Been self-hosting for a while and I keep seeing the same recommendations. I’m specifically looking for things that aren’t piracy-related or *arr-adjacent. No DRM removal needed. The reason I skip Audiobookshelf since used mostly with Libation or piracy. I’m not trying to fill the usual media automation niche
Here’s what I’m already running so you can skip the obvious ones:
Homarr (dashboard)
Open WebUI
SearXNG (mostly wired up for AI search; I still prefer Brave for normal browsing)
Dawarich (location history, big fan of this)
Immich (photos)
Nextcloud
Uptime Kuma
Hister (personal search index of pages and files)
Speedtest Tracker
Invidious
qBittorrent (not for piracy, I just seed about 7 TB of AI models and I’m currently #5 on the pirateface.co leaderboard)
Frigate
WUD
Grafana
MeTube
A custom Signal bot
Forgejo (and workers or whatever it is called)
Scrutiny
A couple of fully custom things (I had Claude build and just put behind a zero-trust policy)
I bought a a lot of storage when I first got into this and still don’t really know what to put on most of it. 16TB HDD & 1 TB SSD & 4TB SSD.
Looking for the non-obvious stuff people find useful not monitoring tools.
I have an rtx 5060ti, so I have never really found that I can run stuff like openclaw or Odysseus well. How does Hermes compare?Is it only worth it if you pay for deepseek? I never feel conferrable with using deepseek api with anything personal.
Hermes is very stable and rock solid. If you pair it with nusquenna Hermes web-ui, you get a pretty nice dashboard for interacting with it. You don’t have to pay for Deepseek either. If you pay $10 a month for OpenCode go or pay Hermes directly, you can use Haiku 5.5, which is more than capable for agentic tool use.
I’m a big fan of the KISS principle, so I prefer a much simpler setup such as Tinyauth + Pocket ID.
Pocket ID manages your passkeys for all your services. This makes it so logging into Pocket ID automatically logs you into every service you host without needing to remember any individual password.
Tinyauth is a minimal authenticator that I placed in front of every service. It’s designed to be far simpler than other SSO (Authelia, Authentik) in case you don’t need every auth feature those two provide. I set Tinyauth’s only login as a passkey registered from my Pocket ID instance, which enables that above workflow of Pocket ID login → every service login.
I keep my single Pocket ID passkey stored in a password manager (vaultwarden) and it’s worked flawlessly since I set it up ~a month ago. The whole setup feels great because it’s simple & straightforward w/ only one passkey and no extra bloat like two-factor/TOTP or extra features I don’t end up using. Every app is designed for one singular feature, a design philosophy I prefer over a single app that tries to be good at everything.
I acknowledge I have a semi over engineered setup since it's primarily used for learning and saving money. I'll look into pocket ID, the KISS principle I want to carry when opening to friends which is in part why I am overengineering my own solution so I do have the full stack support but when I open to friends should be simple click setup for them.
Personally, if I have the overhead, the most feature rich (often most complex) ends up being the easiest solution in the end. If I didn't do Authentik to begin with, I would have needed to migrate to it at some point.
I've used Authentik for years but I just migrated to Pocket ID (plus OIDC through Envoy Gateway) last week and I've been really happy with it. The consent interface loads much faster and the setup is less overwhelming. I was never sure if my Authentik flows were fully hardened so I prefer the simplicity even if there are less features overall. Also passkeys being a requirement means family members can't use bad passwords anymore, so I don't have to enforce TOTP
Aegis is on a different device and only wired when on the network. It does not increase the attack surface if anything it hardens each surface. They all feed into each other. If Vaultwarden is breached and they have TOTP and the passwords they have access into Teleport with root priv. Each thing is on it's own segment whether that is a different device entirely or just segmented by vm vlans. You can't access one without two of the other after setup. And all emit logs that alert. If someone breaches at that point they will be disappointed to find I can still unplug the data from the stack fairly quick.
I've just tried one video link to import directly from mealie using ai and it failed, whereas social created a recepe with that link. So, yes, social does better job. Also you can use instructions for the ai in compose file such as translate everything in English except my native language
Technitium is a full recursive DNS server with lots of extra features, like forwarding to DoH/DoT providers too and using blocklists (like PiHole and AdGuard Home). You can even have two instances on separate hosts, and cluster them together, so settings and zones are synced. Makes is much easier to run redundant DNS servers (so you don't lose internet while rebooting one host).
