@lazyb0y I really would like good remote access to and search of the files I intend to store in this system (or nextcloud, or whatever I end up using). But my kneejerk feeling is that I'd like them to be stored in a normal directory structure. Other than that Seafile seems perfect for my needs.
Maybe I'm being silly...currently trying to get nextcloud installed and having the same old problems I did with it ten years ago.
@alisynthesis
LinkWarden for webpage preservation and cross browser bookmark access.
PiHole + unbound for LAN ad domain blocking and secure DNS lookup.
I'll second that tailscale is nice for off-site *personal* access rather than anyone access. Also nice because I can have pihole resolve my tailscale fun names on LAN without leaving the local network. Off-site I turn on tailscale and see the same stuff.
I thought I would be giving Seafile a try, but now I see that it uses a proprietary file structure, which I'm absolutely not okay with. Bummer!
whats a proprietary file structure?
@lazyb0y it means there's not just a simple file structure like we're all used to. seafile will do *something* with the files, and use a database structure to organize them itself. which means if i ever stop using seafile, things are a mess, and i can't just move a root directory somewhere.
totally not acceptable to me.
@alisynthesis
ah ok i see… was already on their website and found „Extensible File Properties“…
i usually understand „proprietary“ as some format that is owned by someone who often only allows me to use it if i pay them, cannot be copied in another implementation as this is not allowed and it’s not even documented.
but if it’s all open source all that would nit be the case as the format and its handling is visible in the sources…
@lazyb0y right, maybe not quite the right word. maybe "obfuscated" is a better one? either way, i really want to easily be able to mount these files anywhere and have access to them, or copy them elsewhere and ditch seafile. neither of those things looks simple to do.
@alisynthesis
also not sure what the right word would be ;)
haven’t looked deeper for now but looks like it’s not the „normal“ file sync thing as we‘d expect it when we talk about appa like nextcloud or syncthing.
rather a database with a special client and different views.
i find the concept not generally uninteresting, though.
@alisynthesis Raspberry Pi File server (with Kodi on another Raspberry Pi behind the TV as the main client). This has worked really well for an on demand video library (plenty of ripped kids DVDs etc).
Tempted to add a touchscreen music streaming setup (and phase out Amazon Alexa)…
@alisynthesis I started looking at Jellyfin based on many of the other replies, not a perfect match:
“Most Single Board Computers (SBC): Most SBCs (including the Raspberry Pi, especially the Raspberry Pi 5) are too slow to provide an acceptable Jellyfin experience as they often lack proper support for hardware acceleration.”
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-selection
@imikotoba aw, bummer. i'm running mine on a biggish synology nas via docker, which appears to be running it well so far. (i have my synology loaded up with ram, which helps.)
My family uses daily
@jellyfin
@nextcloud
@phanpy
#SearXNG and #immich that are locally hosted on old PC.
All installed via @yunohost .
@alisynthesis
@alisynthesis Here's everything I self-host right now in my homelab:
I like and use all of them, but my top things right now would be Nextcloud, Forgejo and Woodpecker.
@alisynthesis I just started using Navidrome for music and it’s pretty fun. Also I love SilverBullet for just quick note taking and I’ve been using that to document all my self hosted stuff, it’s nice.
@cobweb cool, thanks for the recs! I've heard great things about Navidrome. I'm currently planning to keep using Plexamp for my music because I lurv it, but I'll probably give Navidrome a try down the line.
SilverBullet looks cool!!
Doing a real self-hosting push today:
Synology Photos --> Immich
Plex --> Jellyfin
Maybe more?
@alisynthesis
Don't know if you have an audiobook collection. But if you do: audiobookshelf.
@defaultmediatransmitter I do indeed! That's a great idea...I've been very frustrated by every audiobook situation I've been able to create w/ internal network access only, and have ended up just putting the ones i'm currently reading on my phone.
which is...kinda lame. :)
@alisynthesis @defaultmediatransmitter Instead of audiobooks I use a text-to-speech reader on whatever book I'm currently reading. Picking the right voice makes it palatable.
