I've bounced around running my server on many different OS options, I used proxmox with Ubuntu VMs and containers for a long time and did really like it but decided that for my tiny operation basically just trying to run Jellyfin and maybe a few other things like a Minecraft server, a simple one click deployment OS works good enough for me. Most of the time.

I've really been loving ZimaOS, management is so easy when you're only running a couple basic services like I am. But I decided I wanted to set up an arr stack to build up my media library easier and let others request things. I actually had this set up before on proxmox so it's not my first time.

The only problem is I can't for the life of me get qBittorrent to use my gluetun VPN with Mullvad, the fact that I can't directly edit the compose yml is killing me, because the options that I need to change should hypothetically be simple, but they just don't appear to even exist in the ZimaOS app settings gui. Has anyone gotten this to work?

I wanted to improve the security of a TV connecting to a server on a different LAN, and one approach I thought of is to use a RPi on the network to look after the secure connection.

So the pi could connect to the remove server through SSH, and forward the port locally. I thought this port could then be opened, and the TV can then be pointed at the pi on the local network.

Port forwarding to the pi works but I can't connect to it from another device, even after setting firewall settings.

Basically the firewall rule is ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 port 1234

Does this idea work, or is there a better approach? Am I missing something in the setup?

- I'm new to #Authentik - I've just spun up a test instance and tried to connect my first application (#Postiz) but I'm kind of stuck.

I've installed both Postiz and Authentik using Docker Compose - as provided by the relevant apps.

As far as #Authentik goes it looks like its approving authentication requests (its showing successes in the GUI) but the application just returns to the login screen without progressing.

One thing that I found was that within the configuration of the Application and Provider one URL provided by Authentik is the /application/o/postiz/.well-known/openid-configuration which lists several URLs used by the application - one is /application/o/authorize/ but unlike all the others this returns a 404 error when I try to load it via the browser.

I am struggling to work out if - this URL should 404 should occur and also how to diagnose what the problem is.

I've popped messages in their relevant Discord forums but any ideas or input would be greatly appreciated - I'm figuring getting Authentik is going to be key to getting other applications going.

Hi there, everyone.

For various reasons, our family makes use of Life360. I'm wanting to move to either a linux or completely degoogled phone(ATM, I'm on Graphene but utilize the Play store for Life360 and a few other apps) but can't afford not to have the ability for a group of 4 phones to share their locations with each other all the time, not just to send a pin at certain times. I ONLY need the real time sharing to other devices in the group, I don't need anything else that Life360 offers.

It can't be hard to use as one of the phones we need it on is owned by an 80yo with cognitive/memory issues. This is where Life360 shines, we're able to find him without him ever needing to do anything on his phone.

Is there an option for this out there for self hosting? I could even handle not self-hosted but multi-OS and non-Play connected. I do have a couple VPS I could run backend software on, if needed.

Thanks for your time!

so im setting up a proper anime server and im kind of stuck on the metadata

been running jellyfin for a bit , had everything scan and it looked fine at first but then i noticed stuff was misclassified , wrong episode orders, some seasons (of the same show) getting merged when they shouldnt be. basically a mess

wiped everything and starting fresh. currently looking at shoko server + shokofin plugin as the proper solution instead of just trying to fix filenames manually

my situation is a bit different tho , i dont torrent. most of my stuff came from animepahe and similar sites so the files are encoded in mp4 ,

anyone gone through this with a similar source situation ? is shoko the move or is there something better for my anime :)

thanks!

Edit : Almost forgot ! if you have any tools, tips or anything really that would be helpful to a beginner like me (like tailscale) please mention them in the comments and i will check them out.

Hello friends!

My first attempt at a selfhosting project is up and running.

My goal was to make a private email and calendar system for my family. As it is private, as in we only email each other, I don't have to worry about delivery blocks or spam. The system needs to support 12 users. Turned out it was easier than I though it would be!

Here is my stack:

• Thinkpad T480 with 64G ram and 1tb ssd
• Windows Server 2022 eval
• MailEnable Standard Edition which is free software from Australia https://www.mailenable.com/standard_edition.asp
• Thunderbird Mobile https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/mobile/

Right now we are using the native android calendar app but I would love suggestions for a better calendar app.

Happy Hosting!