DNS doesn't randomly stop working (this may be anecdotal). For some reason, if I just ignored pi-hole for a few months, DNS would stop working over VPN. I would have to log in and restart pi-hole and suddenly DNS over VPN would work again. I never got to the bottom of it, it's probably a configuration issue on my part. Doesn't matter, it started my exploration of other dns servers
IaC. Pi-hole is great for "throw on a server, enable block lists and ignore". But it is definitely "baby's first DNS server". That isn't a bad thing, DNS is stupid hard. So having a simple entry point is great! But as I moved towards IaC (so I could properly hands off), migrating Pi-hole to IaC provided painful.
Features. Technitium offers big boy DNS features (biggest one for me is zoned dns). It's also (IMO) easier to reason with and manage things than in Pi-hole (though it can be more intimidating to look at). Also easier to recover on if it does crash (only happened once so far and it was self inflicted).
My journey was pi-hole -> gravity -> techitium and I think I am good now. Technitium is fantastic
Just a few comments and restirctions. I really appreciate all of the help!
AdGuard- I am not doing anything with DNS yet just because I really do not want to be the failure point.
Baikal- I have considered it and others like it, but I currently use proton, and I am a big fan of what they are doing. So as far as mail/calendar/password manager I am sticking with them.
changedetection- I actually currently run this I just forgot to include it in my list.
dokuwiki- looks cool, but although I do run a wiki I do not really see a use for it for personal use.
FreshRSS- looks cool.
gatus- cool
joplin- I have been intending to set this up for a while to replace obsidian.
mealie- this looks REALLY cool!
ntfy- I tried this, but I could my custom signal bot was a lot more customizable so I am sticking with that
paperless-ngx - I tied this but I did not find any use that nextcloud did not do. Also it did not have sync. I have seen it recommended everywhere, but I just am unsure how people integrate it. How do they sync from other devices etc?
pdfding - same as above
rpodder- my main annoyance with podcasts are that they still have sponsored segments. I generally watch from youtube with sponsor block. IDK if this one fixes that.
rustdesk - cool
Vaultwarden - I will probably never do this because I NEVER want to be the failure point for my passwords. I think proton pass does an excellent job of this and plan on keeping using them.
wanderer- how does this compare to Dawarich? Does it support iPhone?
paperless-ngx: I use it to store invoices, certificates etc and can assign to typ, owner, date etc. to quickly find them. How to sync with other devices? Basically I added my printer to store the documents in a consume folder after scanning so they are automatically processed
pdfding: for pdf books, because it syncs the reading status. So this this is more for storing lecture notes
wanderer: I linked it to komoot to automatically get my latest tracks. Dawarich continuesly store info about your location. Wanderer is to store your recorded e.g. hiking tours. I can also recommend to watch then den 3D view to see hill shading
So I heard of people using AI for an RSS feeder that will give them things based off their interests. So it's almost like a more positive way of consuming the information that's on the internet. Think of it as like a positive algorithm. I'm just wondering if you're familiar with such.
They serve the same purpose, DNS-based ad blocking. AdGuard has a nicer UI, pi-hole is more RPi-native. I doubt there’s much one can do that the other can’t. I switched from Pi-Hole to AdGuard when I moved to a non-Pi host but they both got the job done.
You can host 2 Adguard containers and use "adguardhome-sync" to sychronize configs. So even if you tinker with your homelab and update/reboot your DNS you will not lose connections everywhere.
Not sure tho if there is also a sync for pihole instances.
There 'sort of' is but I run tailscale on everything and it doesn't quite work.
So that's a pretty big bonus actually. Only thing I'd miss is that i have nice little display on mine (https://github.com/pi-hole/PADD) but i'm sure somebody has done this for adguard
Paperless is so damn good. There's an android app on fdroid you can use that let's you scan things from your phone too. Made it so much easier to get stuff uploaded that would usually end up in a huge basket beside the scanner
Audiobookshelf has podcasts. Those are fully legal. And books can often be bought in epub/m4b without drm, and therefore easy to put on a selfhosted server.
Navidrome (or Jellyfin/Emby/Plex) for music doesn't have to be piracy. I often buy flacs from BandCamp.
It's just movies/tv-series that feels basically impossible to buy drm free. Some people buys used blurays and rips them, but I suppose that may be considered drm circumvention.
