Darkassassin07

Fair points.

I’ve been lucky enough to have never been behind cgnat, so I keep forgetting about it.

My bigger concern with tailscale is being required to install software on the client. Not every device I use, I have permission to install a vpn client, nor would I want to.

For example, I have a fileshare using Filebrowser where I store work related files that I don’t want to loose access to or need access to from multiple machines (non proprietary info, stuff IT/MGT wouldnt get mad at me for ofc. I’ve actually cleared it with my managers, so no worries). That’s also a handy way to (temporarily) share large files with people or provide a way for friends to upload large files to me.

I also like to access my emby server (using sufficiently limited accounts), from things like the TV in the work break room, or a friends PC while I’m visiting.

Tailscale is a hurdle that I just don’t need/want.

Glad I could help. I’m not always immediately available, but I don’t mind answering questions if you run into troubles. Just send me a DM and I’ll do what I can. :)

You don’t need a static IP, you just have to keep track of what your current dynamic IP is.

You can do this with either a free or a paid DNS service.

There are a few different ‘free dns’ services that will delegate a subdomain of theirs to you at no cost. Admittedly, I’ve never actually used one of these so their names escape me. Hopefully someone else can point one of those out if that’s what you really want.

I purchased a domain via google domains, when they existed. It’s now transferred to squarespace, because they bought out google domains a few years ago.

It was around $13/year when I first got it a decade ago. It’s now around $28/year.

This allows me full control over the domain: I can use as many subdomains as I want to give each service I use it’s own unique name. (Instead of using their own separate ports that you’ve gotta remember) My domain will also forward all inbound email to my gmail account; this lets me use email addresses like <servicename>@mydomain.example. This way, I don’t share my real email and can immediately tell who sold my info to the highest bidder when I get spam. (I could also host my own email service if I really wanted, but I haven’t bothered)

Add Cloudflare ontop (for free); and it can filter out known attacks, ddos attempts, geofence your services to regions you’ll actually be in, provide/autorenew ssl certs for https, show you usage analytics, cache static data reducing server/network load, etc.

Ultimately, the paid option is well worth it IMO.

en.wikipedia.org/…/Network_address_translation#NA…

TL;DR Your router sees you trying to reach your externap address and routes the connection back to your LAN without leaving the network.

This does still depend on a functional internet connection however, as your client gets your public IP from a public DNS server over the Internet.

If you were to run a DNS server locally (I use pihole for this), you could have that DNS respond with your local IP, allowing clients within your LAN to resolve the name without needing to reach out to public DNS. This means your local connections will still work when your internet is down; it also provides more privacy by keeping those requests local and can let you make local-only names that aren’t publicly listed.

Of the ~28 FQDNs in my setup, only 4 are public. The rest is local/vpn only and not publicly listed due the above. The reverse proxy then drops all connections that don’t use one of those recognised names, before even completing the TLS handshake. (So direct connections from someone port scanning my IP or using a domain name someone else has pointed at my IP are completely ignored/dropped without response. The server doesn’t even send the TLS cert so as to not expose the names defined in it.)

Image

Or similar.

Sold at Homedepot, tool rental usually has a fogger machine to coat the room, but the spray bottles work fine too.

That insulation needs to go too.

Bit old, but pretty much everything Source Engine is self-hostable isn’t it? Most of them even come with a pre-configured SRCDS (SouRCe Dedicated Server) you can download and run right from the steam launcher.

I know I ran a GarrysMod server for quite a while; piling a shit ton of mods on it. Plus any source game you’ve got installed, Garrys Mod can and will use the resources/assets from.

:/ shit.

I’m pretty sure I saw this a few months ago and moved to the beatkind/watchtower fork, but it’s not been updated in 6mo either. (Devs only been active in private repos; so they’re still around, just not actively working on watchtower)

Guess I’ll find another solution. Hell, I might just put my own script on crontab. Looping through folders running docker compose down/pull/up isn’t too hard really.

Perhaps Mozilla doesn’t quite fit into this category, as their software is far more optional to the average user than say, Microsoft Edge or Copilot being forcibly installed on every Windows PC; but more and more companies are forcing features on users that don’t want them, after being told over and over again:

NO, WE DON’T WANT THIS SHIT

Refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer, and instead doing whatever you want to people IS a rapists mentally and I will not apologize for pointing it out.

‘oh, don’t worry; you can turn it off!’

That’s what they all say. Fucking rapists.

Fuck you, it’s not going on my system. It’s sure as hell NEVER being installed in something like a web browser that has access to my password vault when it’s unlocked.