Hi, so been working on this for a week but not really happy with the solutions I find as they seem to be done by induviduals who rely heavily on ai. I got wireguard easy going and can remotly connect which is great but id love to be able to route any internet traffic to and from the wireguard clients to go though another server while filtering my local onsite services. Felt that if i can crack this i dont need to rely on tailscale. The end goal is to have no reliance on tailscale as i am preparing for the eventual enshitification.

I have nearly every service imaginable running and have now started a new project.

I am creating a searchable stock photo archive for my lan. It has been a very interesting project but think i may have crossed the line into overkill lol.

I had hundreds of stock photo cds from the 90s I have turned them all into ISO's.

I then spent ages dealing with some strange cdrom layouts but got all the images off.

I then converted them all to JPG.

I have now setup a batch script that dedupes then takes the images in 2k batches, runs them through a ai vision model to add keywords and descriptions; as they have none.

They are then copied to a folder where I have photoprism running as the front end and I only have 4k done so far but they look amazing and the search and descriptions are really accurate and useful.

400k more images to go but at least it should all be automated now.

I'm a Windows guy since forever and I recently got into selfhosting. So far its a blast! Are posts about that welcome here?

Hello,

As the title suggests, how do you manage your DBs for docker services.

Do you spin a new DB for every new docker cluster or do you have a centralized DB that is accessible to the docker clusters.

What are the pros and cons of both method?

For the moment, I spin a new DB for every services as I feel it is easier to backup the service in case of a problem.

Hello guys, so I have been self hosting a bunch of stuff for some years now. But I want to increase the protection of the services I host.

I was thinking of using a VPS just for ddos protecting my services like game servers, web servers, email etc.

Any suggestion on how to set this up well? I was thinking of routing all traffic from the VPS back home with wireguard. My connection is gigabit so I don't think the performance impact will be too big, any suggestion on which proxy, VPS and other things to use?

Hello,

First let me answer your first question : No, It's not AI generated.

I started working on a new project geared towards small self-hosted environment which automate the use of snapshot to reduce downtime when doing offline backups.

Instead of waiting for the entire external backup to finish to restart the service LaManager create a instantaneous snapshot using Copy on Write (COW) restart the service and upload the external backups reducing downtime significantly.

More details in the readme.md.

Warning the project is still very early so there might be rough edge and bugs, be careful. However I hope to be able to make something nice and usefull out of it.

PS: It is my first post on lemmy after looking around without account here for a while, the lack of history is not me being a bot, I'm just new here.

I wanted to say thank you to everyone that responded on the previous post. Whether intentional or not, some of the comments gave me some ideas for elaboration and improvement of my pipeline.

I discovered that the TINK 4k has the ability to do 480i pass through via custom modelines, which I enabled and updated my capture script to take advantage of. The biggest downside to using the TINK is that it converts color to RGB, which results in slightly-less-than-faithful raw captures.

This leads into the new VapourSynth pipeline I put together. When strung all together, we're now performing:

• Lossless RGB NTSC capture, converting to YUV 4:4:4 for processing until the final 4:2:0 output
• QTGMC source-matched deinterlacing to 59.94p
• Motion-compensated denoise and CCD chroma cleanup
• Dehaloing, contrasharpening, and debanding
• Lanczos upscale to 4:3 1080p

I'm currently punting on any neural upscaling, because I really don't want to introduce any semblance of hallucination.

You also may have noticed I added waveform and vectorscopes to the monitor stream, to get a quick and dirty readout of the brightness and color levels of a given tape.

I understand that this project is now probably blurring the lines of appropriateness for this particular community, so it will likely be my last post on the matter here. I just wanted to give an update, and say thanks!

For those who’ve never heard of us:

Libre Closet is a free, open-source, self-hosted wardrobe organizer - with client side garment image background removal. Catalog your clothes, upload photos, build outfits, and access everything from your phone as an offline-ready PWA - all on your own server.

We at Lazztech LLC have crafted and engineered this project with care and intention to be as easy to self-host as possible. It defaults to local SQLite storage and local file storage. It has optional auth/multi user support.

docker run -p 3000:3000 -v wardrobe-data:/data ghcr.io/lazztech/libre-closet:latest

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have, whether about the development choices we’ve made, or about the product itself. We’re excited to continue to build a community around this project. 

——

For those already familiar, I’d like to share some progress updates. 