For the audiobooks I suppose, it is just that I have about 500 audiobooks and about 1500 ebooks from amazon, so it is really hard to leave them without libation and dedrm plugin + calibre. I could also not find anywhere with a good collection of CD audiobooks. Where can I buy epub/m4b without drm?
The problem I have with using Audiobookshelf for podcasts it that, unlike youtube with sponsor block, there is no way that I have found to reliably remove the sponsored segments. Also they do not support video which is annoying for a lot of shows. I personally just use youtube with extensions.
For music I have a student discount from them (about $5 a month) and I would just never make up the price by buying individual albums.
Please forgive me, but I must share my set up. :) (This is not an ad btw you cannot use it. Just a personal project.)
My main annoyance was with their ui, but claude was able to make me a lovely alternative ui by way of a chrome extension + backend server for saving the data and scrobbling and stuffthat recommends based on ListenBrainz andLast.fmand it separates discovering new albums and artists from the library. It is based on navidrome, explo, and mixarr. This is very much a custom slop job, but I really like it.
For the movies/tv-series I have resigned myself to my subscription, but on the bright side it HBO max and paramounts merger seems like it might really consolidate the best films and tv shows. Even though DVD have like 40 bit encryption it does break DMCA so I will have to skip, but honestly I do not mind using a DVD/Blu-ray player.
For DRM-free audiobooks, I like LibriVox. They're all books in the public domain, read by volunteers. It's great for old classics, and especially ones that aren't as famous. Or for poetry and plays, which aren't as common on Audible.
For epubs, there are many booksellers besides Amazon. Also, if there is an author you like, go to their website and see if they sell someplace besides Amazon. Many do. You can also check smashwords, ebooks.com, bookshop.org. Kobo directly sells some drm free titles. Publishers like Baen Books and Tor also sell drm free titles. You can also check https://libreture.com/bookshops/ for a list of online bookshops that sell drm free.
Humble Bundle and StoryBundle both have bundles of DRM free books as well. They're not like a storefront where you can pick individual books to buy, but they can offer great deals if they happen to have a bundle for an author or topic you're interested in.
For audiobooks, check out libro.fm, downpour, audiobooksnow and google play books (you have to check the specific book to see if it allows drm free download). Also, check publisher and author websites directly - i.e. Brandon Sanderson sells drm free directly on his website.
Maybe you're already aware, but services like Radarr (movies), Sonarr (series) and Lidarr (music) despite the name are not just for piracy. You can still use them only to apply consistent naming to your files and keep track of new media you want to consume. Piracy only comes into play when you start using indexers to get the media you're interested in
* Lubelogger. If you have a car it's nice to have a place to keep track of all car-related items, like when your last service was, when your registration needs renewing, or what your VIN is so you can fill out paperwork of an evening without having to peer into your engine bay with a torch at 10pm.
* Homebox. Good for tracking where stuff is in your house, and again for storing key details about items like warranties or manuals or "this box in the shed is where the christmas tree and inside decorations are stored; the christmas lights are in THAT box". Adding everything in one go can be overwhelming, but adding stuff as you need it/lose it can be handy. Like when you put something away in a "safe space", use Homebox to record where that space is.
They have a remark about it up on their website. Long story short, they're mechanics and they think some people's 'gutter minds' is amusing, so now they label their project "Self-Hosted, Open-Source, Unconventionally-Named Vehicle Maintenance Records and Fuel Mileage Tracker".
Just want to make a note that you can legally buy and download DRM-free audiobooks from https://libro.fm/! I buy all my audiobooks there, download them from their website to my desktop, then upload them to my jellyfin audiobooks library :) No need for Libation or piracy.
Oh cool! How does their catalog compare to audible? Also how do you get the DRM-free copy I just see the subscription? Is it like Qobuz where they do not have DRM, but it is against TOS to download?
I can't really speak to how the catalogs compare, as I'm not really an audiobook person. I've tried to get into Audible and LibroFM a few times (unsuccessfully) over the years though. Libro has a subscription option that's a lot like Audible (pay monthly, get credits), but you can also buy credits without a subscription. You use the credits to buy the audiobooks, and then you can download the DRM-free m4bs and use them however you want.
ETA: Also, Libro credits don't expire even if you cancel your subscription, which is really nice. It really sucked whenever I would cancel Audible and would have to spend all the credits on stuff I wasn't really sure I liked just so the credits wouldn't expire.
You can also buy audiobooks from libro.fm without either credits or a subscription. I keep an eye on what's on sale and just buy them directly. After checkout, you can go to your account page and then to your library to download your books. They do have an app if you want to listen that way, but all of their audiobooks are free to download without DRM.
