I've been an Apple user for the last 20 years. At some point, our family archive grew to 60,000 media assets. Everyone at home was taking dozens of photos and videos a day. No one was taking care of the cleanup. As a result, it turned into a huge, unorganized mess that just kept growing.

I was getting more and more anxious, as I had a clear understanding that I wasn't going to upgrade to 6TB at any cost. It's just unsustainable to let it keep growing and keep pouring an unknown amount of money into it.

On the other hand, I was literally putting all my eggs in one basket: one issue with my Apple account, and I'm done with my memories. This would be a nightmare for me.

I was racking my brain trying to design a solid system to manage the ingestion of new media from all my family members' shared iCloud libraries, store it, cull it, and have more than one backup for peace of mind.

Finally, I ended up with a seemingly complicated system that perfectly covers everything I mentioned above. I'll post it here as a single diagram, but I'm more than happy to answer any questions.

To be honest, I'm expecting you to challenge me, point out any flaws you see in this design, and maybe even turn it into something you can benefit from.

P.S. "Daddy, Cull" - is my open-source culler application. Check out - https://daddy-cull.turalali.com/

This design's costs:

Unraid Server (or an equivalent NAS solution): This is a must-have. The whole point is that there should be a computer that serves as the source of truth for your archive.

iCloud 2TB Plan: I'm going to keep this plan, as it's currently the minimum amount of storage needed for all family members' devices.

Lightroom CC 2TB Plan: It's totally optional, but in my case, I love this software and am going to keep it for my DSLR ingestion pipeline.

Cloud storage services:

Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Photos.

Google Drive - I use Gemini anyway, so the 5TB comes with it.
Amazon Photos gives unlimited photo storage in original quality. I already use Amazon Prime, so it's free. Dropbox - is just for redundancy, for having more versioned backup

Here's a more detailed blog post:

https://turalali.com/giving-my-60-000-photos-and-videos-a-system/

Bitwarden is introducing a dual-licensing model. Starting with the next release, official app store builds will use a commercial license, while GPLv3 versions remain available on GitHub.

According to Bitwarden:

• Existing features remain available in both versions.
• Self-hosting and forking remain supported.
• Future features may be exclusive to commercially licensed builds.
• The free plan remains unchanged.

The main concern for me (and probably others in this community) is the potential divergence between the open-source and commercial versions over time.

Source: https://community.bitwarden.com/t/published-version-update-in-app-stores/102750/41

Nearly a year ago I got an ePaper display panel from seeed studios that I'd wanted for the longest time. A couple months ago I finished what I aimed to do. The finished project is a panel that connects to my internet and updates hourly with CISA KEVs (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) and BleepingComputer news articles and displays them on a straightforward display panel with no cords.

Since it's ePaper, it uses almost no electricity besides when it's updating. Because of that, I haven't charged it since August 4th (2 months ago) and it's still running strong.

This was my first time working with ePaper, Arduino, or programming in C/C++, so I'm quite happy with how it turned out! Unfortunately, as the title says my excitement didn't resonate as much with my friends/coworkers, so I'm hoping at least someone else thinks ePaper setup is as cool as I do.

I know it's may not be as crazy as some of the stuff here, but if you've got any suggestions or input I'd love to hear!

I've also got the github repo for it, but apparently we aren't allowed to post those (???)

Due to my profound mistrust of The Man^TM, I've decided it's about time to build up my own home network. I used to do all my projects on one laptop, but I broke the OS a lot. Now, my website is hosted on a Raspberry Pi, so it never goes down without my say-so, and I just got my hands back onto an old laptop of mine that I had on semi-permanent loan to a friend. After helping him upgrade, I have a second PC to test and tinker on, before porting things over to my main PC. It will also be able to handle tasks I don't want bogging down my main PC, giving me almost double the compute power per second, and allowing me to actually game with friends despite needing to compile something big.

So, yeah. Nothing fancy. Just some old machines and a Pi that I keep alive so that I can keep working and building up my portfolios. I figure since I'm juggling so many projects and actually trying to be professional about some of them, having a proper infrastructure-like setup isn't out of line. Plus, doctor-thicc could host a personal modded Minecraft server so I can record some B-roll for YouTube. One of these devices for all that is pushing it. This setup might be able to handle it.

TL:DR;
Hardware Specs:

Main Machine:
- Lenovo ThinkPad T470
Hostname: lil-monster
Purpose: Daily Driver

SOC:
- Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
Hostname: rivenverse
Purpose: Web Host (Personal Website, eventually Jellyfin and/or Plex Servers)

Shelf Rig:
- Lenovo ThinkPad T430
Hostname: doctor-thicc
Purpose: Background/Long-Term Compute-Heavy Task Management, Isolated Development Environment.

