Hi all,

question to you: How many of your selfhosted Apps are improving your life? Which apps are you really using on a daily/weekly basis?

Many of my running containers are just for … running containers.

Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, Authentik, Uptime-Kuma, Wireguard … they are not improving my life, they are only improving Selfhosting. But we are not doing selfhosting just for the sake of it? Do we? …

Many of my running containers … are getting replaced by Open Source client software eventually

  • I’ve installed Trilium Notes - but I’m using Obsidian (more plugins, mobile apps, easy backup)
  • I’ve installed Vikunja - but I’m using Obisdian (connecting tasks with notes is more powerful)
  • I’ve installed Snapdrop - but I’m using LocalSend (more reliable)
  • I’ve installed Bitwarden - but I’m using KeePass (easy backups, better for SSH credentials)
  • I’ve installed AdGuard - but I’m using uBlock (more easy to disable for Shopping etc.)
  • …

So the few Selfhosted Apps, that improve my life

File Management

  • Paperless NGX - all my documents are scanned and archived here
  • Nextcloud - all my files accessible via WebUI (& replaced Immich/Photoprism with Photos plugin)
  • Syncthing - all my files synchroniced between devices and Nextcloud
  • Kopia - Backup of all my files encrypted into the cloud

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.

What are your experiences? How makes self-hosting your life better?

( I’m not using selfhosting for musc / movies / series nowadays, as streaming is more convenient for me and I’m doing selfhosting mainly because of privacy and not piracy reasons - so that usecase is not included in my list ;)My only SmartHome usecase is Philips Hue - and I’m controlling it with Android Tasker )

  • louislamlam@alien.topBEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    Uptime Kuma maintainer here. The reason why I made this because I have some services like databases and websites cannot be down for a long time. I need someone send a notification to me if they are down.

    If you think it is not improving your life, it is probably because you don’t have such similar scenario and you probably don’t need this indeed.

    My point is that it may be not improving your life, but it improves my life at least, or others’. That’s just a choice.

  • edthesmokebeard@alien.topBEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    I don’t run any containers.

    I own my own data.

    I back up my own computers.

    My email is mine.

    You don’t need to overcomplicate it, it’s not a competition, and you don’t have to do what everyone else does.

  • dollhousemassacre@alien.topBEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    It’s all shits and giggles for me. Whatever service I fancy gets spun up, poked at and then left running until I need to free up resources for the next thing. It’s a wonderful mess.

  • KiGo77@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I moved to self hosting so that I have more control over my data and it’s fun. The services below except for GNS3 are what I use on a daily basis

    - Homeassistant for all my home automation needs

    - OpenMediaVault for my NAS

    - Nextcloud for storage, calendars, backups etc.

    - Emby and Audiobookshelf for family to stream media

    - Netbox to document network installations for work

    - Rustdesk as an alternative to Teamviewer/Anydesk etc

    - GNS3 to simulate and test network topologies

    - Partkeepr as an inventory management system to keep track of my companies inventory

    • SaleB81@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Can you share your Partkeepr compose file? I tried in the last two days both options I could find on the web, and neither one worked.

    • SaleB81@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      - Partkeepr as an inventory management system to keep track of my companies inventory

      Interesting! Have you by any chance tried Inventree?

      I have an instance of Inventree, and I have been filling it slowly and using it, but it seems too bulky for my needs. At first glance, Partkeepr seems a much simpler and less ERP-like solution.

      I need a simple solution that would help me find an answer to questions like: do I have a part, do I have something similar, where is it stored, how to use it, how much have I paid for it; and Partkeepr seems to cover it all.

  • Tibuski@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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
  • drpeppershaker@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • zn448sk39@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Little bit of both I suppose. I find it very enjoyable to have a server at home to tinker with, I’m also enjoying providing media to my friends and family (and myself). I don’t use many self-hosted apps outside of media though, really only nocodb, immich and memos

  • WiseCookie69@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I host it to have my own data under my own roof.