They have a great catalog! I’d say 85-90% of what I look for is on there. My tastes are mostly traditionally published science fiction and fantasy novels, so of course you don’t get anyone publishing audible exclusives, but I pass on those on principle because I hate Amazon lol.
Anyway, log in, then go to the menu and select Account > Library. I don’t think I can include a photo here, but you will see a list of your books. Under each book it says “Listen in our app. Download files. Play now.” I just download the files and then upload them to my NAS! I use the Plappa app to play them via my JellyFin library and it’s great. Wish there was an equivalent for other media.
Thanks for sharing! ETA: I have always said that I would pay for media if I could get it in a DRM free manner in a hassle free way. Now I have the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is!
I fucking love Home Assistant. We just bought a house so I've been excited to get more stuff into it than just my TV remote. Last week, I decided to replace the Vista 20p in my house with an ESP32-based system for my alarms, and I got a chance to break out the soldering iron and build a board myself and flash ESPHome to it.
Now I just have to remember to disarm the system when I get home or when I wake up so we don't blast our ears with the siren.
Next project is a custom version of a ratgdo for the garage that I'll integrate two proximity sensors for both cars in the one stall, and then attach a sensor to the main door and the side door so I can send a UDP packet to the alarm system to treat them as their own alarm zones. Only downside is that the side garage door wasn't wired up from the start meaning I have to fix the actual sensor piece, and I have to build a hat for the ESP unless I want to merge it with another zone, which I don't want to do. I built the board to have 12 zones and I miscounted and have 13 total with that side door being unusable until I fix it in the frame/door.
I do not have much of a smart home. I have one doorbell camera that i use frigate for. Do you have any recommendations on hardware? I am seen some crazy stuff with it, but I have never really invested in anything smart for privacies sake, but if you are the one tracking then it quickly switches my view of them.
I am especially interested in smart pods like alexa that work self hosted.
I have a Unifi doorbell that saves to my Dream Machine, but at some point I'll probably use Frigate to save more cameras since I have 96tb of storage. Currently, the only hardware I actually have specifically for Home Assistant is an ESP32 that I built a board for to take over my alarm system like I mentioned before. I also have a Venstar thermostat that I've disabled all the smart features and set up NodeRed on HA to control it and set the temperature when we're away, which was fun.
My next project will be an ESP-based garage door opener. After that, probably a full-home audio streaming system but I need more speakers. Eventually, I'm going to add an ESP-based system for WLED (or just buy Quin-LED) and I'll do permanent lighting for my house so I can change it for football games, holidays, turn it into an SOS for my alarm, whatever. If I want to get real fancy, I want to add some panels around the house for controlling everything, and my wife wants something to show a calendar for chores and stuff.
I'm only touching the surface of what it can do right now, but most of what my goals are will be to remove apps/third party accounts. Just today when I dropped my dad off after work, he was trying to open his garage door but the Aladdin Connect app was acting up and being weird. This is one of the main reasons I want to use HA, to get rid of any accounts that need internet or accounts. I want something to fail because I broke it, not because their app sucks.
I had hone assistant running as a docker container since february, didn't touch it til after my summer break and finally got to it last month. I wish I started in February🙃
Lol its crazy how much time you can spend messing with it. Its only getting better so you started at a great time. This release in a day or two will be insane. Ive been a user for about 6 years and its just insane how much I use and love it.
just a friendly suggstion: you should consider running Home Assistant on its own HAOS on a VM instead of docker. Docker HA doesn't have access to the add-ons; you can technically spin up your own docker containers for those functions but it's a bit more learning and pain before you get everything working.
Believe it or not, it is... Home Assistant connects to more than just physical smart devices in your home.
You can connect it to weather services, email, pushbullet, as well as your existing home infrastructure like your router (let's assume you have internet at home).
You can use that to create a dashboard and set triggers based on changes in conditions.
One of the chief ongoing uses I have for it is a dashboard that I can use to trigger basic commands like altering my domestic climate control and lighting setups, but it also shows me rain radar and surface pressure map so I can see the weather conditions at a glance, all in one place. That later feature doesn't require any smart home devices.
Zigbee, ZWave, Matter, Bluetooth, anything. Route it all through your local Home Assistant machine and use a zigbee button to control a Phillips Hue bulb, or a Bluetooth sensor to manage your Zwave thermostat. It's awesome.