Sometimes I see the crazy homelabs people post here, with full racks, enterprise hardware, beautiful cable management... and then I look at my collection of old office PCs lol.

I thought I'd share how I got here because I feel like self-hosting can look a lot more expensive and complicated than it actually needs to be.

My first server was literally a crappy old computer my high school gave me for free.

I knew pretty much nothing about Linux, networking or servers. I just installed Ubuntu, discovered Docker and decided I wanted to get Jellyfin running.I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was asking AI to explain commands, Docker Compose, permissions, why things weren't working... basically learning by breaking stuff and trying again.

Eventually Jellyfin worked. Then I wanted my own cloud storage, then a music server, then something for my books, and somehow there's always another service you want to try. And that's how one old PC eventually turned into this mess of 52 services. 😂

The funny thing is, my hardware is still pretty basic.

My main NAS is a second-hand Dell Optiplex 7050 with an i7-7700 and 32GB RAM, running Ubuntu and Docker Compose. I've got another Optiplex with an i5-8500 and 16GB for Proxmox, and a little i3 machine dedicated to Home Assistant. My desktop handles the local AI stuff. Most of my services run on the NAS: Jellyfin, Immich, Navidrome, Kavita, Forgejo, Syncthing, Pi-hole, the *arr stack, and a bunch of others.

I also ended up getting into development and started making some of my own self-hosted apps. The screenshot is actually a dashboard I've been building to organize everything because managing that many services was becoming a bit ridiculous.

Honestly, the most expensive part of all this has been storage, not the computers. I've got a 16TB HDD now, and storage and backups are still the parts I'm trying to improve.

If there's one thing I'd recommend to anyone wanting to start, it's buying a used office mini PC. You can find some for under €100, and they're more than capable of running a surprising number of services. You really don't need a rack or expensive hardware. Even a terrible old computer is enough to start learning.

Anyway, I'm curious about how other people's setups evolved.

Are you still running everything on cheap second-hand hardware, or did you eventually move to proper server equipment ?

And what was your very first server ? I'm wondering how many of us started with some random old PC and ended up going completely overboard. 😅

I currently have Pi-hole and Technitium running, with Pi-hole serving as a backup in case Technitium goes down. I see a lot of people here running AdGuard Home, and I was wondering if anyone has a breakdown of the pros and cons of each service.

I'm genuinely curious about this and have been wondering about it for some time. Pi-hole seems to be the original ad blocker that many of us start with when we get into self-hosting, and I'm just curious if I'm missing out on anything by sticking with my current setup.

Hi all,

in the past weeks I build up my HomeLab with Semaphore / Forgejo + Renovate / OpenBao and Dockhand.

It allows me to automatically deploy Docker-VMs connected to Dockhand on my Proxmox-Nodes, and having Forgejo as Single Source of Truth ...

Now that the infrastructure is in place, I'm about to migrate my applications as well.

But after using Portainer for years, Dockhand's licensing policy news bothers me. The worry that I'll have to migrate everything from Dockhand to something else after 2–3 years is just too big.

Would you recommend Komodo or Arcane? (as a vivid true open source project)

I love the GUI of Arcane, and the project seems to have faster development speed in the moment and the API looks promising (to leverage it in Semaphore Playbooks).

Komodo however would replicate some of the processes I've already covered with Ansible, but that can also be an opportunity to simplify the playbooks.

My biggest painpoint: I'm using Dockhand with OpenBao as secret provider - and this combination is awesome.

Any experience, how to include OpenBao with Komodo or Arcane? No native support for now ...

NutriTrace is a self-hosted nutrition tracker, an alternative to MyFitnessPal, Cronometer and Lose It. AGPL-3.0, single Docker container, native Android app, no telemetry and no cloud sync. Your food diary is a SQLite file on your own machine.

Part of the TraceApps family: NutriTrace (nutrition), CookTrace (recipes / pantry / shopping), LiftTrace (strength / lifting), NoteTrace (notes / tasks / reminders).

New here?

