UPDATE: To everyone who suggested YUNO, thank you so much. This seems like it is about to make my journey much easier. It is basically almost exactly what I was looking for, but I was unaware that it existed.
Thank you ALL for your suggestions, actually. It’s a bit overwhelming for an almost complete noobie but I an going to look into all of the suggestions in time. I just saw that there were several mentions of YUNO so I decided to make that one of the first things I investigated.
So, about two months ago, I had a very eye opening experience. As the result of a single misconfigured security setting on my Android, I was locked out of my Google Account on my phone AND all of my PCs. I had no access whatsoever to Google, or any of the literally hundreds of services that I get through Google.
This is when I realized that I relied entirely on Google/Android because those two days were actually very difficult, being cut off from media, services, passwords, everything, from the past almost twenty years of my life, could be taken away from me in an instant. The decades of my life that were locked away in my Google Account included hundreds of thousands of pictures, almost a hundred thousand audio tracks, several hundred books, several hundred apps, thousands of videos, etc. ad infinitum. Unfortunately, very little of this material was backed up at that point. That is my fault. Also, the misconfigured security setting was my fault as well.
The amount of data, media, memories, services, etc. that would have been lost is actually endless and it would have affected my life in several ridiculously negative ways.
Luckily, in the end, I was able to get my access back and then basically immediately grabbed all of the several terabytes of information and media of mine that they had, and that I was almost locked out of. I have it all in my house now on a drive in my computer, with a backup made on another disconnected disk.
I then decided that no corporation was ever going to have such an insanely high level of influence on and control over my entire life and my media ever again. That experience was actually very scary.
I’ve been trying to get into SelfHosting, but am finding it quite daunting and difficult.
There is a LOT of stuff that I have to learn, and I am mostly unsure of where to even begin. I know basically nothing about networking.
I need to learn the very basic stuff and work my way up from there, but everything that I’ve seen on the Internet assumes that the reader already has a basic to intermediate understanding of networking and the subjects that surround it. I do not, but I am going to learn.
I just need someone to show me where to start.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
What exactly do you want to do? Just have storage that you upload all your media to, which is also backed up somewhere else?
Unless you have experience with ethernet equipment and such it is probably better to start with some hosted service of an open-source app like Nextcloud or Immich or (slightly more advanced) a VPS somewhere. Doing it immediately from home with your own server has a steep learning curve.
Write things down
You will break something - and that’s good, it’s the best way to learn - but you’ll want to make a note of what you did / went wrong / how you fixed it.
Future you will still break things and be grateful that you wrote that thing down
You’ll buy something and find next year it was the wrong thing (too small, too large, too old, too new), so just get second hand stuff until you know what you need.
Cabled networks are so much better than wireless, but then you’ll need switches and cables and shelves and stuff… so using today’s wifi is fine, but know where you’re heading.
You need to store you stuff - that’ll be in a NAS
You need something to run services on - that’ll be your server
These might be the same physical metal lump (your 2nd laptop?), they might be separate… play around, break something and work out what feels right for you… and then put your data on there
… and that’ll break too.
Just be aware… if sync files between devices. That’s not a backup. (Consider you’ve deleted / corrupted something - it’s now replicated everywhere)
Having a NAS with 10 drives in a RAID6 array, is not a backup. It’s just really robust against a drive failure, but a deleted file is still a deleted file.
Take a full copy of your data off your system - then restore it somewhere else.
Did it work? If so, that’s a backup.
I’ve always struggles with practicing restoring backups. Do you have to buy an identical 2nd machine to see if everything still works w/o messing up the first one?
Not really.
I keep my data backups (docs, photos, etc) separate from the OS backups.
So, depending on what you’re using to do the backup, often they can just simulate a restore and just check the backup’s not corrupted. Not really a restore, but at least you know it’s not trash.
If you’ve backed up your data with a simple copy / sync (ie not a “backup” program), then you can restore your data somewhere else (maybe even jist a part of it) and do a compare.
But, yeah, if you’re restoring the OS, then it might be ok restoring it in a VM to check it…
I’m slowly moving towards no OS backups and using Ansible to be able to recreate the system(s) from scratch… of course I need to backup the ansible files too 😉
I would like to backup and test restore app configs not sure how to do that yet :p
Maybe OS backup is the way somehow. Maybe I need an atomic distro …
Thanks for the advice. I am using Trilium to create a knowledge base as I go, and I am keeping meticulous notes on my progress, successes and failures.
At first, you have to decide what do you need. You can selfhost almost everything, but in my opinion there is no need to do so.
Second thing is hardware to host it. I saw a few comments recommending NAS. It is of course good thing, but my suggestion is just building your own NAS. You need only decent computer to do it.
The easiest way is just installing TrueNAS on it - with that you can setup file sharing and your apps via docker.