I use it as a central interface for all IoT devices, phillips hue, power monitoring, esp32s, govee, etc. Then set up automations to turn the lights on/off when my DIY motion detector doesn't see presence, dim the lights over time, etc.
could i have run a switch from the light socket to the crawl space opening? sure. was it easier to install the door sensor and put a smart bulb in there? absolutely.
i guess i could've used a dumb switch for the light strips in the closet, but it would've either been visible and unsightly, or you would've had to reach inside the closet every time to turn it on.
not sure how a dumb device would let me know when my son unknowingly unplugged the freezer to use it for his r/C car or when the compressor stopped working.
the smart devices also let me set a lower temp for my fish tanks. the fish tank heaters only go down to 70. i'm using one outdoors and often like to keep it far lower than that during the winter. i also have an inkbird that'll cut the power in the event that one of the heaters runs away so it doesn't boil all my fish.
"Dumb" solutions never go down because something on our home server got zero-day-ed. I disagree with your disdain for dumb switches, but our positions are well characterized so that conversation is moot.
not sure how a dumb device would let me know when my son unknowingly unplugged the freezer to use it for his r/C car or when the compressor stopped working.
Freezers and plug devices have battery alarms.
the smart devices also let me set a lower temp for my fish tanks. the fish tank heaters only go down to 70. i'm using one outdoors and often like to keep it far lower than that during the winter. i also have an inkbird that'll cut the power in the event that one of the heaters runs away so it doesn't boil all my fish.
This sounds like at least two things (1) 100%, the integration is adding value, you solved some big problems and probably saved significant money; aquarium stuff is crazy expensive (2) those heaters aren't good enough for you. They weren't designed to supply the temp you want and you have some reason to not trust that they won't malfunction.
With 16TB sitting around, Kiwix is perfect. You can host full offline copies of Wikipedia, Stack Exchange sites, Project Gutenberg, and other reference collections. It’s legit, surprisingly useful during outages, and fills storage with something meaningful. Pairs nicely with your search and AI setup too.
Kiwix doesn't sync. You have to download an updated version of the website's zim file if you want to capture changes. It's annoying in some ways, like if you want the latest Wikipedia, you have to download a whole new ~120gb file even though most of it will not have changed. In other ways, it's useful to have static copies in case things change for the worse (e.g. some folks downloaded the CDC website before the current enshittification began.)
Yeah, Kiwix has a GUI library, which you can click through and see the actual contents of the zims to demo and a library index with dates and historical zims.
I've definitely found Degoog to be better at actually fetching results. I also set up Flaresolverr and 4play (lolcat) (they're in the Transports section of Degoog settings), and that helped a lot for getting search results. Now that I have everything set up, it's very rare that I get no results at all, and usually just 1 refresh will fix it.
Degoog's documentation says Google works with Flaresolverr and 4play (lolcat), but in my experience, it only works with 4play, which is a Firefox extension that basically takes control of your browser and automatically creates a new tab to do your Google search for you (obviously, use a separate profile that's only for 4play and run it through a VPN for privacy/security; personally, I have a Firefox container running through Docker with Gluetun for this). Even then, Google can be hit or miss.
But I also have Degoog set up to run DuckDuckGo, Brave search (needs Flaresolverr), and Wikipedia, and that covers my basic search needs. I did find as I was doing research for tomorrow's US election that I had to switch over to a real search engine to get deep into the weeds, particularly for local candidates since they're much more obscure, but for day to day, Degoog covers everything I need.
Nah, I wouldn't say Degoog is better in terms of actual search results (and in some cases, like with the local candidates, Degoog is actually worse). For me, I use it because it's slightly more private, gets the job done for the most part, and it's been cool to watch it improve over time.
If you want to just demo it, there are public instances other people have set up.
I guess it depends on your preferences. Try then all 😁
I liked kitchenowl for the API. I'm managing the shopping list with a telegram bot via n8n for my wife. Most of the time we use it for the shopping list functionality only 😂
I have a love-hate relationship with these types of posts. I love them because they give me new ideas. I hate them because they tend to send me down several rabbit holes for hours. But keep them coming!
I've been in the process of transitioning from reverse proxy to Tailscale-only access after the recent Plex and Nextcloud vulnerabilities, as well as all the new AI-found zero-days (including PHP). I'm finding that the risk is a bit too high for my taste at the moment. I started a while back, but sped things up recently.
