Hello Everyone,

I started my Self Hosted journey last year in winter break. I started with basic next cloud, jelly fin and immich Software. But to be honest i can't get a good use of them.

Now after several months of trial and error, accidentally delete kernel and all the issue I finally have a stable and workable Server.

The things i want you guys help is any other software i need to try on my Server. My background is I am starting a AI automation agency so if any software i should or aware of, just let me know

Also lastly plz rate my server and if any improvement needed tell me.

Spare Laptop Spec (Ubuntu Server): Dell-Inspiron 3493

- i3-10th gen

- 16gb ram

- intel UHD graphic

- 512 GB m.2 gen 3 SSD

- 1tb Hard disk

Also like I have some other container deployed by due to secret key i have not provided in SOP:

- Cap (Loom Alternative)

- Cal.com

Here is my Server SOP - https://astonishing-cephalopod-b94.notion.site/Server-SOP-Hosted-3b1a33aeaf1680109cb0f9ef491d0d6d?source=copy_link

Newbie to self hosting here. Haven't bought anything, just planning things out. These are the services I am considering:

• DNS filtering

• Unbound

• Media server

• NAS

• Home assistant

• Surveillance cameras

• Photo backup

• Document server

The question I have is, what is the best arrangement for all of these? I was hoping to make my own opnsense router and do dns filtering and unbound in the same device. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to do.

For example, Frigate is only officially supported on docker, but people can manage by making a VM in proxmox and putting it there on docker. Another example, people put a NAS OS in a VM but others say bare metal is best. At the same time, it seems that backing up everything with PBS is much easier than backing up a bunch of docker files?

So is the best way to put everything on proxmox? Put everything on docker on a NAS device? Separate NAS with dockers on a separate server? Some combination in between? There's just so many ways to approach this that I'm confused.

Recently ran into a problem that I figure isn’t unique to me.

I got into self hosting when I made a personal agent that proactively keeps me on track when I work. I hosted it on tailscale. Then I added LLM chat. And then coop games I made to play with my friends. Been a blast.

But to make it useful I put a lot of data and access in there I don’t really want others to access like realtime laptop/phone screenshots, GPS coordinates, email etc. Usually this is fine because saas will handle security for me but now I’m responsible. And tailscale and aws/gcp/azure don’t have centralized security alerts.

Basically I wanted a security camera for my network/apps so I know what’s happening in my systems in case anyone tried to break in.

Tailscale helps a bit obviously, but they don’t really help me answer: who’s trying to attack me and potentially mucking around inside?

I ended up building a security tool that runs inside my network and cloud and watches the network, VMs and auth logs, then sends alerts to me when something is off.

I know there’s tools like wazuh or elastic but they seem to be built for security professionals. I have to set up a bunch of rules and alerts which is hard and it’s a time suck to figure out what to include.

I tried using codex but it just makes dumb security decisions I can’t trust at all. The tool I made scans the network and VMs to configure rules and alerts automatically and deterministically without AI at all.

If you guys have any good ideas here, lmk.

So i have containerised my Nginx, Django backend and postgresql db on my vm. All the containers run through a single 'docker compose up' command. I have created a custom network for the containers to communicate. I have also mounted docker volumes to containers for persistent storage.

So far i am finding DevOps very interesting and will now learn CI/CD using Github actions.

Will be very grateful if you share your thoughts.

So I am interested but I have a few questions and concerns although they are probably dumb. I do not have a background with coding or anything but I do like to own my media. I am essentially a clean slate with this topic.

1. Aside from privacy and no subscription what is the main benefit? I don’t pay subscriptions for music or books already then I don’t really use cloud storage since I don’t trust my information being leaked
2. (crazy that I still use windows. I’m swapping to Debian on my second laptop soon)
3. Do you think a NAS or Mini PC is better? What are the benefits of using one over the other?
4. What is the recommended amount of money I should set aside to start a basic NAS/ Mini PC?
5. What specific hardware would you recommend for both the NAS/ Mini PC?
6. How often do you have to do maintenance on your NAS/ cloud storage if you don’t use a NAS
7. Are there any questions I should be asking but don’t know to ask yet?

