I’m pretty happy with my Ubuntu, docker, and ZFS with Sanoid/Syncoid server. Nothing against NAS focused distros, I just haven’t come across a compelling enough reason to switch.

For hardware, I use a Odroid H4+. Intel N97, 4 SATA ports, Intel quick sync, and low power. It’s running my 20ish docker containers with plenty of power to spare. It’s been great

I’ll DM you in a bit but real quick I just wanted to say I thought you improved in this episode. Great work

has some basic monitoring on them.

What monitoring software are you using?

I feel like the other measures you talked about (backups, condom of network traffic, etc) I’m doing ok on. Its really just the monitoring where I’m stuck. There’s so many options

I’ll look into it, thank you

I’ve seen a bunch of people recommend Authelia. Do you mind if I ask why you went with it over other software? I only went with authentik because I found a tutorial on it first

1. check

2. check

3. check

4. I saw someone else recommend crowdsec. I’ll look into it, thanks

if you use one of those 5$/month VPSes, with a VPN tunnel to your backend services, that adds one layer of “if it’s compromised, they’re not in your house”.

I’ve heard this mentioned before but I don’t really understand how this works in practice. If the VPS was compromised, couldn’t they use the VPN to then connect to my home?

Caddy only allows private IP ranges

Do you mind telling me more about this? How does that work; a VPN?

will do, thanks

If it were only me using the apps, I’d be using a VPN. Over the years, I’ve used OpenVPN, Wireguard, and now Tailscale. In my experience, they work like 99% of the time. That last 1% though is weird connection issues; usually when switching between WiFi and cellular (or vice versa) but sometimes it’s my server or ISP and I have to turn the VPN off and back on to troubleshoot. During those rare times, my partner will either turn off the VPN and forget to turn it back on or they will forget about the VPN completely and not be able to use their phone. Ideally, I’d like to set something up that doesn’t require any potential troubleshooting on their part so I can avoid hearing “why can’t we just use Google photos?” or “what’s wrong with Google home?” 😓

that’s awesome. thanks!

oh, my mistake. tbh, I don’t know enough about it but I’m interested. Why set up a TLS cert for AI at home? How is that benefiting you and your setup?

I’ve seen some people set up SSL certs for self hosted services and not make them publicly available but I didn’t get around to seeing why they were doing it

Have also set it up so they get banned on Cloudflare’s side, so before another malicious request ever reaches me.

How did you end up setting that up?

Most definitely does not need a public URL for Assist in HA. Not sure where you read that.

You’re probably right. At one point, I had a subscription to homeassistant cloud a few years back to use a google nest speaker at the time. I was just going off that I guess. I’ll do some testing and will probably put it back behind tailscale. thanks for the heads up

It sounds like you need a VPN to your internal services if you’re concerned about security.

I’m more so concerned that I set something up incorrectly and would like to be made aware of it in the event someone else noticed

I feel weird about having those apps on the internet and basically being blind to threats. I mean yeah, I’m not a target on anyone’s list and most IPs visiting the site are bots but I would still like to know what’s going on.

I don’t work in tech for a living, this is just a hobby for me so I have limited time to work on this stuff and do research. It’s very possible I fucked something up and don’t know it. I figured if I at least got an alert that said “hey, your immich server db was dumped and sent to <insert IP>”, I could at least turn it off

If you have access to all devices, why not just use your own self signed certificates to encrypt everything and require the certificate for all connections?

Sounds like you are describing a VPN. I was using that setup before but small stuff like immich album sharing via a link won’t work properly. Also, having to ensure a vpn is on and connected is a little to much to ask of my partner; they would turn it off and forget about it and then ask why their app wasn’t working :/

I’ve been playing around with the voice assistant stuff in homeassistant and it seemingly needs a public url to get all the features. I could be wrong about that though?

I put authentik in front of immich to handle authentication so that I would need need a 2FA code

What monitoring solution do you use? I need to set something up for my own projects but haven’t gotten around to it. Any experience with Nagios?

I hope it’s alright that I add to this a little.

What draws me to podcasts are the topics that are talked about but what gets me to stay is the host(s). I heard in your first episode that you do masonry and landscaping. I’d love to hear more about who you are and how you ended up selfhosting. How did a masonry worker find themselves this deep in tech? Thats super interesting. (Please don’t take that the wrong way, I work in construction yet here I am)

The 3 episodes you have could totally be split up into multiple episodes if you slow down and thoroughly talk about each topic and how they related to your situation.

You tend to give some hypothetical problems that your listeners might be trying to solve with a few solutions but I want to know what problems you had, how you solved it, and how you might have iterated on that solution and made it better. And in the next episode, what did you tackle next? I want to hear your journey episodically 🙂

Anyway, I’m subscribed. Good luck

I get where the original commenter is coming from. A VPN is easy to use, why not have my partner just use the VPN? But like, try adding something to your routine that you don’t care about or aren’t interested in. It’s an uphill battle and not every hill is worth dying on.

All that to say, I appreciate your comment.

i guess you were able to install the os ok? are you using proxmox or regular servers?

I was. It was learning the Nix way of doing things that was just taking more time than i had anticipated. I’ll get around to it eventually though

I tried out proxmox years ago but besides the web interface, I didn’t understand why I should use it over Debian or Ubuntu. At the moment, I’m just using Ubuntu and docker containers. In previous setups, I was using KVMs too.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you have to reboot every time you change your Nix config? That was what was painful. Once it’s set up the way you want, it seemed great but getting to that point for a beginner was what put me off.

I would be interested to see the config though