First, I’d like to introduce Leolazz, who’s joined the project as our 3rd core maintainer, alongside ShoshannaTM, and myself!  

Second, I’d like to share gratitude for the warm and supportive reception Libre Closet has continued to receive. It sincerely makes my day when we get a new feature request or comment about how users are enjoying it. Since the first post, we’ve gotten 234 Github stars, over 10.8k docker image pulls, multiple community PRs contributed, and many helpful issues filed.

Latest News - Significant Performance Improvements:

We've refactored the server resulting in nearly a 2x throughput increase, almost half the latency, and the lighthouse speed score has gone from 68/100 to 99/100.

Latest Releases:

• v0.3.2 - June 09, 2026: Added background removal toggle for garment image uploads.
• v0.3.1 - May 26, 2026: Refactored server resulting in nearly a 2x throughput increase and almost half the latency.
• v0.3.0 - May 21, 2026: Garment image background touch up tool
• v0.2.5 - May 1, 2026: Added option to disable register functionality
• v0.2.4 - April 28, 2026: Fix garment photo upload cropping

For full details refer to the CHANGELOG.

We can’t wait for everyone to try it out, and we hope you enjoy v0.3.2 of Libre Closet! 

Public: https://librecloset.lazz.tech/

GitHub: https://github.com/lazztech/Libre-Closet

@

I read every single day. At home it's on my Kobo running KOReader (yes, I'm that open-source guy), and I love it. The problem: I don't always have the e-reader on me. On the train, at work, waiting somewhere — I just have my phone.

I tried Kobo's own Android app to bridge the gap and... I really didn't like it. Promos everywhere, adding your own books is a pain, the reader itself feels clunky, and the Wi-Fi handling is annoying.

So I built my own thing: Varbook, a small self-hosted EPUB library.

You drop EPUBs into it in one click. From there:

• They're readable on your phone through a simple but well-made PWA. Books are cached locally, so you can read offline; when you're back online your reading position syncs to the server.
• The server exposes everything over OPDS, so any compatible app works (KOReader, Moon+ Reader, etc.).
• I also wrote a KOReader plugin that pushes/pulls your reading position to the server in a single gesture.

My actual daily workflow:

• Evening, at home: I wake up my Kobo in KOReader, tap the top-right corner → Wi-Fi turns on, my current book jumps to the right position, Wi-Fi turns back off to save battery.
• I read.
• Done reading: tap the top-right corner again → Wi-Fi on, my reading time + position sync to the server.
• Next day, at work: I open the PWA on my phone. It drops me exactly where I left off, and syncs my position on every page turn.
• Evening: back to the Kobo, which picks up my position from the phone.

All of this with fully open-source software, no commercial service in the loop, my books staying on my own server.

The trickiest part was cross-device position sync — every reader engine (epub.js in the browser, KOReader's CREngine, Moon+) tracks position differently. Varbook uses a "pivot" format based on EPUB spine items (chapter index + percentage) so your position survives the jump from one device to another without throwing you 30 pages off.

It's open source (MIT), built with Laravel + React, and ships as a single Docker container (SQLite by default, no external DB needed). The entire UI is translated in English, French, and Spanish.

Honest disclaimer: a good chunk of this is vibe-coded. That said, I've been a developer for 20 years, so it's opinionated vibe-coding — I know what I'm looking at. It's been used daily and intensively by about 5 people for the last 3 months, and I keep improving it regularly. It's not bug-free, but I'd call it reasonably stable. I'm being upfront so you know what you're getting into.

There's a free public instance if you just want to try it without installing anything: https://varbook.hophop.be/

• Full write-up on my blog: https://trucs.hophop.be/en/blog/varbook-bibliotheque-epub-self-hosted
• Code: https://github.com/ndieschburg/varbook
• KOReader plugin: https://github.com/ndieschburg/varbook.koplugin

Happy to answer questions or hear what's missing — it scratches my own itch, but I'd love to know if it's useful to anyone else.

Hi everyone

I posted before here. I'll try once more but don't want to get over bearing.

I'm trying to self host all my contacts and my calendar.

I've managed to install radicale but there very little ui and I'm not actually sure how to import my contacts and calendar, or how to start using it with a client.

