Server and self-hosting

This page lists what I am self-hosting on my home server. To see what hardware it is running on, go to the PC hardware uses page.

Base OS

Yes, there are many, many options for the base OS on a server. I use Ubuntu Server as the operating system on my server, with a mix of virtual machines and containers running on the host (depending on the job they need to do and what they need access to).

I am not in the Proxmox cult and I have no reason to run an enterprise hypervisor on my severely under-powered home server and NAS.

Apps and services

This is a list of everything I am running on my server with a couple short notes on each. It is in no particular order, but with categories!

Networking

• Tailscale: Exclusively used to access my network remotely. I wrote about how I use it with PiHole and subnet routing.
• PiHole: Full network adblocking, plus local DNS.
• Swag: My reverse proxy.
• Tor proxy: A proxy to for the Onion address for this blog. Read this post on why this blog is available as an Onion Hidden Service.
• ntfy: Sends notifications to my phone whenever it is accessed via ssh. I also use keys, password, and 2FA security on my server(s).
• Heimdall: A simple homepage for the self-hosted services we access routinely.

Files

• Syncthing. Recently switched to using this instead of Nextcloud for syncing files on all my devices.
• Dufs: Web browser access to my files, mostly for devices I don’t want to map Samba, NFS, or Syncthing. Also has WebDAV options.
• NFS & Samba: File sharing around the network. I have both for the devices that refuse to cooperative with NFS.
• Radicale: For calendars and tasks. Sync to devices using various tools depending on the client.
• LibreOffice: This is actually a virtual desktop that is exclusively LibreOffice. Files connect with WebDAV and makes it so I can edit files in any browser. I use this on my phone when in DeX mode since Android office clients are terrible.
• Nextcloud: My wife and others still use Nextcloud even though I’m not using it. Notes on why I switched away from Nextcloud: Moving away from my self-hosted Nextcloud setup.
• Photoprism: A web frontend for our family pictures. It is at the top of my list to replace this.
• StirlingPDF: A web-based tool for editing, managing, and converting PDF’s. This is one of my favorite tools for both me and my wife. See why here: Using StirlingPDF for homeschooling and owning a business
• Microbin: I occasionally need just a simple pastebin and this does the trick.
• Forgejo: I am slowly learning git and I am happily running my own server for experimentation.

Media

• Jellyfin: For streaming my media collection around the house.
• Jellyseerr: Allows people in the house to request various media to be added to Jellyfin.
• Navidrome: A Subsonic compatible music server. I don’t listen to music, but my wife uses this all the time.
• Audiobookshelf: It serves as my frontend for the podcasts I archive.
• Jelu: I like to read and my wife ABSOLUTELY LOVES TO READ and runs circles around me (she reads about 100 books a year, I’m good for about 15), so we needed a tool for tracking what we’ve read.
• Calibre-Web: A frontend for our personal ebook library.
• REDACTED: This section is hidden for no reason, officer. 🏴‍☠

Web

• Shaarli: A bookmarks manager I use instead of managing bookmarks with browser sync services so my bookmarks are platform agnostic.
• FreshRSS: I’ve used lots of self-hosted RSS aggregators and FreshRSS is the one I like the best. Here’s notes on my RSS setup.
• RSS-Bridge: Creates RSS feeds for sites that don’t have one.
• morss: Pulls full article content into FreshRSS.
• Hugo: The static file server used for this here blog.
• GoToSocial: A single-user Fediverse instance I use for my Mastodon profile. Read why and how I set it up here: Getting on with GoToSocial.
• Searx-NG: A metasearch engine I switched to because web search in 2024 is terrible. More notes on how and I why I’m using Searx-NG here: A check-in on self-hosting SearXNG metasearch engine.

Archiving and digital hoarding

• Podgrab: For automatically grabbing and archiving podcast feeds. Notes on why I archive podcasts here: Archiving podcasts and serving them in local RSS feeds.
• yt-dlp: Downloading videos from YouTube. Notes here on how I archive YouTube: Download options for YouTube archiving.
• Kiwix: A frontend for the various sites I’ve archived, along with a local copy of Wikipedia.
• zimit: A tool for archiving full websites and then accessing using Kiwix.
• ArchiveBox: For downloading and archiving individual webpages.
• Kolibri: A web frontend for homeschooling resources.
• fdroidcl: A tool for downloading Android apps from F-Droid. I use it to archive Android apps from F-Droid and other FOSS app stores locally.
• Docker: Not a specific tool, but I run a script to download Docker containers, compress into a tar, and archive.
• Flatpak: Same as Docker above. I use built-in Flatpak utilities to download and archive flatpaks for installation offiine and have in my archive. I found this is the best way to archive Linux apps that will allow for actual offline installations. Any other app format - binaries, source, or .deb - still need to download dependencies. I would love to use AppImage instead, but almost nothing is packaged as AppImages.

Gaming

• EmulatorJS: A web frontend for retro gaming and allows you to play straight in the browser. This is similar to what the Internet Archive uses for their Arcade
• Gameyfin: Another web frontend, this time for my DRM-free games I’ve purchased from Humble and GOG. I forget what games I own, so its a nice frontend to browse and download them from my NAS to any PC that way I don’t have to keep downloading them from the source.
• Minecraft: I have servers for both Bedrock and Java so my kids can play together.
• Minetest: A backup server in case anything happens to Minecraft or they want to play and we’re having internet issues. It is setup with the Mineclone 2 world mod.

Retired

Items I was hosting, but not using any more.

• Plex
• Memos
• Filebrowser
• Kasm
• Airsonic
• Keeweb
• Mumble
• Paperless-NGX
• PiVPN
• Shiori
• Tubesync
• Xowa
• Zoneminder
• Wordpress

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