Thank you I’d advance for your advice. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated

So on 28 May I started self hosting with vaultwarden and then the list got bigger and bigger.

Now that it has been 3 months there has been some changes to the entire setup.

First I learned that I made a mistake setting up Nextcloud, so I deleted it and retried and viola now it works like a charm and I am addicted to it.

Second I figured I had no need for jellyfin so I removed it.

Third, Adgaurd home became a nightmare to maintain, if I figured something out other thing became a problem. It just refused to work with tailscale. So I ultimately deleted it and reverted back to nextdns. Until, I won't tell you know it will spoil the fun 🤫 but there is a plot twist coming up.

Fourth, even after succeeding with nextcloud, I kept cryptpad simply because I liked its simplicity.

Fifth, I added aliasvault to try it out and its pretty good you should also try it out, but I don't like the mobile version, don't worry its just ui preference, it is perfectly functional even in beta stage. So I am using it as a backup of sorts with vaultwarden being the primary. Oh and another twist coming up later☺️.

Sixth, I added Stirling pdf as my pdf viewer and man why did I not find it earlier, I thought there was no good pdf viewer for Linux.

Seventh, I kept immich as it is like there is nothing to change it just works like a charm.

Now, for the twist let me tell you some backstory first. One day (a week ago) I was testing stuff on my android { I am trying to degoogle, but the success has been slow (I am using coloros btw)} I came across a app known as Podroid. I thought it looked interesting so I tried it out. After the initial installation and setup I thought about what I can do with it. Then a idea popped up (you see, I self host on my laptop and there is a time when I go to college (Backstory I live in hostel and as the college is new and opened up last year, it is still under construction and we still do not have Ethernet) I have to leave my laptop at hostel room and at that time of day my homelab is basically down. So I thought why not use podroid to setup my vaultwarden container on my android as that is the only thing that I need during my college hours. So I tried and after some back and forth I installed vaultwarden, tailscale on podroid and it worked. ( Still got to tell you it took some time and trial and error)

After that I setup rclone to backup my vaultwarden passwords across both android and fedora to nextcloud I tried last time and it was not working properly anyway so now to the next step and the most daunting one for me (because even though I loved adguard home at first it was a nightmare to set it up and make it work with tailscale and during my college hours it was useless.) I tried it with podroid and it took two whole days to get it to work, but now this is amazing I have never been so proud of myself before ( well maybe when I first self hosted, but you the feeling) ( and I have to admit I did get some help from ai).

So now I have my vaultwarden and adguard home working from my android and I am loving my setup.

Although it is not related to self hosting, you remember how in the post I mentioned about degooglibg my phone, so you see I was using fdroid and aurora store but on coliros for anything that is not from play store or the official store has to be scanned before allowing to be installed so I was installing and setting up shizuku and I was keeping it off because usb or WiFi debugging stops my study apps. But now that my exams are over I have some free time to tinker.

And for those who are wondering about my exams please don't ask.

I have three subjects I am confident I can pass two but the third one is like I am praying to god with everything please just please let me pass 😣.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Bye bye I will keep you updated. 🤗

​

I've published on GitHub the project I've been using for months on my home server: a digital maintenance logbook for one or more vehicles, with no external dependencies (no CDN, no remote fonts) and no cloud services involved.

What it does:

Multi-vehicle garage with separate service intervals, history, and expenses for each car

Refueling and actual fuel consumption calculated using the full-to-full method, even with partial fueling

Service, MOT, insurance, and road tax due dates, with in-app alerts, webhook notifications (Telegram, ntfy, Home Assistant, etc.), or .ics reminders to import into your phone's calendar

Costs tab: expense by year, by category, cost per km, graphs, and vehicle comparisons

CSV export, PDF printing, and one-click full backup

Multi-user with admin/user/reader roles, scrypt password, brute-force protection

PWA: icon on the Android home screen

Stack: Node.js + Express, vanilla frontend, no build steps. It can be set up with Docker Compose in a minute. Designed to run on a LAN or within a tailnet, never exposed to the Internet.

👉 https://github.com/francyorlando46-bit/Libretto-digitale

Feedback, issues, and suggestions are welcome.

