Anyone else have it ? The more work I do setting things up like dockers, reverse proxies, single sign on, etc. the more I want to do it. But I’m running out of ideas of things to host that would actually benefit me. But I have that itch where I want more lol.
So far I have the following: (EDIT: added descriptions for those who aren’t familar with all of it. )
- Caddy - use this primarily as a reverse proxy to access my applications via my domain and outside the house
- Nextcloud - mainly using it for cloud storage but also some of their other apps likes decks and tasks as well as contacts and calendar.
- Memos - simple note taking app similar to twitter but personal.
- Miniflux - rss
- Authentik - sso
- Portainer - web view of dockers and status / health
- KitchenOwl - groceries / recipe management
- Actual - zero budgeting (like YNAB)
- Firefly iii - finances management
- Immich - images / iCloud replacement
- Organizr (barely using it. Trying to think of more use cases) - dashboard of all my services
- Speedtest - runs daily speed tests and monitors.
- Plex - host my media library
- Plex_Debrid / rclone - sync real Debrid with plex.
- rsync to backup data to one onsite and one off site location. Automated backups
- Watchtower automated docker updates
- Home Assistant - home automation
- Home bridge - Apple home automation
- Zigbee2mqtt - manage zigbee smart home devices
- Unifi controller - manage my network
I think that’s everything!
Edit: Thanks for the overwhelming responses! I really appreciate everyone with their opinions. First things first I did get borg setup for both my server and my desktop so thats awesome! I am waiting for response from my backup server admin if they can install rdiff-backup for me so I can utilize that as well for my cloud backups.
Going to take a look at a few other of the many suggestions here! More than a few I like!
A local caching DNS server can be useful and is easy to get set up. And learning about DNS gives you insight into one of the most important pieces of how the internet works. You can go as far as setting up your own root zone which means you have the needed components to run the entire internet (except for the bandwidth it would require).
I don’t see an apache or nginx server in your list, do you host your own websites? Get one of those set up, and then read about LetsEncrypt to creating and managing SSL certs.
There’s just so many other things you can run from home… Chat servers like IRC, instant messager services like XMPP via OpenFire, a local SMTP relay with postfix, file hosting under something like SeaFile. If you have a collection of music files you could even build your own internet radio station.
I’ve been wanting to set up NextCloud on my servers, but I’ve been busy trying to get all the OS upgrades caught up. One of these days…
Caddy is listed instead of Apache or nginx. And it handles all of the SSL on its own.
Ah ok. There’s a ton of stuff on these lists that I’ve never heard of before, and since nobody is adding descriptions for the rest of us who aren’t familiar with the projects, I think there will be a lot of possibilities passed over in this post that might have otherwise been of interest.
I agree with you, I don’t know what a lot of that stuff is.
Yeah I was thinking of people giving me ideas didn’t even cross my mind people would use my list for ideas. Updated!
Didn’t think of that. Most eyes are probably already off this post but I’ll edit it with some descriptions !
Updated my apps to describe what I use them for. But it’s funny you mention this because as I switched away from cloudflare tunnels I was learning how to get all of it working with nginx proxy manager. Took me a while cause im a dns/ssl noob. But I learned a lot and then switched to caddy for its simplicity.
Now a local caching dns server is not something I’ve thought about before and while not something I’d probably need it would be a great learning experience.
I did learn a bit about lets encrypt but happy caddy handles it all for me now. I still need to learn more though because I need to do some tls verification skipping for some of my sites. The other ideas are cool too. Thanks !
Oh and thanks for updating the app descriptions, gives me more to look through!
Seems like one of the features I read about for Nextcloud was that it could host a Zoom-like video conference… Am I remembering right? I keep thinking of setting that up because our model train club has a lot of older members that can’t attend in person and a paid subscription is out of our range.
I haven’t played with the Nextcloud chat apps yet so not too sure. But I’ve heard a lot of people talk about “Jitsi” as a zoom alternative and planned to look into it.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll check into that!
There’s a lot of options for local DNS caching. I think one of the easiest is dnsmasq which not only handles dns but also lets you set up a local DHCP service, and will automatically add local machine names to your DNS lookups. I use the DHCP side for my lan and wifi networks, and then put static IPs of my servers into the hosts files on that machine (which dnsmasq also reads) so everything on my network can easily be addressed by name.
One of the benefits of a DNS cache is that it saves the wait time for lookups of sites you frequently visit (although your desktop may already provide this too). Another advantage is using local names when your various services need to reference each other. For instance if you have a database at a given IP, you could add that info to dnsmasq, point all your services to the name, and if you ever need to move the db to a different IP you only have to make one update to tell every other machine where it moved to.