Hello selfhosters! I read here a lot, longing for the day to get back into it. I have a little plan to do so I have access to some thin clients with decent enough hardware to run a small file server. I’d like to set one up for myself and as a gift to my partner
I keep getting lost in the jungle of options and incompatibilities so I was hoping to enlist some help in selecting a stack
I’m looking for open source software in the base, maybe truenas but I prefer debian and my partner uses LMDE already.
- On top of that should be a simple file server for backups/network storage. Some interface for managing storeage would be huge too
- Wireguard with an interface
- Having a simple container interface for future features like homeassistant and jellyfin et al is great too.
Open source and free is a must and I want to avoid risk for future lockins and freemium/ripe for enshitification-software as far as possible. And no or at least responsible llm use if that even exists anymore. Happy to shed featues to acheive that in combination with longevity. Is plain debian or even ubuntu the way to go or are there more optimised distros? Or am i just describing fedora with cockpit? Im not lost in linux itself, just overwhelmed with the endless options hoping someone can help me make a plan!
Would you make someone you love a home server?
selfhosting is a salvation, have own mail server, cloud, git, xmpp and more cool stuff))))) some day i’ll totaly leave google suckers begind and remove my aacount on their system
you want the equiv of a manic pixie dream server
must be free, and have all the options, and be easy!
also, servers are terrible gifts unless the person is expecting to be responsible for a server. kinda lika a dog.
I think Debian Server + Docker compose. Its the easiest way to get started and has the most documentation for. To me, the OS itself is the least concern - just get something maintainable. Then choose services you want from https://selfh.st/apps/ and have a go with them. Most services give you docker compose scripts so that is by far the easiest way.
If there are two of you with accounts, then I would suggest these:
- Reverse proxy (caddy, nginx, etc)
- SSO authentication (authentik, authelia etc)
- VPN for access (wireguard, netbird, tailscale etc)
- Security (fail2ban, crowdsec, etc)
On top of Home assistant and the Jellyfin / arr stack you mention, I would recommend Immich (google photos), Paperless NGX (letter scanning / management), Vaultwarden (password manager), FMD (find my device server for android phones), and SearNGX (private search engine).
Potential alternatives would be NixOS (fully scripted) and Proxmox (better containerisation but still got to decide what you install on each container, such as Debian + docker). You could also use podman instead of docker compose, which is more secure but a bit more effort to adapt to. However, if access is only through the VPN and you have two users, Debian + docker would be fine.
You could do them a solid and set them up with an ad blocker on a cheap SDC, but if you really want a loved one to manage proxmox and learn how to yaml and manage containers, all while learning everything you never wanted to know about networking, IP addresses ports and Linux all at the same time… The best thing you can do is get them interested in figuring it out for themselves. Give them the bug, spread the addiction, don’t give them hardware/responsibility
I put openwrt on their router and an adblock dns already but a dns sink would be cool too
Neither of us want to learn proxmox, but I am still convinced there are simple and feature rich solutions that don’t require that.
I don’t see a problem with the idea as long as you’re aware you’re committing to be the one maintaining it and dealing with any problems that might arise from doing so.
If you’re storing other people’s data (especially photos) you better be extra sure that you have a good backup strategy and a plan to test those backups regularly.
Yea I always provide lifetime support to linux convertees and so far every issue we had in lmde could be solved with the right keyword search. I was hoping the right server distro would have similarity good documentation. The Linux version of TrueNas and open media vault look like promising such distributions.
The idea evolves with all the comments and I think the way is to make two identical servers from thin clients. Identical hardware, different passwords. Two mirrored drives over usb each and the internal nvme for write cache and OS. Perhaps the OS could be immutable on a USB, to further reduce the risk of sudden self immolation. Just need to learn flashing the latest version.
As long as there is a competent webgui I know they are willing and capable of reading documentation and forum answers. Should something ever happen to our relationship my partner can easily take their data even if their server died, but they do say debin goes forever with regular updates. In the meantime, the server gets the same treatment as mine.
If you are after a Debian base system, with an interface for file server/backups/network storage, with a (web) interface, you are pretty much describing https://www.openmediavault.org/ . Decent plugin ecosystem to set up Wireguard, as well as a web interface to set up docker based containers for anything.
I did look at that. Between the giant popup ads and at the time 403 forum I couldn’t tell if it was legit or not. Would you say it is trustworthy and long term?
Long-term cause it has at this point been around for actual decades.
Popup ads? Where are they? That’s not something I’ve heard of, but then I always use an adblocker…
I used it for years on a raspberry pi, and it was great, very easy to manage storages and different ways of sharing over a network.
I don’t know about long term, but it’s running on my pile of virtual servers and does it’s job just fine. The openmediavault itself is a pretty good web-interface on top of Debian and it’s just configuring the underlying operating system so you can get exactly the same setup by writing configurations manually for the services. OMV is just a convenient tool to manage simple fileshares.
I use it only for samba and wireguard, so can’t really say if it’s as solid with other extensions, but for me it’s been a decent tool for the job.
You’d be giving both them, and yourself, a job. Not a great gift unless they’re actually into this kind of thing and techy enough to be able to get up to speed. It’s not hands off enough to be given to someone who can’t maintain it themselves.
Well for me, my wife had a ton of pictures laying around, and some scattered on google drive etc…
I basically did a huge scanning project in secret, set up an immich server and surprised her with it. That absolutely is one of her favorite gifts of all time.
Now as far as doing that with someone that didn’t stay in the same house, on an OS I wasn’t already managing… no probably wouldn’t imagine doing that unless the person was already showing signs of interest in managing something like that… in which case it should be done as a “lets build this together” project.
Definitely check out yunohost. No containers, but roughly what you’re asking for imo.
Yes, but the gift isn’t the hardware. It’s that it keeps working when you’re not around to fix it. So I’d go boring: plain Debian, Cockpit for storage and containers, and a WireGuard web UI. Before you hand it over, unplug the internet for a day and see what breaks. DNS usually goes first. I’m building an open-source home box around the same idea (GPLv3 once it ships), and your question is the one I keep chewing on: what makes a partner actually use it instead of just tolerating it?
I run a self hosted server for my household and my family gets a lot out of it. I’m not quite sure I’d consider it a gift as much as I do a way to save money and have more privacy and control. To be more blunt, I do not expect my wife would feel happy with me telling her it is a “gift” for her as it is clearly a hobby of mine.
For your question on OS, truenas scale has worked really well for me. If you have comfort running Debian server, that’s a great way to go as well. I think truenas scale would fit you well for one of your specific notes, “Having a simple container interface for future features like homeassistant and jellyfin et al is great too.” I love how easy my containers are to work on and maintain in truenas.
Ultimately, I think you should spin up every OS you are considering and look around first. It would only take a few hours of your time and it’s a very personal choice to a certain degree.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSO Single Sign-On VPN Virtual Private Network nginx Popular HTTP server
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
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