But what apps would you need/want? I can recommend a few from my stack:
- vaultwarden - for storing passwords, 2FA codes
- immich - for storing photos, videos, autoupload from phone
- adguard - for getting rid of ads, tracking They are really easy to deploy.
As an alternative to file shares via SMB, nextcloud is really good option. It’s google drive on steroids. Also includes photo gallery with great app on android/ios with autoupload option.
Nice! Yes, photo storage and backup as well as note sync, reminder sync, calendar, etc. are all very important micro services to me.
I think Nextcloud is a really good option for you. It includes everything you mentioned.
If you want to start cheap, I can recommend you to use an old notebook. In my opinion it’s the perfect home server for beginners.
- It’s cheap (most people have an unused laying around anyway)
- If it’s old enough to still have a dvd drive, you can replace it with a second sata ssd. There are cheap frames for this available.
- it has a battery, so it can shutdown if there is a power outage
- It’s slim. You can just throw it on your closet and forget about it
Most services don’t need much. So it’s just fine if your “server” is like 10 years old. My first notebook server had 2 cores and 4 GB ram and it run Proxmox with like 10 lxc containers just fine.
Awesome suggestion! Thank you.
The only thing to watch out for using a laptop that is plugged in 24x7 is the battery. Battery management systems are generally pretty good, but Li-ion batteries can fail catastrophically. As long as you make a point to check on it periodically it’s probably fine.
I’m using an old laptop as a local interface for my network setup, since its in my basement, and I actually pulled the battery out entirely since I have a beefy UPS powering everything. Paranoid, maybe, but a Li-ion battery sitting on top of my equipment rack could do a ton of damage if it were to fail someday.
I’m fairly technical but I honestly don’t know where to begin either. Also trying to improve our personal security to an extent.
Hope you get some answers
In addition to what another poster said about getting an off-site backup hard drive, I would recommend looking into setting up a raid array for data redundancy with your online storage. You don’t want one hard drive failure to make all of your data inaccessible.
Backup. I use Backblaze personal which is $179 for two years of ‘unlimited’ storage. All my important self hosted data is duped to some old 2.5" external drives connected to my work machine that then is backing up to Backblaze. I also have 1yr retention, so any deleted file is accessible for up to 1yr.
After backups are sorted, stick with the OS you know best. If Windows (I hope not), then HyperV for VMs is good. Try the official Nextcloud VM from Hanson IT. Nextcloud is a good catch-all, but it’s beaten by other specific tools. I now host all I need from specific Docker containers: photos, calendar, email backup etc etc
But I would say Docker. Docker desktop if Macos or Windows if your thing. Get to know docker and the world of self hosting is your oyster.
As what others say, keep it all to your home network and tread carefully when trying to remote access it all.
Yunohost should be the software you’re looking for. Install stuff by clicking. Much less terminal stuff
I have a big super micro server i was given a while back but have yet to set it up. I was going to put proxmox on it. Would you recommend yuno over that?
Depends on what you want to do. For a small server, if you want to host multiple things, hosting them straight on the metal without putting a VM in between would be more performant. If your server doesn’t have much RAM and CPU to give, then getting rid of the emulation layer makes sense.
Can you tell me why you want to use proxmox and what for?
It has 256gb of ram. I don’t remember the CPU power but it has 2.
I want to do self hosted storage, currently have 12-16tb (I’ve forgotten which). I’ll also want to have other services running. Like game servers or things like immich and jellyfin. I’ll also want to have something for git and probably Jenkins (or similar), then also a place to host anything I create that needs hosting.
When i asked where to begin with such a server, pretty much all of the responses were to go with proxmox. I’m not a fan that it’s nagware though so I’m open to other suggestions.
256 GB of RAM? Wow. And game servers too? If that’s small, them I don’t know what you consider big…
Anyway, proxmox does fit your scenario well. Separating your hosted services into VMs or containers makes a lot of sense. And a few game servers also have installations specific to different distros, so instead of fumbling about with your specific distro, just creating a VM with the distro you need is way easier.
How secure is yuno? Is it actually secure plugging into your Ethernet for remote access to something like immich?
It’s super intimidating when the weight of the weight of the global hacking community is attacking you from the moment you expose a port.
Is their progress on a simple sustainable solution to security? Is this the primary roadblock to self hosting becoming more common place? Or am I way off
Yunohost is probably more secure than you figuring everything out yourself. More people have a vested interest in keeping it secure. They have a minimal page on security but they have fail2ban, unattended upgrades,and a secure SSH configuration. If something is discovered, you might be vulnerable but at least there will be knowledgeable people fixing it.
Security is always difficult and nothing is 100% secure. The three letter agencies around the world have been hacked and they are in the business of hacking others. Hackers themselves get hacked on the regular. Using yunohost as a noon probably reduces the chance of you getting hacked.
