Come to say thank you. Time to move from proprietary to Open Source

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨essell@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Thanks to this community I’ve learned and I’m feeling inspired. I’ve loved having an NAS for the last few years, but it’s woefully under powered for what I’m using it for these days.

So I’ve ordered some basic PC parts, gonna build a basic setup using an old CPU I got lying about and try the NAS OS I saw talked about on here recently.

TrueNAS looks like a good option with only slight fears it’ll go down the well known path to the dark side like so many free options before.

In any event, I’m looking forward to adding Nextcloud and Jellyfin, to trying out Docker and generally having more control over things.

Thanks again to you all for informing and inspiring.

I’ll be back if I get questions!

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Comments

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muusemuuse@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit. Now when anything fails it’s my own damn fault and I can actually fix it. This sounds bad but it’s actually a much better experience. I learn a lot and have fun. I’m the guy who made all those G4 cube retrofit kits on Thingiverse. It’s been a great distraction for me over the years.

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- fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yup, my servers just run bare Debian and ZFS and I have backup scripts that parse the docker compose files for how often to run and keep backups.
  
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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thank you, I’ll add podman to the list of things to checkout. Feels good to know I’ll get to set this up however I want
  
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  - Colloidal@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    There’s also Incus, but if you’ll be using your TrueNAS box to host the containers, I suggest you stick to Docker as it’s the default. If you’re building a second container box, Proxmox, Docker, Podman, and Incus are your best bets. Choose what fits your expertise and needs best.
    
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- theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Do you have a recommendation on how to start migrating from docker compose to podman pod or podman kube? And do you know about a web ui for podman (similar to dockge or komodo)?
  
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  - muusemuuse@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I haven’t learned about kubes yet. I do use and love quadlets though.
    
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- Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit.
  
  It sucks, because I really like Synology’s ecosystem–but I don’t buy vendor lock-in devices. Luckly we have arc that lets you use SynologyOS on bare metal. If you get get it working with your hardware it’s badass.
  
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ohshit604@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Late to the party but I decided to pickup a 13th gen ASUS NUC with an i7 over a prebuilt NAS, bought a couple external hard-disk bays setup Proxmox running a headless Debian 12 VM however, this was a mistake on my part because the Debian 12 Linux kernel is pretty far out of date and does not support the CPU properly.

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Sproutling@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
When my QNAP finally died on me, I decided to build a DIY NAS and did consider some of the NAS OSes, but I ultimately decided that I really just wanted a regular Linux server. I always find the built-in app stores limiting and end up manually running Docker commands anyways so I don’t feel like I ever take advantage of the OS features.

I just have an Arch box and several docker-compose files for my various self-hosting needs, and it’s all stored on top of a ZFS RaidZ-1. The ZFS array does monthly scrubs and sends me an email with the results. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best option, but YMMV.

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- dan@upvote.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I like Unraid because it’s essentially “just Linux” but with a nice web UI. It’s got a great UI for Docker, VMs (KVM) and Linux containers (LXC).
  
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  - unwillingsomnambulist@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Just got unraid up and running for the first time today. There’s a bit of a learning curve coming from TrueNAS Scale but it supports my use case: throwing whatever spinning rust I have into one big array. Seems to work alright, hardware could use additional cooling so I’ve shut it off until a new heatsink arrives.
    
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- curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  My NASs are purely NAS, I prefer a Debian server for… Pretty much everything. But my storage only does storage, I keep those separate (even for an old PC acting as a NAS).
  
  No matter what goes down, I can bring it back up, even with a hardware failure.
  
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  - Sproutling@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I used to do that. I had a QNAP NAS and a small Intel NUC running Arch that would host all my services. I would just mount the NAS folders via Samba into the NUC. Problem is that services can’t watch the filesystem for changes. If I add a video to my Jellyfin directory, Jellyfin won’t automatically initiate a scan.
    
    Nowadays, I just combine them into one. Just seems simpler that way.
    
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- ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Out of curiosity as an owner of a QNAP NAS, how did it go out? Any signs it was in its last legs? Now that I’ve used one, the form factor is the only thing better than most options out there when I got it.
  
  Nowadays all QNAP, Sinology and other NAS vendors supposedly offer a lot of extra value with their cloud options, but I find them a sure way to get hacked based on the average company’s investment in security (I work in IT, it is a sad affair sometimes) combined with all the ransomware specifically targeting them due to old packages they rely on = I’ll build my next system from the ground up, even if the initial cost is higher and the result is uglier.
  
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  - Sproutling@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    It was this nasty Intel clock drift bug: forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=157459
    
    Support was completely unresponsive and refused to do anything. Didn’t even acknowledge the issue AFAIK. I tried to add the resistor but my copy of the NAS didn’t expose the right pins so I couldn’t even solder them on if I wanted to. Then I tried mounting my drives into another Linux machine, at which point I realized they were using some custom version of LVM that didn’t work with standard Linux. I ended up having to buy a new QNAP NAS just to retrieve my data and then I returned it.
    