It means I can read a few chapters, give my eyes a break by listening to a few chapters ... and I'm always in the right place when I next pick up the book.
I have a pleasant female Scots voice (a freebie from Ceres) loaded into ReadEra on my de-Googled Android phone.
@elsemusic I have tried that because I think it's a very cool idea, but I'm just not happy with the text-to-speech. I honestly wish I were because that would be awesome!
@elsemusic the voices are getting really good, I agree, but I just love a great audiobook narrator. And I kind of use audiobooks differently than I do reading the text.
@defaultmediatransmitter i've got audiobookshelf running...it's AWESOME! thank you for suggesting that, it's a gamechanger for me. :)
@defaultmediatransmitter so now that I have Cloudflare Tunnels running, I should be able to pull this off!
@alisynthesis Busy installing Immich too!
@jeremy 
my instance is busily indexing! v. excited to have a nice photo library. i installed and tested immich on a local computer awhile back, and it was totally awesome.
@alisynthesis Not even close to indexing yet :(
@jeremy oh, no way. mine's going to take days. but i'm okay with that!
even on a big desktop computer w/ a pretty good graphics card it ran overnight, iirc. on my synology i fully expect it to run for days on my 11,800-ish files.
@alisynthesis I'm running it on a Raspberry Pi 5. Just logged in with the app and this stuff is amazing, why didn't I start using this earlier!
@jeremy if you're not using all your power, there are concurrence settings in the admin area that are really handy. (the admin of immich is awesome!)
@alisynthesis I've been using immich for a while. The only thing that bugs me is the (high) frequency of the updates and the fact I don't keep on top of them. I started using it when it was alpha and they often had quite a few breaking changes, so I'm not quite comfortable with just automating my docker pulls to keep it up to date.
@edinburgh_man that's super good to know. I'll keep an eye on that!
@alisynthesis@io.waxandleather.come too. I have a home server with Proxmox that needs to move downstairs and I need to get pfSense stood up on it so I can use DNS for local services.
Go go IT Sunday!
@alisynthesis ooh, that prompted me to realize i could probably try spinning up immich to stress-test my new server ahead of trying to move some of my existing services over to it
@ryan immich setup will definitely achieve that! :D
I know Synology Photos and Plex are kinda already self hosting...but they're not, really. And I know Plex is selling my data left and right at this point. Probably Synology too.
And let's face it, Synology Photos just kinda sucks. Honestly, Plex kinda sucks at this point too.
So they can get outta my face.
@alisynthesis I have been using #Immich for a long while now, and other than a few issues with a weird initial setup, it's been great.
Its facial recognition stuff will almost certainly trigger purists, but you don't need to enable that at all.
I installed #Jellyfin a few years ago and used it as much as I used #Plex ie: never - I forgot what it even was until a few weeks ago when I was cleaning up :)
I have been playing with #Tailscale to make some of the connectivity easier, but I still haven't had too much time to dig that deep; it seems pretty great though. I especially like the CEO's blog posts on what appears to be a very transparent policy.
@lorry nice! I've got Immich and Jellyfin going. I use my own Plex libraries for pretty much all watching I do, so Jellyfin is a no-brainer, and it's AWESOME. I'll have to do some extra setup over time, but I can tell I'll like it much better than Plex, barring consistent issues updating or anything like that.
I'm starting out using Cloudflare Tunnels, b/c as someone else here pointed out, I can always switch that out for Tailscale, etc. later. So I'm off to the races!
I heart Piwigo, which is really to install, and let's me do photodumps to automatically setup full featured galleries, that can be easily setup for sharing to private groups too. https://piwigo.org
@sberson that looks awesome! Have you compared it to immich at all?
@alisynthesis@io.waxandleather.com
I haven't yet. I believe Immich gives some better options for encryption though, so if security is a big concern then it might be the better choice. But Piwigo is super easy to install, gets regular uodates, and has mobile apps for both Android & iOS that work well.