This is all I see

I've set up the calendar and contacts server but I can't find any security settings to password protect it

Any guidance would be awesome, thank you

So far, my self-hosting has been limited to Pi-Hole, and a static website. I now want to try out something new, an Immich server.

I have a static IP from my ISP, so I don’t need to rent out a VPS. However, given that this IS a home internet, I want to be extra sure that it is going to be secure.

In my existing website, I use Fail2Ban + BadBotBlocker + Anubis + Nginx rate limits to protect it from scrapers, bots and malicious users, and it works well. With photos (especially family photos) at stake, I just want to know more on how to protect my server.

Add: thanks for the helpful replies. I will be sharing the photos with family, many of whom live abroad.

Is anyone aware of any self hosted portfolio tracking software?

Something like TradingView or Yahoo Finance, where I can input my trades, and track tickers.

I recently found out that you can get up to 3 free .eu.cc domain from GNAME, which also claims that you can renew for free when its within 90 days of expiring. So I got one to check it out.

Obviously, the next step is making one of my local machines act as the target destination for any queries to the address, so it becomes accessible for the wider web. I'm not entirely sure, however, what to configure on GNAME (there's the option to setup A and AAAA records, which I suppose I should just point to my IP, but there's also CNAME, TXT, NS, SRV and what configurations/programs my local server (rPi 3) needs to have running besides a webserver (Apache2 or Nginx)

My intent is to have it run a single-user fediverse server, possibly friendica, as it seems to have the best support for seeing all sorts of APub posts. If that proves too heavy for my old pi, I'll try one of the lightweight APub alternatives

I know I'll also need to do some configurations on my router, so I'd appreciate help on this, too.

Hi all, my Unifi Doorbell just died after only 4 years of service. I've been pretty disheartened with them lately, other products haven't lived up to the company's promise.

So I'm not looking to replace my networking stack yet, but I am looking for a doorbell camera. I only have the Unifi machine, but I also have an extensive docker/kubernetes stack, and mostly I want to use it with Home Assistant.

Any recommendations? Open to software, hardware, you name it. I have a few other Unifi cameras too, if they could be brought into the fold while I slowly migrate, I'd be interested. Thanks!

There are so many options to get started with self hosting that I feel myself stuck in the "paralysis of choice". For a novice, does anyone have a good resource for the equivalent of good/better/best paths that cover the "basics" (In my mind this is hosting images, music, video, connected home controls, search and email)?

Thinking something like first try path A, if you feel comfortable and your HW can handle A, then try path B, etc. I guess a it of a tutorial mode feeling where you get exposed to key boxing blocks initially and then you are released into the large open world on your own.

I know the advantage of this movement is the choice and the well distributed variety, but just feels hard to start.

I have an old laptop, an SFF workstation and a NAS to play with.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Thank you all for a very generous response. I knew this was a tough ask from the start because, by design, this area is vast and constantly evolving. A lot of great starting points here that I'm now considering.

This post contains content related to media piracy. I couldn't find any rules for this community and I don't know if it's allowed. I accept the risk of getting this post taken down or being banned without knowing the rules.

With that small disclaimer out of the way, let's tackle my question.

I'm a simple self hoster: I have single server made out of an Optiplex 3060 Micro (i5 8500T, 32GB, 14TB of storage in one drive), I use duckdns instead of a real domain and I have no supporting infrastructure. I don't really like watching things, I set up arr stack mainly because everyone says it's the best thing to use a homelab for.

My family have strong opinions on piracy and I know for a fact they wouldn't use my jellyfin, even if I tried to manipulate them, which btw is a really bad practice (if it's as common as responses under posts about getting people to use your homelab suggest).

I also have hard time getting them to even allow me to run my homelab (I'm a teenager, I live with my parents), because it takes space and uses power (for context idle is around 8W).

As I said, I don't watch things that often and even if I watch, I'm extremely monothematic, I watch basically only AOT and sometimes some random popular movie.

I understand that my situation is quite unique, but I find it hard to argue for Jellyfin+arrs when fmhy and countless reliable streaming sites exists.

I already made my mind, I'll stop using those services today. I'm interested how others look at this "problem" tho.

Are you hosting arr stack/plex/jellyfin?

How much is it utilized (in watch hours/week for example, mine was less than 2/week)?

Have you considered not using it?

If you stopped using it and went back, what happened, why did you change your mind?