    After that, I swore off proprietary NASes. If I can’t easily retrieve data from perfectly good drives, it is an absolute no go.
    
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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I have feeling I may find myself here in time, as I develop this setup more.
  
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  - Sproutling@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    If you’re familiar with Linux, I highly recommend it. The flexibility is just great and you can setup whatever dashboards / management tools you need. No need to tie yourself to a specific solution IMHO.
    
    If you’re going with Docker containers, a lot of the NAS OSes just hold you back because they don’t support all the options that Docker offers. You’ll be fighting the system if you need to do any advanced Docker configuration.
    
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- lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I went with OMV because 1. I’m cheap, and 2. I could configure it how I wanted.
  
  Glad I went that way, because I was considering “upgrading” to a Synology for a while.
  
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  - Sproutling@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Oh yeah. I bet you’re feeling lucky you didn’t switch to Synology given the recent drama where they’re locking features down to their branded hard drives, which we all know are just up-charged drives from regular vendors.
    
    What drive bay enclosure are you using btw and how does it connect to your Mac mini?
    
    Never heard of dockge. I’ll have to check it out! I’ve just been using podman and docker-compose scripts.
    
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Trimatrix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
When you end up having a mini homelab look into komo.do for container orchestration over the overkill options like kubernetes or portainer

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- TunaLobster@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I prefer dockge for putting all of my compositions in one place.
  
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  - wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    And being able to manage multiple hosts in one UI is the absolute tits. There are a few features I miss from portainer but none strong enough to pull me back. And no bs SaaS licensing and costs…
    
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- wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  So what’s the threshold for ‘mini’ vs ‘you need to stop’…? Number of hosts, or number of containers, or number of public services, or…
  
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  - bss03@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    When you lose a system. It responds to ping; all services are up, but you can’t find the damn thing.
    
    So, not a number so much as a limit to your organizational skill+effort.
    
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  - Trimatrix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Not sure, currently have 8 nodes and 40 apps running
    
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- HelloRoot@lemy.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  dokploy is good as well
  
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SidewaysHighways@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
i loke TrueNas! and after trying out True Nas on bare metal for a year or two, now I run it as a VM under Proxmox.

so awesome

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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You’re the second person to suggest that approach. I’ll check it out before I do setup next week
  
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  - Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I’ve tried TrueNAS, Rockstor, Openfiler (iSCSI), EasyNAS, and a few others and TrueNAS is easily the favorite. Running it alongside Proxmox is ideal if your server is beefy enough.
    
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muusemuuse@lemm.ee ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Open source is certainly in a great position now but there are some things it’s just not doing that I’m frankly too dumb to do myself. For example, there’s no open source answer to appleTV. The closest thing we have is androidTV and it’s just awful.

I would love to see a TV-centric desktop environment you could run on top of any typical Linux distro. Something implementing live tiles like old windows phone had, a web app that you could access with a smartphone and use to control it like a remote, single-task interface rather than a task-juggling interface we have on normal DEs, sigh. I have a vision I cannot possibly create because that would take incredible skill that I just don’t have to make and I can’t just whine that nobody is making it for me.

Meanwhile, all my Apple stuff works together in a way I generally approve of.

I need to transition away from this at some point but there aren’t always open source solutions for this.

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- francois@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  As a TV centric distro, there is libreelec libreelec.tv You can use it to stream media from jellyfin, plex or other streaming platforms with plugins
  
  It runs kodi that you can also use in other distros as a package
  
  Kodi supports hdmi-cec, which allows to use your TV remote to control kodi, the hardware needs to be compatible too though (raspberry pis are compatible) There is also a mobile app, Kore, to control kodi on local network
  
  The UX may not be as slick as androidtv/appletv but it is customizable
  
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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’m planning to switch my Plex setup to Jellyfin on this new platform. I tried it on my NAS and it almost cooked the very meager CPU 😮
  
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  - muusemuuse@lemm.ee ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Jellyfin is HEAVY when doing trickplay scans. But outside of that, it’s really not that demanding. I’m running on an N100 right now but I’ve run it fine on stuff as weak as a rk3399.
    
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- meltedcheese@c.im ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  @muusemuuse @essell Maybe this? There seem to be a number of possibilities. Let us know what you find out. #HomeAutomation #Maker #SelfHost
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Kuinox@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Consider that a new power efficient CPU may be cheaper by consuming less electricity over a few years!

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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I hadn’t considered that! Thank you.
  
  I’m hoping the OS, as it’s designed for this, is going to be helpful in getting the right balance with power usage.
  