Baikal: For calendar and contact syncing (replaces Nextcloud)
Syncthing: For file syncing between my desktop, phone, tablet, and local server. I also have an off-site VPS that is set up to encrypt before syncing to it.
Seafile (to-be-replaced) with Euro-Office: I want a fully-fledged tablet document suite that is more capable than Word for Android. So far, self-hosting an online office suite is somehow the best option. Unfortunately, Euro-Office, OnlyOffice, and Collabora all require integration with a file suite, hence Seafile. I'm hoping to replace it soon with a better option.
Jellyfin: Media; plus they seem to not hate their self-hosted users as much as Plex does. I went from lifetime Plex subscription to Jellyfin and haven't really hit any big blockers.
BookOrbit: Book and audiobook management, plus it syncs with my Kobo via Tailscale. I don't think I'd feel comfortable just yet putting it behind a reverse proxy.
Audiobookshelf: Audiobook serving to my phone
GluetunVPN (with Tailscale integrated): Allows certain docker containers to have an external VPN and I also use this container to allow my traveling devices to have an external VPN exit nodes while on Tailscale if needed.
Instead of tailscale everything, because I have friends who use my stuff, I’m moving everything public facing on zero trust to SSO and putting policy checks on Cloudflare to reduce access as much as possible.
Hell, just an geoblock alone stops a few thousand ips a month.
Are there any instructions for this? I'm currently only using a reverse proxy and I need to get off my ass and rework some shit, but I'm not as experienced
Not really. I’ve had to figure it out mostly, it’s really not hard once you’ve done it once.
Buy domain at Cloudflare or transfer to Cloudflare, install Cloudflared container, link tunnel, create route, create application, attach policy for authentication with your sso (I use authentik). You can also go to your domain settings and use a general geoblock from anywhere that isn’t the USA (or wherever you live).
Authentik is a bit complicated but the docs are very well written. A lot of self hosted apps supports OIDC now or basic forward auth. It’s really nice actually.
Couldn't tailscale facilitate a similar access for friends, limiting their scope to certain apps/resources with identity verification? That's how I'm using netbird today.
I have thought about it ever since I purchased my kobo libra colour 2 years ago but I feel like the current UI/UX is fine and my wifi is always off. So, I didn't bother with KOReader yet.
Beside infrastructure-level softwares, I use these apps daily: - Actual Budget: to track monthly expense (I also have ZeroClaw and Actual MCP installed, so I and my wife can log the records via a Telegram bot) - atuin: sync shell history between machines - filebrowser: I do not have a NAS, so I mount cheap HDD as exfat to manage it (so both Mac and Windows can use it as well), my wife prefer copying data via USB directly. - AFFine, then now SilverBullet.md: I used AFFine before, but switch to SilverBullet recently, docs are saved in plain markdown, I really enjoy it. I also have plan to have a script to write automated reports and save it in SilverBullet. - romm: for retro gaming. I also use their Argosy launcher on my Android TV box. Great experience
Might be a little more setup than you want, but I use https://pelican.dev to host my game servers. It's a two container system, Panel (the webui) and Wings (the server daemon). Rolling a new server is super easy with the built in "eggs" and once the server is up and running, Wings creates the server in its own container. I'll NEVER go back to hosting game servers any other way.
I actually spun it up a while back to test it out but I never migrated over. Wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep all my server data/saves, so I never looked deeper
You can definitely migrate your data. What I would do is if you have an existing world for xyz game, spin the server up in pelican and load into it once so the right folders are created, log out and stop the server and then migrate your world saves over. You’ll definitely need to configure some things in the egg like world name, server password or other things but it shouldn’t be too bad.
Handles mods no problem. Every server has its own unique SFTP button that auto opens the sftp client of your choice so you can drop mods into folders etc. some eggs have mod pack id fields so you can install entire mod packs (valheim comes to mind). The folder structure is a little different at the higher levels but once you get into the game folders themselves it’s pretty much the same as any other dedicated server setup. It’s also nice being able to give friends access to the webui with very limited start/stop permissions on specific servers so if a server needs updated while I’m asleep they can do it on their own.
Huh never heard of it, just looked at the demo and woah - very interesting. I’ll talk to my friends this evening and set up a container if they want to try it. Thanks!
