark server too.

I need to get more use out of my plex setup, but my Fire Cube v1 in the bedroom doesn't run much reliably anymore.

Started out with a simple samba file server for remote editing

Then expanded into ipsec+ l2tp vpn server, then into ipsec + ikev2, then into wireguard vpm server and its been expanding ever since

Never stopped since then