this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
94 points (99.0% liked)

Selfhosted

40296 readers
213 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hey guys, I'm new to self-hosting; I'm trying to set up cloud storage to store pics and other content. However, I’m unsure whether to use my old computer, Buy NAS or ResberryPie to set up a home server.

Also, what is the best privacy-friendly OS to use with the home server?

Lastly, do’s and don’ts.

Any help would be appreciated (:

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Really depends on what you have, what you're trying to store, etc, etc.

Like we need more info.

I've been running a windows desktop as my "server" for years, with a large data drive, that's backed up by Crashplan.

It stores all our phone stuff - pictures, downloads, app Backups, etc, that get their via Syncthing and Foldersync.

I'm currently in the process of switching to a Raspberry Pi to handle a few things: Tailscale (mesh network), PiHole (for home network), Syncthing. It's data drive (however I decide to do that, direct connected or some kind of NAS) will be backed up to a service like Backblaze B2 or something like it.

The power draw if that desktop is massive compared to the Pi. Granted the Pi lacks horsepower, but it should be fine for what I need it to do.

[–] fahad@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sorry for the lack of clarification. I'm mainly into backing up personal and device data and the ability to add media through Plex. I'm also exploring the idea of self-hosting Bitwarden for password management, allowing access to data from anywhere through the internet. Although both Raspberry Pi and NAS are options, privacy concerns lead me to favour Raspberry Pi over NAS.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think Pi will struggle with Plex. Maybe the latest version does it better, I'm not sure. Hit up a Pi forum or a Plex forum. I've seen it talked about.

There's also mini PCs, that have real graphics, but have idle power draw of maybe 10 watts. More than idle on some Pi's, but I believe RPi 4 idle is like 5 watts? 8 watts? I forget. Those mini PCs start around $100. They can run with a monitor or headless. You'll see them talked about in Plex and Jellyfin forums/communities.

For everything else, you're looking to do what I'm doing.

I just finished PiHole and Tailscale (mesh network, so all my mobile devices can now connect to home from anywhere with a transparent encrypted connection).

Bitwarden and Syncthing are next. And I'm looking to switch to dockers for this stuff.

Enabling SSH on RPi (basically you create an SSH file on the boot partition) https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-ssh/

Latest versions of RPi use nmcli command line for managing network interfaces, just an FYI.

Instructions for Tailscale on RPi https://tailscale.com/download/linux/rpi-bullseye FYI, requires a reboot after setup.

Syncthing on RPi https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-syncthing/

Here's instructions for a PiHole Docker (I haven't tried this, my PiHole I installed directly.) https://pimylifeup.com/pi-hole-docker/