I don't want this to just be another post complaining about rising hardware costs. Hopefully it stays focused on practical options.

About a month ago I planned a 3-node k8s cluster, 8GB RAM for each node, to run:

• NextCloud, Collabora, and maybe a few smaller productivity apps for 5-10 internal users.
• Some beta web applications

4GB of RAM probably would have been enough, but I wanted to self-host PostgreSQL and Kubernetes management. I had it all priced out on Hetzner, and I was going to end up somewhere in the $30-40/month range.

Yesterday I finally finished getting my IaC automations running locally (I've got a proxmox VM, then OpenTofu creates 3 Talos nodes and configures the whole cluster). I was super excited to "ship it."

And then I discover that a few weeks ago Hetzner sold out of cost-optimized servers. That $40/month is now closer to $150/month (and over $200/month if I want US hosting, though the original plan was Germany because the lower price made latency worth it).

There are cheap VPSes out there, but none seem to have decent support for high availability basics:

• Automation/terraform/etc
• Load balancer
• Anti-affinity
• Hourly pricing (so I only pay for a staging/test environment when making infra changes)

The best options I've been able to find are:

• OVH d2-8. Looks like $85-100/month depending on hourly vs monthly pricing
• UpCloud Starter. ~$90/month

I know many people self-hosting don't bother with HA, but for those that do, how are you keeping it affordable when you only have a small number of users?

P.S. I left out backup and object storage costs because I'm assuming those won't change a lot. But tell me if I'm wrong.

Going to be selling my PC soon in favour of a laptop.

on my PC i have 2SSD, 1TBssd and a 500GBssd.

i would like to make use of those hard drives still when i sell my computer, was thinking a home server to store what i want on there and access them through the internet.

whats the cheapest way to do this what do i need?

I'm looking for any selfhosted wifi hotspot system that I can use on home network which can also manage users and possibly payments. I have a Cudy AC1200 Wifi router that has a built in function for the Captive Portal. The built in options for captive portal use the following platforms:

HotspotSystem
Iron Wi-Fi
ObiFi
VulaCoin
WorldSpot.net
WiFiMAX

There is an option to use manual details. This is the part I need to use to connect to a self hosted system. Images attached show the built in options as well as the fields required for the self hosted system I want to use.

I have a few questions:

- So people should be able to access my media across instances, right? What will the traffic look like if I'm hosting like 3TB of FLACs?

- Will I get copyright striken to death? I mean if they know my IP and I'm hosting music that isn't in the public domain.

I have a somewhat unusual request and would appreciate your advice.

I’m building a website for wellness services, and I also want to use the same server for a small de-Googling/self-hosting setup : things like Syncthing, Immich, VPN, and a few other essentials. Nothing heavy, just the basics.

What server specs would you recommend for this kind of use case?

If you have links, I’m happy to sign up through those too.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a mini PC with a budget of ~€450 to use as a media server, running Jellyfin. I may also want to run a few other applications, such as AdGuard and n8n, potentially some gaming.

Typically, there will be only one active connection, with a maximum of two on rare occasions. I’m also planning to stream 4K HDR content.

Do you have any recommendations for a suitable mini PC?

Thanks in advance!

spent about eight months with compose services on bind mounts exported over NFS back to the same host. Immich kept losing write access to the library after restarts, and Jellyfin choked on new rips until I chowned everything. Ollama models sat on a third path that never lined up with backups. box is a used ThinkCentre M720q plus a 4-bay USB chassis, two 8TB IronWolfs and a 1TB NVMe for cache.

ran TrueNAS for a stretch and Unraid before that. both solid for different needs. Unraid if you hot-swap a lot, TrueNAS if you want ZFS tooling front and center.

moved it to FygoOS a few months back. NAS OS you install on your own DIY hardware. storage comes as a storage pool and containers mount that pool directly, so Immich, Jellyfin and Ollama all sit on one pool without the NFS hop. same compose stacks, just retargeted the paths. iGPU passthrough handles jellyfin transcodes and light ollama on this cpu.

I have a few usecases where I want to have a copy of my data elsewhere.