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  - Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    To put this into perspective for you, if your NAS sits at idle for 90% of the time (probably true) and an older CPU is 50w (kinda high, but maybe) and a newer CPU is 15w, over an entire year it will save you around 305.76 kWh. Average price per kWh in the USA is 12.89¢. So over a year a new CPU can reasonably save you around $39.41. So it’s not nothing, but it’s nothing crazy, but lower idle wattage = lower temp = components last longer, which is the real savings.
    
    If an older CPU is only gonna last you 5 years, when a new might last 10, you’re going to save almost $400 in energy and generally a CPU today is going to be cheaper than a CPU in 10 years (probably^tm).
    
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  - Kuinox@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    You can calculate it !
    Take your power usage and compute the cost over a year.
    I will soon add a SSD because i finally moved from a RAID 1 to RAID 5 (so more HDDs), it consume more electricity.
    I calculated an additional between 20-30€ a year of electricity, adding a SSD for read/write cache would allow the HDDs to stop spinning, make things faster and will be cost effective over a few years.
    
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  - Landless2029@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    This is why I’m using a refurbished mini PC as my home server. Lower wattage for constant uptime at home. Also very quiet.
    
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Slagfart@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Expect to be ostracised here but if your drives are “junk” (some have SMR), I got better parity performance with Windows Storage Spaces (WSS) than with Unraid. Recoverability and compatibility with old junk hardware was very good too, whereas the bits I had lying around gave me Linux driver conflicts. Trying to install ZFS on Linux gave me a headache, and I then realised I couldn’t expand the array easily when I found other cheap crappy drives to add. WSS doesn’t care, it just keeps trucking.

As for a licence, the old “upgrade from the windows 7 enterprise key that got leaked” trick did it for me. Never paid for it.

I found that I needed to spend more on components with better driver support to have a working NAS on Linux. Windows isn’t open source, but for me it was the cheapest total cost option, and you can still run your containers in it.

I reckon maybe performance is worse on write for WSS? I paid for a PrimoCache licence to fix that though, and now my SSD gets used for initial writes and slowly spools over to the array as the array is able to calculate parity and write with my 10 year old CPU.

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- Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  “Microsoft is an evil company, basically the enemy of free software, but here is why you should use their product…”
  
  Booooo
  
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jjlinux@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
You have plenty of options. I use Unraid because I bought it before it became a subscription. But I have a friend running Fedora server with Cockpit and running everything from docker containers. The options are endless. ProxMox is a great choice.

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nixx@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If you are concerned about TruNAS, go look at Xigmanas. This is the original FreeNAS project before iX acquired the name.

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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Much appreciated!
  
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Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Welcome! I personally run proxmox as my host is then virtualize a truenas core VM and have my docker setup in another lxc. A bit more complex than just straight up truenas but its saves me before. I’d recommend looking into it

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- essell@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thanks! That sounds like one of those things that’s a hassle to setup and appreciated in the long run
  
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  - Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Its honestly not too bad as a starting point but its definitely harder than just installing truenas. Reason I’d suggest it is that it gives you more flexibility in the long term.
    
    If you want less complexity, something like yunohost or CasaOS can be great too
    
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_____@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
What’s the self hosted guide to security when opening up ports to the public ?

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- dan@upvote.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Don’t. Use a VPN like Tailscale or Wireguard. Tailscale uses the Wireguard protocol but it’s very easy to configure, and will automatically set up a peer-to-peer mesh network for you (each node on the VPN can reach any other node, without needing a central server)
  
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  - randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Offtopic, but do you think it’s better to use HTTPS for non-public web services that must be accessed through ssh?
    
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    One thing to note: the NAT traversal doesn’t always work especially for symmetric NAT. If you want reliable p2p connections I would setup IPv6
    
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- Trimatrix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Use tailscale for host nodes, use tailscale docker container in a compose stack with an app that you sidecar to. That way that app is on your tailnet as if it is its own computer. Use tailscale serve for reverse proxying support of the apps. Then, setup a vps node (I use linodes $5 node) with tailscale and configure that to be your DMZ into your tailnet.
  
  For DMZ, use Caddy, UFW, and fail2ban. Also take advantage of ACLs in the Tailscale admin console to only have the VPS able to route traffic to specific apps you want to expose. My current project is to work in Authelia into this setup so a user logs into one exposed app and is able to traverse to other exposed apps through header / token authentication.
  
  Oh also, segment the tailnet using different authentication keys. Each host node should have its own key, all the apps on a host node should have a shared key, and all public facing clients should have a common shared key. That way in case of compromise you can revoke the affected keys without bringing down your network.
  
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- yaroto98@lemmy.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Basically not to. Open one for a VPN like Wireguard to accept incoming connections, and that’s it. Use the VPN to connect to your home network and access your services that way.
  
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- crawancon@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  deploy to dmz
  
  filtered by fw
  
  host based isolation
  
  zerotrust
  
  etc
  
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- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Don’t
  
  No need to worry about it if you don’t take the risk. The internet is constantly being scanned by bots.
  
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