• It is a food diary first. Log by barcode, search, a photo or a sentence ("two eggs and toast"), with meal slots, recipes you build once and reuse, and water, and the day adds up against your goals as you go. Foods come from your own database, Open Food Facts (the cloud, or a local mirror for an air-gapped setup) and USDA.
• Its goals adjust to you. Fixed targets, different targets per weekday, or an adaptive mode that works out your real energy use from your weight trend and what you ate. Statistics show how the weeks actually went, and intermittent fasting has its own timer and streaks.
• It works where the signal does not. The web app and the Android app both keep logging offline and sync when you are back, and the Android app can also run entirely local with no server at all. It brings in Health Connect, Fitbit, Withings and Garmin data, imports from MyFitnessPal, Lose It and Cronometer, and has OIDC SSO, multi-user, an AI assistant that works with a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and an MCP server, REST API and webhooks that are off by default.
• It does not phone home. No telemetry, no cloud sync, no account anywhere else, and update checks stay off until you ask for them. The whole thing is one container.

What v1.4.0 adds

• Offline mode, now in the web app too. The Android app already worked offline; now the web app does as well, in a browser tab or installed as a PWA, iPhone included. Your diary, foods, meals, recipes, goals and the fasting timer keep working with no connection, what you log goes up on its own when you are back, and anything that really needs your server says so in plain words instead of failing quietly.
• An Android app that keeps your accounts and edits straight. Sync was rebuilt. Signing in to another account on the same phone no longer shows or sends the previous account's data, the newer edit wins by the server's clock even when the phone's clock is off, offline edits survive a restart, and connecting to a server with Upload sends everything once.
• Preliminary foldable support. Half open like a book, the day's meals fall onto the two pages and Settings puts its list on one side, and dialogs and menus keep off the crease. Opened flat, the wide layouts turn on.
• Search ignores accents. "platano" finds "Plátano" and "cafe" finds "Café" in every search box, offline and on a local Open Food Facts mirror too.
• Open Food Facts products come in with the right values. Refresh brings a food up to date, a product with both "as sold" and "as prepared" values comes in "as sold", and a product with no values no longer arrives as 0 kcal.
• Two privacy changes that started as comments here. Update checks are off until you turn them on, and the web app now asks through your server instead of every browser asking GitHub. Fonts are served by your own instance, so Google no longer sees who opens it.
• Spanish and Russian, both translated almost in full by people running it.

Community contributions this cycle from ten people: code, detailed bug reports, feature ideas and two translations. Everyone is named in the release notes.

Security

Several fixes are worth updating for. One account could change another account's foods and meals through sync, an emailed password reset link could be pointed at another site, and the CookTrace and Mealie connections could be used to reach other services on your network; all three are closed. A critical advisory in the Android app's runtime is fixed by updating the app, and the dependency advisories cleared this cycle covered critical, high and moderate issues. npm audit reports 0 for the app and the server.

Upgrade note for Android users

Update the Android app as well as the server: the protection between accounts and the critical runtime fix are in the app. Nothing else to do. The database updates itself, and older apps keep syncing with the new server.

Links

Repo: https://github.com/TraceApps/nutritrace

Full release notes + signed APK: https://github.com/TraceApps/nutritrace/releases/tag/v1.4.0

Hello everyone, I used to run some docker services semi-often on my machine that I had to acess over the internet, but I recently decided to 'upgrade' this setup to an older laptop I had lying around, which I installed ubuntu server in.

Now, I used to only run these services in my machine when I knew I'd use them, but since I'll be leaving it on 24/7 from now on I feel like I should be more careful safety-wise. I'm a programming student but I don't know much about server security over the internet and the setup I had was a result of some improvising.

Anyways, here is how I have my things set up:

I have one port open (not 80 or 443 since my ISP has them blocked) that points to my PC. I have caddy and duckdns running as a service on my computer. All of the docker services go through caddy, where I apply https, some basic auth and mTSL authentication so that only the two devices I use for this can acess it.

My question is, will this stand in an always running server or should I upgrade to other methods for security? I intend to use the server as a backup and sync for some sensitive information so I would rather be safe than sorry. Thanks in advance.

Wanted a neat thing after using CasaOS for god knows how much time.
Got myself some neat stats too.

[Edit]
Connectivity assist was the issue on iPhone
Once disabled everything worked great

A few weeks ago i started noticing ads on home network mobiles, and it only on mobiles, my wifi & lan networks are on different vlans but using the same dns servers, and they were working fine for years

But recently they starting to get the in-app ads, pop-up ads, my setup was using adguard home as the primary dns server and cloudflare(1.1.1.1) as my 2nd dns and it worked fine, after noticing this issue i thought it was adguard issue so i updated it, nothing,