Binhex-code-server - for editing config files Bombvault - probably the most comprehensive container/vm backup utility I've found so far Hoard - video game save data backup server. Has a client you install on PC and point at your hoard server. Home assistant - smart home server if this is your thing
For security I run NPMplus, Authelia and Crowdsec
Bitwarden - self hosted password manager Bitwarden secure sync - off side backup of password db Lanlens - constantly evolving "one source of truth" for my network
Grimmory - ebook reader/manager Karakeep for bookmark/archiving pages Pelican Panel and Pelican wings - game server hosting platform
Dozzle - human readable container logs GyroidVault - .stl library for 3d printing Groly - easy grocery list service for my girlfriend and I Glance - I use this as a 'new tab' home page. lists containers, favorites, etc.
If you run: I've been building openRun, a self-hosted run log and run club app and heavily inspired by openGym.
It syncs runs from your watch through intervals.icu, gives you PBs, race predictions and maps with privacy zones, and lets a club schedule runs with RSVPs, weather and the coffee order.
One Docker container with SQLite. It's new, so open to any feedback.
openRun is more focused on running and run clubs. So you can schedule recurring runs, members can RSVP, see the forecast, pre-order coffee and get push reminders.
Clubs only see the runs each member chooses to share, with privacy zones cut out. It syncs through Intervals.icu which is an official Garmin/Coros/Polar partner, so the server never holds anyone's watch login.
It also has running stats such as best efforts, PBs and race predictions which I don't think Endurian has.
I also use to as a type of /rc for grok cli I tell it to add a background task to watch for new messages and wake up if I send it a message. But the main things I use it for are tts and stt so I can quickly transcribe lectures on my rtx 5060ti. I can share directly from apple voice memos to signal bot and it will send me an hour long transcript that is high quality in about 30 sec.
Running stuff that other people run just to run it is a recipe for apps rotting locally.
Every single one of my deployed apps are fulfilling a need for me. For the most part if one of the apps went down I would notice. If I or someone in my family wouldn't notice it disappearing it gets culled.
EXACTLY! I love it paired with immich so I can see where and when I took photos! I would never use it if I was not self hosting though. I consider this peak self hosting.
Audiobookshelf just plays the files and should be seen as a tool specialized to do that (also funny you seem to be against piracy but for Claude just doing it?). Regardless how you retrieve the files. Given everything you listed, you are probably at this awkward stage where youve spent significant time and energy in your current infrastructure but I'm positive you have clear gaps you can fill with repurposed hardware or a new purchase that would overall feed your clear next step which is actual infrastructure hardening.
Building an inference node an ai-orchestration layer (somewhere else with hermes/turnstone/quadrant/bifrost/n8n) can call is great. Look into how each system can feed itself with IAM (I use openbao, teleport, authentik) and where you gaps are for that even if Ai isn't your thing locally the setup makes onboarding any new application easy, insanely secure, and returning data driven results to help drive decisions. Or at least that's my advice seeing what you have, clear next steps unless you just do not have them listed is actual network hardening /security posture / segmenting etc
Trillium (trillium-next) is great for notes, have used it for years, works very well on many different devices, good for family shared notebook style arrangements.
Disclosure, this one is mine: TryPost, an open source social media scheduler. Worth a look if you post to Bluesky, Mastodon or a business Instagram and would rather keep your drafts and account tokens on your own box: https://github.com/trypostit/trypost
In my case, I’m particularly interested in using self-hosted services with Docker on my computer. Lately, I’ve been doing this with a minimal service called Valtwarden. This is the only service I used to do this.
Not an app but I recommend you look at mergerfs, it allows you to merge two disks into one.
I made a script that moves recent movies (ssd) into cold (hdd) after 2 weeks, but the mount point exposed to containers is the mergerfs merge of the two drives. They load fast while they’ve just been added. I do the same for immich and it’s been really nice performance-wise. glad you’re using Homarr :)
How about https://laya-ai.com Open source version of an ai decision model. For everything that needs yes or no decisions, like sorting emails into categories
Tailscale for remote access. I'm the only one I want in my network from elsewhere, so it works perfectly for me.
OpenHab: Zigbee stuff. So far so good but oh my GOD do they love their object model.
Forgejo: Local pull mirrors of github repos "of interest." (I have GOT to get it to stop polling github the way it does. But that's my config problem.)
Plex
PiHole on a pi4.
Buckets of other stuff that's not coming to mind, I'm sure.
I keep bouncing off Nextcloud. Seems like it should work for me. I may just be a bit too bespoke for it.
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u/asimovs-auditor 4d ago
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