If you have something only you need to access, you can also host yunohost for yourself and make it accessible only via a VPN. Headscale, tailscale, maybe even your router provides a VPN service, or setup wireguard yourself. If others have to access it… I dunno. That’s a good question to ask on /c/selfhosted
I was a member of r/selfhosted before I abandoned reddit altogether, but I’m not familiar with /c/selfhosted. May I ask what the C is?
c stands for community. I didn’t know on which server it is but it’s on lemmyworld !selfhosted@lemmy.world
Sevral people have mentioned Yuno and I’m going to look into it shortly. Thanks for the input!
There’s Yuno, CasaOS is ridiculously easy to setup, manage and maintain as well. There’s UnRaid (not free, but very good), Proxmox is extremely versatile.
I am currently running light services (caldav, carddav, PW manager, and some other lighter stuff) on an N150 mini PC, and have a hefty server for heavier services running on Proxmox.
Of course, I follow the 3-2-1 backup rule, but only for data I could never get again. Movies, Series, music, I never back up.
Oh my god, you were right. Yuno is AMAZINGLY useful for exactly what it is that I am attempting to do!
Glad you like it! If it’s useful to you, don’t forget to donate or at least say thanks to the contributors once everything is up and running and stable.
Don’t forget backups! Restic is in yunohost and should be useful for that. Yunohost has a guide.
I haven’t actually began to use it yet because first I am trying to understand the framework and fundamental basics of what it is that I am attempting to do. When I get a grasp on that, I will definitely be using YUNO and overwhelmingly likely will donate a good sum of money to that project.
You can test it in a virtual machine like virtualbox or virt-manager. Then you can get a good feel for it.
Ahhh, good point! I definitely know about Virtualbox. I shall try that. Thanks!!
+1 for YunoHost from the POV of a total self-hosting newbie (I’m now self-hosting my own GoToSocial, Pixelfed, PeerTube and NextCloud thanks to it… upgrades and backups are super easy, too)
Can I ask where you host your backup service without paying another cloud provider?
As someone who went through this after trumps 2nd term and power grabs i can give you my process:
- angrily unsubscribe all big tech subscriptions
- make a protonmail and tutamail account, realize I like proton suote more and decide to subscribe
- transfer all passwords to proton suite
- download all photos and other from cloud to an external drive. TURNS OUT THIS TAKES SEVERAL DAYS WTF
- angrily order a rasp-pi and an external SSD
- use step by step tutorials from pimylifeup to install docker and immich. Fall in love
- gradually (via help of google and GPTs) become confident enough with command line to start managing the server headless over SSH
Fast forward 6 months: My router is now running OpenWRT. With a few necessary exceptions my network access is always through ProtonVPN. My external devices are connected via wireguard to the router when not on home wifi and only after that reach the www. I have 24/7 access to my services from everywhere. My main server is now an old office mini pc running about 10 services. Im using borg for nightly snapshots(its a bit like apple time machine) and after that everything is backed up to another server at a friends house via rsync and ssh. I have a third mini computer whose purpose is to be my tv’s UI with access to services like the national broadcasts web ui and my own jellyfin and invidious (adless youtube client) The tv does not have an internet connection anymore. I even made a custom land page that automatically opens full screen in a browser when open my tv.
The point is: this builds gradually and you have fun doing it. …until it breaks :D The most painful parts involved networking so you can settle for LAN only at first to keep things simple
how well does invidious work on the TV? how easy are the controls?
I use a small wireless logitech keyboard-mousepad so it works very well. I had to make exceptions in the router for googles video severs to bypass the vpn though.
yeah not all invidiouses allow proxying the video, and at some it used to be off by default
Re-investing in a new platform full of tools (Proton suite) isn’t in my opinion a rational answer. My answer is self host vaultwarden, self host your file storage, and choose between Proton and Tuta for mail, and use your own domain name so you can take your email address with you should you move.
In my opinion No-one should ever store any form of personal data implicitly on someone else’s computer.
Oh i have vaultwarden as well nowadays
When you’re connecting to your local network, say from outside your home, you connect through proton vpn? I’m wanting to self host, but I thought I would have to switch between proton and whatever VPN the local machine is using? Say immich for instance
My phone is on a wireguard tunnel into my router which puts my wireguard vpn in the same forewall zone as my home LAN. Internet access is routed through the tunnel and then through another tunnel to protonvpn and from there to the www. It was a bit elaborate to set up but it works. Wouldnt really recommend the setup for everyone, it was a bit of a pain in the ass to get working. I used Openwrt and policy based routimg plus wireguard for the tunnels into and put of the router.
I’d recommend starting by hosting a nextcloud instance.
- Get a desktop computer, pretty much anything will do but having room to add more HDD is important.