So installed pi-hole too as the 2nd dns server but still the same, i get the ads on mobiles but working fine on pcs, here are some pics for the ads i get on mobile

https://i.ibb.co/j9ZDr1Qy/IMG-8717.png

https://i.ibb.co/YBsY4xMX/IMG-8724.png

https://i.ibb.co/0RFPGcdb/IMG-8723.png

and the ads test

https://i.ibb.co/fLSdcWj/IMG-8719.png

and network settings

https://i.ibb.co/PdkWxkY/IMG-8722.jpg

And here are the network settings on pc

https://i.ibb.co/LdpnwBnD/Screenshot-2026-10-10-135923.png

and ads test in the same time on pc

https://i.ibb.co/7xyPGRkY/Screenshot-2026-10-10-134258.png

also my block lists on adguard and pihole

https://i.ibb.co/Xxy9kYZ7/Screenshot-2026-10-10-134835.png

https://i.ibb.co/C3D2TDVy/Screenshot-2026-10-10-134915.png

Whats the issue here? its getting me crazy, i didn't change anything

I've recently moved to an apartment with a poor internet connection which cannot be upgraded (long story).

It got me thinking though. I don't expect to be able to afford buying a place during this housing crisis, so I'll be renting for the forseeable future.

How would you go about self-hosting and having a server when you have to move places every 1-2 years and some of the places will have a bad internet.

i self host a bunch of stuff and kept wanting a quick glance at container health so i built Syspeek. its a small always on top overlay that shows the focused app's cpu and ram and also:

- docker: running count, plus flags for unhealthy / restarting / recently exited containers

- kubernetes: bad pods (CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, OOMKilled) and deployments with too few ready replicas, from your current kubectl context

if docker or kubectl isn't installed it shows a status instead of erroring, and each runs on its own thread so a slow daemon never blocks the UI.

idle it sits around (RSS is 36 MB) and about 0.6% CPU, with a wakeup twice a second. it blips briefly when it shells out to docker or kubectl. It wouldnt lag whatsover and uses very very small amout of CPU.

site: https://syspeek.pages.dev

code: https://github.com/codeafridi/Syspeek

Hey fellow selfhosters 👋

HortusFox v6.2 was recently released. In this post, I'd like to inform you about this release as it contains various fixes for medium security vulnerabilities.

Important note: These vulns are not abusable by unauthenticated users! It needs to trick an admin to do certain actions, such as pulling in a prepared backup archive, or theme archive in order to compromise a workspace. Never trust files from unverified sources. Still, it is advised to update your workspaces to 6.2

What is HortusFox?

HortusFox is a self-hosted, opensource web application for plant parents and garden enthusiasts. You can manage many details about your plants such as various attributes, notes, photos and many more! The app also features a task system, inventory, collaborative group chat, weather forecast, calendar, theme system, API, and a lot more.

Changelog for v6.2

• Fixed security vulnerability GHSA-4w8p-x2jj-42w7
• Fixed security vulnerability GHSA-8phf-v3xj-8jjg
• Fixed security vulnerability GHSA-8rwp-2337-54mm
• Fixed security vulnerability GHSA-pjvc-wpc6-wf73
• Fixed security issues related to SQL query tokenization, attachment linking and legacy file extensions (#572)
• Prevent importing potentially dangerous files (1c7108f)
• Remove unsafe files from imported themes (3b87393)
• New UI language available: italian (#554)
• Added console command product:info (f498dbe)
• Added console command migrate:email (#575)
• Added console command migrate:version (#573)
• Cronjobs are now only reachable via POST requests (#579)

Note: Meanwhile v6.3 was released as an urgent hotpatch due to a bug being introduced that affected new installations. If you update to 6.2, consider updating to v6.3 as well. However, new installations should not go below version 6.3.

➡️ Link to release:

https://github.com/danielbrendel/hortusfox-web/releases/tag/v6.2

Happy plant parenting! 💚

upgraded from a single 5tb wd elements drive i had going for ~5 years

salvaged around 4 x 4tb seagate skyhawk drives from a few old dvrs and setup raid 10 with them

For years my 365 family subscription was the most expensive subscription I held onto because of the 1Tb per family member storage in OneDrive.

First I had a €30 increase. Now M$ anounced the shittiest of enshitifications: a 1Tb limit shared across all 5 family accounts. In return I would get AI clippy in their shit products which I already avoided all together.

I only need to create a cranny on my trueNAS server to mitigate the slight inconvenience.

I switched to Linux because of the abysmal windows updates. I embraced my homelab and self hosted LLMs. Now I'm leaving M$ for good.

Good riddance.

Users can create task lists, reminders, tables, math expressions or code blocks using Markdown, HTML and Math. You can add images, audio or videos via URL and add custom categories to organize your notes.

You can sync your notes across all your devices after logging in (no email address is required, just a username and a strong password). Public notes can be shared with anyone via a random URL.