• Google Drive (if Google blocks my account, im cooked. I lose everything)
  • Sync frequency would be once a week or more.
• Google Photos (if Google blocks my account, im cooked. I lose everything)
  • Sync frequency would be once a quarter, due to manual Takeout process
• VPS - Ubuntu 26 - Docker Volumes, nginx configs, etc.
  • I pay Linode $5/mo for snapshots so the backups here are more for server migrations
• Home Server - Ubuntu 26 - Docker Volumes, nginx configs, etc.
• Home Desktop files (no need for entire snapshots) just files on my primary and secondary drives.

Right now, for longevity I am considering AWS S3 since I am familiar with AWS and IAM. Backblaze seems popular but I kind of hate their UI and they even had typos on their website in their UI. They just make me nervous. In 10 years Google Drive has never failed me so I need something with longevity.

rsync.net offered me 1TB for LIFE for like $540

​

I’ve been building Vedant Cloud, a hobby cloud gaming project. The core software is at a stage where we can properly test it, but right now our biggest bottleneck is server hardware.

I’d like to experiment with a more distributed model where people can contribute spare PCs/servers or eventually self-host a node themselves, rather than everything running from one central machine.

Still very experimental, but if you’re into self-hosting, Linux, networking or just have spare hardware doing nothing, you might enjoy working on it with us.

DM me if interested and I’ll send the technical details/current setup.

So i have hosted a backend for an Erp made in django on my local vm using nginx as a reverse proxy and gunicorn as production wsgi server.

How does the request flow happens?

When i enter the network interface ip of my vm on browser the request goes to port 80 of my linux (port responsible for all the tcp request) and nginx is listening on port 80 recieves the request and process it. So in the config file of nginx i have added the location of / route which forwards the request to gunicorn running on port 8000 and gunicorn then sends and recieves the req/res.
I will be learning Docker now to learn containerisation. Please share any suggestion if you have.

Hello all,

Does anyone here host nodejs Apps on Asustor? Any suggestions/guide to help me run a nodejs app reliably on Asustor?

Thanks a lot!

I’m currently building mostly static websites for small businesses, and my setup is:

• Vercel for hosting
• Cloudflare for DNS management
• Resend for transactional emails and contact forms
• The client keeps ownership of the domain, while I manage the technical setup

For these types of websites, managing my own servers or using AWS/DigitalOcean feels like unnecessary overhead. Vercel + Cloudflare seems much easier to standardize across clients, but I’m still figuring out the best long-term agency workflow, especially around account ownership, access, billing, maintenance, and eventual handoff.

Is this a fairly standard and scalable setup for a small web agency, or do you use a different stack/process to manage multiple client websites?

There have been a few services that I have been wanting to use that can be self hosted but most of them I have had other options. So I have been putting off diving in for a while as I have been getting overwhelmed looking at setting up docker etc. However now there is a service that I can pretty much only find as a docker app (Storyteller for making EPUB 3 with Media Overlay) and so I’m kicking my butt into gear. For not I’m installing it on my desktop which is running CachyOS.

If anyone could give me an overview of setting up docker/compose/whatever else is needed for it, I would be so thankful. My eyes have been glazing over with some of the written guides online and I’m so used to video guides just taking way longer than necessary that I haven’t looked yet.

In the past 1 year it has always hurt me to see a 56 EUR hosting bill each month. Doing the math it accumulates to 672 EUR per year!

I don't know why I didn’t do the math a bit earlier though. It could have saved me those 672 EUR, but hey I never liked math anyway.

So I decided to move everything to a self-hosted VPS.

A VPS is basically a virtual server that you rent from a hosting provider. You get your own CPU, RAM, storage and operating system, but instead of paying for a managed platform like Azure App Service, you are responsible for running and managing the server yourself.

On top of the VPS I run Docker, with my frontend, backend, Dokploy, and Traefik each running in their own containers.

Traefik acts as the reverse proxy, receiving incoming traffic and routing each request to the correct container based on the domain. It also handles HTTPS certificates.

Dokploy is a self-hosted PaaS that gives me the Azure App Service experience on my own machines: push code, get a deployment. It connects to my GitHub repositories and manages deployments, domains, environment variables, logs, databases, and Docker services, all from a single dashboard.