I might(unlikely) have considered it, if it was op-in. But just the fact that it’s opt-out means I’ve got to make a point of turning it off, AND regularly verifying it’s stayed off because it will “accidentally” turn on again.

I have the same issue with Immich on android. It pretty much never uploads files until I manually open the app; then the app refuses to acknowledge it has uploaded those new files until it’s closed and re-opened :(

FolderSync has been the only reliable (non-root) backup solution I’ve used. It’s set to monitor my image folders for changes and upload any new files as soon as they’re created; this works ~85% of the time. Then, It’s also set with a few schedules to check for changes every 3hrs, backing up everything on the phone the app can access; this catches anything the on-change/on-creation file detection misses, while also backing up more data than just my images. I have yet to see that fail after ~3 years.

Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin and all legal, and each have ways to serve liveTV alongside your own locally stored content, amd DCR that liveTV if you want. You’d just have to purchase a liveTV subscription from your local provider (or go the Pirate route ofc).

Emby has what they call ‘Emby Connect’ which is entirely optional and is basically a glorified DNS service.

It doesn’t proxy connections, it just passes on the hostname to the client. The server is still required to setup port forwarding or other routing like tailscale or a proxy on a vps.

Emby Connect will let you sign into your local server using your emby.media credentials, but unlike Plex it’s completely optional and only works once explicitly linked to the local user of an Emby server.

I only bring it up because you explicitly said you have no idea why it doesn’t work.

Take things at a comfortable pace; there’s no sense overwhelming yourself. Then you just forget what you’ve done and end up lost in your own maze.

I started with Plex myself, almost 10 years ago. Moved to Emby, where I learned about buying a domain, setting up ssl through a reverse proxy, and just continued to explore from there. Today I run ~26 containers/projects across three systems and I’m always keeping my eye out for interesting new things.

Best of luck with your journey m8.

Sounds like you’re behind cgNAT, which essentially means there’s another router owned by your ISP that’s between yours and the open internet, which also requires port forwarding, but your ISP will never do that for you.

It complicates things, but the solution(s) are tools like tailscale, cloudflare Tunnels, or to rent a VPS just to host a proxy/vpn.

Plex solves this by using their own public servers as a proxy for you, but this is part of how they have control over your users/server/data, such as blocking remote streaming… That makes more than a few people uncomfortable.

Plex centralizes authentication at plex.tv

When a user wants to connect to a ‘private’ plex server, they must first sign into their plex.tv account, which then provides the auth token needed to login to the users server (even if both the client and server are on the same lan)

With this system, Plex can monitor and control every single connection to every plex server; limiting access to whatever they want. Even your own local content.

Plex has an automatic proxy service hosted by their public servers. If you haven’t or can’t configure port forwarding correctly, plex will route the connection through their own servers.

The problem is, that also means Plex co has total control over your server and the data sent between it and clients if they so choose. Anything from quietly logging the data sent back and fourth, to controlling who can connect and what they can do while they are.

Jellyfin has to be correctly exposed to the internet via port forwarding or tools like tailscale/a vpn; but it’s entirely your server under your control. You have ultimate control over how your server can be accessed, but that also means you’re responsible for actually setting that up.

Can’t say I disagree.

Yeah; Emby was originally called MediaBrowser and was a free open source project. ‘MediaBrowsers’ developers decided to move to a closed source paid model to establish some more consistent income and support the dedicated developers they have. Thus Emby was born.

Some users were really unhappy with this decision and forked MediaBrowsers last release to create Jellyfin. Their development has been quite a bit slower, but they’ve made some significant strides in recent years. It’s a more and more attractive option.

One of my biggest reasons for sticking with Emby (besides already having a lifetime premier license) is the dedicated clients available on more platforms. Xbone is my primary streaming device, besides android: Emby has a dedicated xbox client you can install, where as Jellyfin you’ve gotta use the web browser.

In the case of plex, it’s not 100% selfhosted. There’s a dependence on plexs public infrastructure for user management/authentication. They also help bypass NAT by proxying connections through their servers so you don’t have to setup port forwarding and can even easily escape double NAT situations.

I can understand paying for that convenience, but cost keeps rising while previously free features continue to get locked behind paywalls.

Tbh, having users required to authenticate with plex.tv was enough for me to look elsewhere. The biggest reason to self host for me is to remove dependency on public services.

I got the same email.

I haven’t had plex installed for over 7 years, and I’ve NEVER used the shared libraries feature.

We noticed that you’ve accessed libraries from friends and family in the past

They’ve apparently noticed activity that’s never occurred.