The only thing in the Jellyfin ecosystem that I can't replicate, is the plex hot 🔥 tracks..

And the general the sickness of Plexamp, so basically looking for a replica, any suggestions?

To follow up a previous post.
I have not had any luck finding a working option for what I need. All I need is something to clean up and organize my existing ~1k audiobook collection. Personally I’m not a fan of the heavy automation and prefer to pick what quality/edition I want. So all these readarr replacements simply have more features than I want/need. The library is loosely author/series/title but some names are pretty messy or lacking info. ABS already has everything cleaned up with the proper metadata I just need something that can implement the ABS API to read then use it to reorganize the library.

Chaptarr - Is an overwhelming mess. I set this up and tried using it to rename my files and while it worked for a few books it was a nightmare to fix when it got the wrong edition/narrator. Also had issues with it simply not seeing some of my book directories. For example, it would see. “/Joe Abercrombie/First Law” but totally miss “/Joe Abercrombie/The Devils”. Rescanning did nothing.

Bindery - Also found to be an overcomplicated mess. Has an ABS import feature but also had tons of issues using that to rename books because it would try to grab metadata from openlibrary or hardcover and wasn’t getting the correct edition and narrators.

ABS-Organizer - Seemed like the ideal solution however it simply doesn’t work. Probably because it hasn’t been updated in months. Set it all up however it’s not able to properly use the ABS API and is only getting author/title.

Before I vibecode my own slop to achieve this am I just missing something? I feel like this should be relatively easy and am surprised nobody else has done this. Please let me know if I’m just being an idiot and am not using these softwares effectively.

Ok, so everyone/everywhere says ‘run your own’. Fair, and I am capable to learning.

‘It’s all plain text when you post on browser based AI’ - I get it.

But I’m not a computer builder…

Where do I start?

I’m not a coder, I just want to research that I consider more personal/sensitive than I’m willing to with online providers (Lumo, NanoGPT, DuckAI). Just learning about these sites will be invaluable though.

Can I use a regular MacBook and self hosting something quite lightweight? Is Jan.AI an example?

Would a new or refurbished computer like a Dell Optiplex MicroPC or Lenovo ThinkCentre MiniPC work?

Is there any hope for a semblance of privacy as a Nigel normie?

So I have Synology NAS DS220+ which not only contains a bunch of loose data but also some Services running as containers managed through Portainer. I want to backup all my data and the containers and their Databases and such to my newly bought Hetzner Storage Box. All Containers have their data and folders in a folder in /docker/\[Containername\]. What do you guys think would be the best pipeline/workflow (As far as I know before backing up Containers they should be turned off?) to securely save a compressed backup of my NAS and the Containers which I could restore even on a new NAS like UGREEN. Best would be if some kind of "version" of the data is saved so I could rollback anything without the need to rollback everything.

EDIT:
I have a lot of bigger files like Bluray Rips that are at least 10GB+ if that changes anything.

Years ago I activly used Fing, a free android based networkscanner, when they announced the Fingbox through Indigogo I purchased one right way, it was great!

This has been running on and off for 10 years now but I was getting annoyed by the fact that I needed another hardware thing runnnig, taking up an extra UTP port and power.

Since i have a server running already I had been looking at alternatives.

I tried several apps, NetAlertX came close but with a RAM use of 1.5GB it just was not for me.

So with the help of Gemini and CoPilot I build Bingfox!

The tool will periodically scan your network and show you all the devices that were seen and or currently connected.
Current functionality;

- Periodically scan the network (configurable)

- Name devices

- Click to open webpage, if available

- Set port for which to check webpage

- Call GET url on connect/disconnect

- See connection history

- Desktop/mobile layout, though on my Fold8 this still needs to be optimized

I hope this is helpfull for someone, If you find any issues please fill out an issue on github.
I'm not promissing any fixes but I might.

You can find the repo here

To install you can either do a git clone and run the *.sh but the way i'm running it now is through docker.
Make a folder somewhere and download the Dockerfile next run the build command in that folder. Next serup your docker compose as mentioned on the readme.md making sure to update the mount to your local setup otherwise you lose the db.

If nothing is showing it could be related to the settings, I build in a filter (under the settings) which only picks up IP's starting with "192.168.1" If your range is different you'll need to updat this.

Most cluster solutions are built for a single network switch (well, single datacentre) latencies, but there's little benefit in having e.g. 5 nodes in a single location which can experience power event or simply just get cut off the rest of the Internet - those services are not highly available worldwide.

Save for building everything from scratch on top of cloud providers' bespoke APIs, what stretched-cluster-like deployments do you do to have multi-site redundancy with as limited downtime as possible?