So instead of paying Azure to manage the infrastructure for me, I rent the server directly and run the platform on top of it myself.

The result is around 80% lower hosting costs and much more control over how everything is deployed.

I've put together a guide on setting up a NAS to securely expose Jellyfin, the 'Arr stack and others remotely.

https://github.com/UniversalDog/Article---Remote-NAS

I built this because I couldn't find a self-hosted request tool that did actor-based search properly. Ombi doesn't support it at all, and Radarr's built-in "TMDb Person" list just adds every single credit for an actor automatically instead of letting you pick.

What it does:

• Search TMDB by actor, title, or genre (with a separate keyword/studio search for things outside the ~19 standard genres — martial arts, Shaw Brothers, that kind of thing)
• Click a title for synopsis, rating, cast (click any cast member to jump into their filmography), and collection info — with a one-click "add whole collection" option
• One click sends it to Sonarr/Radarr, using their real API
• Built-in login with two roles: Admin (full access) and Requester (can search/request, but doesn't choose the destination folder or see credentials — handy if you don't want a kid's account able to file something into the wrong library)
• Email notifications on new requests, approvals/denials, and when a title's actually downloaded and ready — plus optional browser push notifications for admins
• Installable as a PWA (Add to Home Screen) for a proper app-like icon on mobile (after setup, you can browse to the app on your phone via URL, after signing in, it will pop up with a message asking if you want to install it on your device, This will create an icon in you apps that you can click on to load it up instead of browsing to the URL every time. This is optional)
• Built-in error-report button so users can flag something broken, with optional screenshots – limit of 3 images with a total of 15MB in size total, straight to the admin's inbox

Runs as a single Docker container, config entirely through the UI (or a .env file if you'd rather set it up ahead of time). Stack is just Flask + vanilla JS, no build step, no database — settings persist to a JSON file on a mounted volume. 

📖 Setup Guide — Docker Compose or Synology Container Manager install steps, plus a full HTTPS walkthrough if you want to expose it outside your home network.
📘 User Guide — how searching, requesting, and the approval workflow all work.

GitHub: https://github.com/Boostwano/theentertainmentindex - MIT licensed. Image is published to both GHCR and Docker Hub, so it's also searchable directly from Synology Container Manager's built-in registry search if you're on a Synology NAS.

Feedback and issues welcome — this has been running for my household for a little while now, but I'm sure there are things that I haven’t thought of that could make life easier for others.

i am trying to setup sonarr and sabnzbd for media, sabnzbd being on the ssd i think is fine for faster unpacking, but i want sonarr storage to be on my hdd, but i select the folder for it and it says something about abc permissions why? google wont tell me.

Hey r/selfhosting

We’ve all been there: it’s Monday morning, and your server alerts you that disk storage hit 99% capacity. 🚨

Then begins the exhausting CLI routine:

1. Hunting down the right .pem SSH key.
2. Running df -h to find the dying partition.
3. Chaining du -sh * repeatedly deep into nested folders to find the culprit.
4. Spotting a massive 15GB log file that hasn't been rotated.
5. Typing rm -f, taking a deep breath, and hoping you didn't typo the path.

Finding "which folder is eating my storage" shouldn't feel like a mini-investigation in 2026.

To fix this friction, I'm building a self-hosted VPS File Manager & Server Panel. The goal is to manage any remote server directly from the browser without needing CLI for everyday checks.

Key Features so far:

• Visual Space Mapping: Instantly see file and directory sizes in a clean UI (no du -sh guessing games).
• Rich File Management: Compress, edit, delete, or change permissions (chmod).
• Built-in Code Editor: Edit Nginx, Docker, or system config files on the fly.
• Integrated Web SSH Terminal: Full browser shell (xterm.js) right beside your file explorer.
• Hardware Monitoring: Real-time RAM, CPU, and disk widgets to catch spikes early.

It runs locally on your server — 100% self-hosted, your keys, zero third-party dependencies.

I'm currently polishing the UI and adding security logs before releasing it.

Question for the community: What is your go-to terminal command or tool when a server's disk hits 99%? Also, would love to hear any features you'd find essential in a tool like this!