- Install Linux distro like Ubuntu or something
- Get a static IP so your IP doesn’t change
- Setup a router port forwarding rule so that an outside address points to your nextcloud instance.
Then do some optional steps:
- Automatically turn on PC when power comes back on (BIOS setting)
- Startup script that runs nextcloud on startup
- Install docker to manage services like nextcloud
- Add some remote desktop thingy to manage your server from your laptop (ssh is also good but a steeper learning curve)
- Get a NAS for storing data with redundancy.
- Have some other form of backup like your current Google account, cloud provider or one of your mates with a similar setup.
That’s pretty much what you need to start hosting your own files, then later on you can setup a email server, media server like Jellyfin, homepage and everything.
Just go one step at a time and when you hit an issue you can and should ask Google or ChatGPT. Remember, everything exposed to the Internet is vulnerable so take security seriously. Always have everything protected by a decently long password, pairing requirement with your server confirming adding a device or an API key.
@MTZ saving this for later! I aim to go the same path soon :)
If you have systems or services you’re dependant so strongly, always have an backup / emergency access. 3rd party or self hosted.
My 5c but I think you agree.
Point being as a decades old it professional I see design more important as the detail implementation.
Goddamned inflation. It used to be just 2 cents worth!
Ah crap that’s what I get for not being native English. But still, correct somehow.
I don’t believe inflation is a serious problem. But that is just my 9 cents.
Indeed, I do agree but I’ve never done anything close to this magnitude so it is kind of intimidating for me. It is a learning process though!
I’d recommend not to go containerized but that can start a flame war. I would think it easier. But best to stick to the recommended beginner tutorial that someone else posted and go along from there.
Then ask questions on the way.
I hard agree with this. I would NEVER have wanted to start with containerized setups. I know how I am, I would have given up before I made it past the second LXC. Starting as a generalized 1 server does everything and then learning as you go is so much better for beginnings. Worst case scenario is they can run docker as the later on containerized setup and migrate to it. Or they can do what I did, start with a single server setup, moved everything onto a few drives a few years later once I was comfortable with how it is, nuked the main server and installed proxmox, and hate life learning how it works for 2 or 3 weeks.
Do i regret that change? No way in hell, but theres also no way I would recommend a fully compartmentalized or containerized setup to someone just starting out. It adds so many layers of complexity.
Thanks, you put it better than I can.
Native vs containerized really depends on what it is going to be doing tbh. If it’s just downloading and/or moving files around, containerized is fine. And having your docker-compose.yml files saved somewhere external will make future hardware upgrades/recovery much easier.
There is certainly some learning curve to figure out the quirks of a compose file, but the nice part is that most services will post an example compose file for you to edit as needed. And that means learning it is basically just a matter of reading the example files and figuring out what the different fields mean; yaml is extremely easy to read, even for someone who has never looked at it before. You may have some fringe cases that need a deeper dive, but the vast majority of setups are basically just a matter of “copy the example compose, edit the volumes as needed, and fuckin send it.”
if it seems daunting, which it is!, maybe it would be a good piont to ask yourself if you really need to run a server and these self hosted web apps in the first place. i did for about 10 years but i realised at some point i didnt need half of it.
if youre planning on having multiple users or want to share one of the services (like real time editing of files or passwords etc) then thats where self hosted stuff makes sense to me, but if not then syncthing can do a lot without needing any complicated setup
keepass is a good example. or note taking apps like jopin or obsidian where the data is store in plain text and where you can choose where the data is stored works great with syncthing
for about a year before i did any self hosted stuff i was running only syncthing on my laptop and phone without any server so its do-able and you can get started right now and worry about getting a server later.
tailscale is a huge help as well and is very easy to setup. say you repurpose an old laptop as a server for now and install whatever services on it, jellyfin for example, you will only be able to access that when you are on your home network but not when you are away, and thats where tailscale comes in. as long as its installed on each device you should be able to connect to your apps/services from anywhere.
basically you can start small and then over the coming months and years as you learn more you will get more confident about moving onto more complicated setups
Instead of self hosting, why not try better offerings?
Most anything you probably use Google for, you can do with a disroot account. Riseup is a great group, with many similar services (not all). The tildeverse also has myriad replacement services.
Just try to support them, financially.
I have no idea what Riseup, Tildeverse, or Disroot are but I will certainly look into it.
Amazing, thanks for sharing. I understand Riseup and Disroot and the missions of each, but I’m having a bit of trouble with Tildeverse , likely because I am not well versed in *nix operating systems as of yet. I’m going to commence to reading up on all of these!
Oh, yeah, I guess I kinda tossed that out there, as they do host a ton of servives. However, its very welcoming as an onboard ramp to learn about *nix stuff. Just ease yourself into that, while exploring Disroot and RiseUp :)