    • Nextcloud (everything from pictures, over tax stuff to my keepass database)
    • Matrix server (even more important with every government on this planet pushing against encrypted messengers)
    • PiHole, that i can also use via DoH from my phone
    • Traccar instance to keep an eye on my car, when it’s in for service / maintenance / when i’m abroad
    • …

    I’ve worked in the hosting industry. I’ve witnessed an internal breach, where an employee abused access over a few corners and fetched files matching a certain pattern from all customer VPSes (Virtuozzo container based VPSes have their root filesystem accessible from the host)

  • AnApexBread@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • Cybasura@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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

  • Toutanus@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    For serious business :

    • Jellyfin
    • Paperless-ng
    • Mealie (only MY receipes)
    • Home assistant (cool stuff with domotic)
    • Yourls
    • ruTorrent
    • ytdl_api_ng (download videos directly on my server)
    • pihole (bye bye most of ads)
    • gitea
    • seafile (more reliable than nextcloud)
    • overleaf (easier to install on docker that install a LaTeX distribution on all my computers)
    • Deemix
    • Custom backup report
    • Custom uptime report

    For the lol :

    • Aria 2 (no real usage for me)
    • Nextcloud (bad desktop client, gave up, still useful to share some files)
    • Wikijs (to lazy to maintain documentation)
    • Memos (can’t replace google keep)
    • Portainer (I manage things manually)
    • Webmin (for some dangerous things only)

    I almost disabled everything else.

  • gladwrap1205@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Rely on a lot of my selfhosted stuff like my media stack, immich, syncthing (phone backups), home assistant, vaultwarden. Saves me a bunch of money from subscriptions

  • azukaar@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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

  • Proximus88@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Both, i like setting up the network and trying out selfhosted services.

    Definitely improved my daily routines:

    ​

    - Paperless-ngx, connected to my email. All my bills and purchases are backed up. So easy to find documents/warranty documents.

    - Nextcloud, for backing up my phone and personal life. Too much data for cloud providers and pivate.

    - Plex/Jellyfin, easy way to watch all my Linux iso’s without paying 10 different streaming services. Still subscribed to two steaming services though (family).

    - Adguard, lifesaver to browse the web without going crazy.

    - Immich, awesome photo viewer with mobile app.

    - Syncthing, awesome tool to sync data. Use it to sync my Obisian notes to all my devices.

    - Kasm/webtop, have my own OS in browser to access from any web browser securely.

    - Restic, tool to backup everything to Backblaze. You can use any storage solution.

    - Wireguard VPN, to easy access my services and have adblocking on my phone and laptop outside of my LAN.

    • alexhackney@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      I have paperless running in a docker container on my unraid machine but it seems like it takes longer to use then what I used to do.

      I used to save all files to a folder system

      Docs -> Year -> date-sender.pdf

      Now it seems I have to manually do all of the coding. I thought that paperless, would learn who files are from and then categorize it for me, so that if I scan all my monthly bills and then 2 years later I need to find my internet bill for Dec 2019, I could just search for it and find it.

      While the search will work, it only works if I scanned it, tagged it spectrum and put the date on it. Seems like its more work to me?

      • Proximus88@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        I run paperless-ngx in a docker container. Have it scan my email for attachments once a day. It automatically tags the email depending on keywords found in the email and sender.

        If I scan a document to import I tag it manually.

        But paperless-ngx also has ocr, so it will scan the whole page and save that data. So I can search for example ‘samsung’ and it will show me all documents where Samsung is in. Even if it is not tagged.

        My docker-compose:

        version: "3.3"

networks:
  paperless:
       name: paperless
       driver: bridge
       ipam:
        config:
          - subnet: 172.36.0.0/16

services:
  paperless-redis:
    container_name: paperless-redis
    image: docker.io/library/redis:7
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - paperless
    volumes:
      - ./redis:/data
   

  paperless-db:
    container_name: paperless-db
    image: docker.io/library/postgres:13
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - paperless
    volumes:
      - ./db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: paperlessdb
      POSTGRES_USER: paperless
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: super-secure-password

  paperless:
    container_name: paperless
    image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - paperless
    depends_on:
      - paperless-db
      - paperless-redis
    ports:
      - 8002:8000
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-fs", "-S", "--max-time", "2", "http://localhost:8000"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 5
    volumes:
      - ./data:/usr/src/paperless/data
      - ./media:/usr/src/paperless/media
      - ./export:/usr/src/paperless/export
      - ./consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume
    env_file: ./docker-compose.env
    environment:
      PAPERLESS_REDIS: redis://paperless-redis:6379
      PAPERLESS_DBHOST: paperless-db

        The .en file you can find on there GitHub. But the over important part is to setup a language for it.

        # The default language to use for OCR. Set this to the language most of your
# documents are written in.
PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE=nld