@sberson it's good to have another option. Definitely looking forward to getting rid of Synology photos.
@alisynthesis
I'm very surprised by replies here.
How come nobody mentioned Jellyfin yet? =)
Last week my colleague told me a story: she was asking on reddit about how to utilise newer feature on an older NAS, and even there was an advise to by new NAS, and use old one for Jellyfin.
One can only aspire to be as bold as that adviser =))
@Q3fRtMU0WFxfK2M awesome :)
I've been a heavy plex user for ages, but I am pretty frustrated by both the privacy and experience trade-offs at this point. I may very well just leave Plex running for my friends and family members who are into that and install Jellyfin for myself!
This would have the side benefit of letting me continue to use Plexamp, which I think is a really wonderful music app.
@alisynthesis My Mastodon instance. But I also like my Home Assistant setup. And mail. Even though that has become a bit of a pita through the years.
@jeremy I have an old laptop running HAOS and it is rock solid! I really only use it for some basic automation of lights and a few other minor things around my house, but honestly, I love it.
I wish it were easier to find devices to use with it that will run fully locally. I'd love to have, for example, a garage door set up, but every time I've investigated, I've kind of given up.
@alisynthesis I totally understand, every time I want to configure something I find myself cursing all these devices, entities, actions, automations, scripts, events, zones, timers, states, templates, areas and labels. The thing is almost too configurable.
@jeremy it's definitely for people who like to fiddle around with shit! 
@alisynthesis Honestly, setting up a #chatmail server for #DeltaChat was quite fun. It was quick and relatively uncomplicated and I felt real good being able to setup such a powerful instant messaging service on my 1€ VPS. The bigger challenge is convincing people to use it 
@stormii haha isn't that always the issue?
@alisynthesis I’m still just fooling around with things, but for that purpose Yunohost on my Raspberry Pi is awesome.
I can spin up and test close to everything in seconds. Recently discovered my webhosting has a one click installer with all kinds of self-hosting open source things I will be looking into.
But for now I’m not permanently using anything selfhosted.
@alisynthesis I like https://tt-rss.org/ which is an RSS reader designed to feel like the old dead Google Reader. I've got it hosted on a cheap shared hosting service.
@ranjit part of what has stopped me from working on a lot of typical self-hosting projects is that I tend to host things on my NAS locally, but that becomes a real pain in the ass and a security problem when I want to access things outside my local network.
Maybe I need to just break down and find a decent hosting service for this stuff. Do you like yours?
Look into Tailscale. It's transformed self hosting for me - any device can be securely connected to the home network (using vpns) and it's dead simple to set up. Private accounts are limited to 100 devices which should be plenty for most people.
@alisynthesis @ranjit You might find that Tailscale helps solve that problem: it allows you to expose things to your VPN, which is accessible from anywhere.
Interestingly, they also support issuing TLS certificates for the VPN hosts.
@alisynthesis @ranjit Yeah, I run Tailscale on my NAS and access it that way. It sounds like we have a fairly similar approach.
@alisynthesis I've been using dreamhost for a verrrrry long time. It's the basic 2000s style server with php and sql and optional email inbox and domain registration. They might have more modern offerings that I've never tried. It's fine I guess!
@ranjit oh man, I used to use Dreamhost long ago! Fine would have been the word I used at the time. 🤣
@alisynthesis @ranjit fwiw Dreamhost is run by “free speech” Nazi enablers.
@alisynthesis Mail. Because it's so essential, still.
I like #Modoboa , easy to setup and use. Comes pretty well pre-configured and runs butter smooth since I've installed it (begin of january)
@DeltaLima you are bold, self-hosting your email! How's the spam situation?
@alisynthesis Spam is actually not a problem. Modoboa comes with a good preconfigured amavis/spamassasin/clamav/postscreen setup. But you can also use rspamd, which also does a very good job.
@DeltaLima that's very cool.
