Hey yall, I want to get into self-hosting. I want to start from hosting on a raspberry pi, and I am just wondering if yall have any recommendations (I've never hosted anything before, but have experience in linux and programming). Sorry if it's bit of a stupid question.
Pihole is easy and light enough. I used to host Transmission (transmission-daemon) on a 3B+ and it worked alright for seeding around 300-500 torrents. FreshRSS also worked alongside.
YouTube ads don't come from a separate server. They come in the same way as the video. They pretty much need to be filtered out at the player end (e.g. browser plugins).
You can block ads on your computer with basically any browser plugin adblocker.
If your phone is Android, using an app called ReVanced, which is a modified version of the official YouTube app that essentially gives you all the Premium features (including adblocking and picture-in-picture) for free. You can even sign in with your Google account and interact with playlists, comments, etc.
It has to be side-loaded, of course, since Google wouldn't allow that in the Play Store.
Goes against the spirit of self-hosting but for some stuff(Email, DNS, Passwords), I just SaaS it out. As much as I love my lab, nothing self-hosted in my prod environment is critical.
Exactly, I can barely maintain a media server I really don't want to be responsible for my passwords and photos. There are secure alternatives that are private and open enough for my needs...
I just started with HA as well and it's a massive rabbit hole haha.
So far set up thermostats for rooms, motion sensors with smart lights and integration with Frigate for my security cams.
Also set up a tablet with HA which displays all our photos from the NAS as screensaver.
Add outside environmental conditions from your national provider and purpleair, and you can figure whether it's better to run HVAC or open a window. I have an aspirational project to motorize some windows.
I've been leaning this way lately. From a cost/capability standpoint, RPis were easy to justify when they were ~$30, but not as much at their current inflated prices unless you have specific power consumption and form factor requirements. Used/refurbished Dell thin clients and MFF PCs can be had for $40-100, ranging from fanless systems with low-power Atoms and Celerons to full-fledged desktops with Core i-series CPUs, all with memory and storage included more often than not. I personally just picked up a Dell OptiPlex MFF with an i5-9500T, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD for $100.
Refurbished thinclients really are fantastic if you don't specifically need a pi for the formfactor. I got a bunch of Fujitsu S920 with 4GB RAM for roughly €35 a piece and I've been pretty happy with them so far.
This reminds me of the old "build a gaming pc for less than a console" thing was popular for a while.
So let's assume a $90 raspberry pi (someone really splurged here)
$90: case
$0: cpu, get used from a friend
$0: motherboard, get used from a friend
$0: ram, get used from a friend
$0: power supply, steal from work
You can drop the case and just use a cardboard box, which would allow you to afford storage. I'm just going to assume you boot from a usb and keep everything in memory.
One suggestion might be to load a Debian build on it and use it for docker containers. With docker containers you can do so many different things. I have a PI 4 and it does all of the following: PiHole - For blocking ads. (Everyone should have one of these) OpenMediaVault - For NAS Portainers - For loading docker containers Radarr - Downloading Movies Sonarr - Downloading TV Shows Tautulli - Monitors my plex server Overseer - Allows members of my plex share to request content. NZBGET and Real-Debrid Torrent Downloader Clients - For downloading content from usenet or real-debrid.
I have one Pi4 running all of these as docker containers. Have fun!
Let me start by saying I hope you enjoy this stuff. Some of these can be a bit much to setup. I personally love this stuff so for me although it can be challenging it's fun.
honestly it is good to start with and for controlling machines like an array of 3d printers but a dumpster dive laptop will be faster. RPI4 is quite old now.
with that done:
jellyfin
smb server
syncthing
tftp with wake on lan / clonezilla to backup your other machines
I think you’re underselling the RPi a little there. I have an 3B+ which is running a few services well and it’s being undervolted so I could squeeze some more performance out of it with a better power supply. My Pi is currently running:
It doesn’t. Not well. And for larger files, even on cable connection without transcoding performance is god awful, sometimes it doesn’t play, or stutters or you get awful audio desyncs. Don’t do jellyfin on rpi
Pi Hole is a good start.
If you're into movies and TV shows, sonarr /radarr/bazarr is an option
Would highly recommend to use docker images from https://www.linuxserver.io
Except pi hole, I've dockerized everything. So much easier than installing stuff as every application does that differently.
If you have a 3d printer also check out Klipper, Octopi etc. I run mine off a pi zero 2 and it is a leap in performance over the stock board on the Ender 5.
Yeah OctoPi is a game changer. Take it one level higher if you have several 3D printers and run OctoFarm. Now I just click a button and my multi-piece print is distributed to my print wall.
Some things that haven't been proposed here might be to use it as a nas. If you want to access your films and shows from outside it's easier to set up Plex instead of jellyfin for now. You can use it also as a steam machine streaming from the pc to the tv, or as Kodi/Libreelec mediacenter to make your tv smart
If you do this, whatever you do make sure at the very least you get NAS-grade hard drives. But preferably, use some sort of RAID system as well.
I just lost years worth of data because I used a consumer external HDD as my NAS drive connected to my RPi, and I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to get it back.
If it's a Pi3b+ - you can actually host a vanilla Minecraft server on it, with some heavy optimization to reduce memory usage and no more than 4 players online. It's a fun experiment, however impractical.
Generally nothing that requires capable hardware, but benefits from a standardized computer that I can just flash an SD card image from my computer to deploy.
MQTT broker. Usually this does not require even a fraction of the processing power available in a RasPi.
AutoSSH. Why? So it sets up an SSH tunnel to a cloud VPS. Then I use a reverse tunnel to get terminal access to the Pi from the Internet, ignoring all firewalls / ISP NAT etc. I install this (with permission) in a client office or at home so that I can maintain local network services without driving to their office. Then they can unplug it when I'm done. This also uses only a tiny fraction of the RasPi's processing power, but the standardized hardware makes it easier to deploy (SD card image) and maintain.
Oh also it can probably run a Deliantra (http://www.deliantra.net/) server. That's a fun little game to play with some friends.
I have two rpi zeros running motioneyeOS, one is a nannycam in the baby`s bedroom, and the other is a doorcam.
I also have wireguard running on a rpi 3b, which lets me connect to the home network from anywhere (like a proxy) and access the live video feeds, and anything else on my network; like my jellyfin server (not on a raspberry).
I'm considering Home Assistant on a Raspberry pi 400, but don't really have any smart devices to use it for - thinking of buying some cheap controllable power outlets.
I already have the 400, for some reason, so I have to use it for something...
I have 2 rpis and I have had running many things. Pihole, Wireguard, deluge, etc... One problem that I had is that it corrupted all my SD cards after some time. So I have them now collecting dust, and move all my services to real machines. It could be that I'm unlucky and got shitty SD cards, but I wouldn't want to install something on it that I rely to be there in case you need to reimage the whole thing.