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If you go for btrfs, be careful going backwards on kernel versions.

I had upgraded my kernel on Gentoo, which also happen to include a btrfs update. Booted up and found the latest kernel didn’t like something about my full disk luks encryption with RAID mirror setup (for the root partition, and unrelated to btrfs), so I decided to go back to the previous kernel. Big mistake.

My entire root partition got corrupted to hell. It mounted read only at first so I decided to try to go through regular repair steps. It got worse. Got to an eventual step that someone said could take a few weeks to restore (forgot the commands). This isn’t an option for my server. So with snapshots broken, unable to use the old and now new kernel due to corruption from attempting to go back to a previous kernel, I had to restore with a full partition clone backup I had created prior to the kernel upgrade… Also went back to ext4 again afterwards.

Btrfs treated me really well for a few years, and snapshots and performance are great, but once it hits a hiccup, you might in a world of trouble. Don’t think I’ve ever run into such a thing with ext4 over the years, which is why I reverted to it - not saying it’s immune to such things, but this is just me.

Not sure if zfs would have such a dramatic situation, but maybe something to consider about btrfs if you ever decide you’ll need the ability to go back a kernel version due to whatever reason.

I’ve been using “passwords” on nextcloud for a few years now. Minimal issues with the app, moving apps, and browser extensions. Not perfect, but hey it’s self hosted and reliable.

My personal advice, secure it down to only permitting what needs it, regardless of your trust to the network.

Treat each device as if they’ve been compromised and the attacker on the compromised device is now trying to move laterally. Example scenario: had you blocked all devices except your laptop or phone to your server, your server wouldn’t have been hacked because someone went through a hacked cloud-connected HVAC panel.

I lock down everything and grant access only to devices that should have access. Then on top of that, I enable passwords and 2FA on everything as if it were public… Nothing I self host is public. It’s all behind my network firewall and router firewall, and can only be accessed externally by a VPN.

Yeah, in my example, I have various genres of music I listen to and some days I’m in the mood for one and not another. Some of those might have subgenres I am in the mood to listen to. For example: Metal might break into subfolders called black metal, thrash metal, melodic metal, etc. Based on where I feel they belong the most. If I’m in the mood for some melodic metal today, I’ll go there. Or EDM, I’ll have a folder for Psytrance, another for House, etc…

Rather than trying to edit the metadata on thousands and thousands of files every time I change media systems as I’ve done over these years, it’s 100x simpler for me to just navigate to the folders directly and not care about how the system “wants” to organize it. Every media system wants to organize differently and I’m kind of tired of having to spend hours editing all my music just to get it to organize the way that works for me, so that’s where I’ve gotten to the point of just using folder structures.

I could never get Plex to work the way I wanted it to, so I’m actually someone who moved to Kodi and then to Emby. Once I got into Emby, I’ve yet to leave it. My biggest problem now is that I want to leave it for Jellyfin, but the lack of many things I love about Emby have never been moved to Jellyfin.

For example, I have a very specific organization of my music libraries I use to navigate what I want to listen to much quicker, since I’m into all kinds of genres of music. Emby allows me to navigate by folder structure, so if I’m in the mood for heavy metal one day, go to that folder. If classical another day, go there. Jellyfin on the other hand didn’t have folder structure view and even though it’s one of the top requested features for the past few years when I last checked, it’s never been added…

I think the day Jellyfin does fill in these gaps, assuming new ones aren’t introduced due to Emby also improving, I’ll finally jump over.

I guess to the original topic, I do think Jellyfin exceeds Plex though lol.

Plus 1 to Venstar. Got myself the T7900 and even though it offers internet access, I just blocked it at my router and connected it to the network, controlling it through home assistant. No need for third party access and whatnot with it since it’s completely local.

For those of us not using Wayland, any idea if this still applies? Waiting on my flatpak version to support audio sharing with screen share… And please performance improvements.

Haha, 1 year ago… Cannot remember, but I’m positive it was some failed autocorrect. Unfortunately I can’t figure out what was autocorrected. I’d just ignore “dusky” in that sentence. I don’t even know what word means lol

Raid 1 has saved my server a couple of times over from disaster. I make weekly cold backups, but I didn’t have to worry about it when my alert came in notifying me which drive went dead - just swap, rebuild, move along. So yeah I’d say it’s definitely worth it. Just don’t treat raid as a backup solution - and yes, continue to use an external cold storage backup solution as you mentioned. Fires, exploding power supplies, ransomware, etc don’t care if you’re using raid or not.

I’ve been using the fdroid syncthing-fork version for a long time now and haven’t had any issues at all… Doesn’t mean it’ll last forever but it’s been getting the job done for me even in its current state.

… And can’t remember my original reason to use the fork instead lol

Glad it’s getting a little more light. Been trying to tell people this for a few years now lol. It’s the reason I’ve stayed away from it since first learning of the tool and looking at the “source code”.

I’d say anyone wanting to go this deep into a home monitoring setup will likely go with what works best for them instead of reading and following the entirety of this guide… I’m one of those people…

Wrote my own log parsing software to put into a database, display and alert through grafana, which is alerting through a homemade webhook that sends a notification to ntfy based on severity… And I also use uptime Kuma like mentioned, but my notifications channel is ntfy. No cloudflare for my internal services, only wireguard to connect home and use everything. And definitely no telegram.

Plenty of other stuff setup, but my security alerts and monitoring rely heavily on the syslog/grafana server which helps me monitor everything.

I converted my gaming machine into a server as well. I actually took the graphics card out as I couldn’t find a major use for it, but kept the 12 core Ryzen and upped it to 128gb memory. It now self host way too many things, including a few game servers my friends and I play… But even with all this, CPU carries along nicely and not even at half memory consumption (yet).

But as others have asked, what’s your goal? Don’t overkill it if you’re only hosting one service or something. If you’re doing a lot like I do, then up the RAM. And seriously consider whether the GPU is even useful or needed if you’re not using a desktop environment.

I’ve had this issue many times as well. I’ve found changing the MTU would help since it seems some filter specific ranges. Doesn’t always work but I’ve had more success than failure doing so

Glad I looked at this thread. The fact they’re cheap and have what sound like reliable PoE hats… Tempted to replace a few old Pis lol. Maybe. But can at least say no future devices will be Pis at this point.

Note: only using them for simple things. Wireguard VPN (no I don’t have a fast internet so I don’t need more than the 1gb connection speed), pi hole, and a touch panel I installed that connects to home assistant on the wall.

Hey this is pretty nice and simple, I like it. Had to hold down on the app to select the settings to change my server, would be nicer if that settings button was within the app itself… But got it pointing to my self-hosted instance and tested it out. Works perfectly! Thanks for sharing

Thanks for clarifying! Took a deeper look on my computer and I guess I learned that NoScript was misidentifying due to the cors or something. Just had to call it out before, as one can never be too careful these days :D

I use iperf3 with Speedtest’s servers, personally. But for a browser, yes JavaScript is needed… But needing JavaScript files from like 20 different domains is typically a red flag for me on any site.

My solution to this question a year or so ago was to take my gaming desktop, which was collecting dust after I moved to my gaming laptop, and gut it down to a 4U server rack case. Best decision I’ve ever made. 12 core Ryzen and 128gb memory. Got a 10g adapter in the pci express, 8xHDD for data and then 2 mirrored nvme for the OS itself. Only thing I kept out was the video card since I had no use for it (yet)

An equivalent “server” on the market would probably cost a fortune and cost you a ridiculous amount of electricity.

The NoScript list terrifies me a little though… Not sure what’s going on there, but that’s a lot of JavaScript lol.