tl;dr: Proxmox or bare metal? Containers yes/no? What is your use case?

I used a Dell R710 when I first started self-hosting, it ran ESXi with one VM for each service I wanted. Restarting the server required me to first shutdown each VM in order and then the whole host. When setting up a new service to host I had to create a new VM (allocate RAM, disk etc), install the OS (I ran Debian) and then follow instructions for how to setup the service. This mostly was not a problem but one software I never managed to get working was Apache Guacamole.

Nowadays I have a Dell Optiplex I salvaged for parts, got a new case and all my HDDs from my R710. Because it has much less RAM and an old Intel i5 (6th or 7th generation), I decided to get into Docker. With Docker containers you write your compose file and it will just work. No more need to dig through documentation for which version of a dependency to use, how to handle if two services on the same host need different versions (this was part of the reason for one VM/service). With Docker, I can try out a software in seconds and have it configured to my liking in minutes.

Today I have NixOS (bare metal) and it comes with Podman which uses systemd. Hence restarting my OS (albeit not that often, almost never unless I mess up my config) is a no-brainer because Podman via systemd will manage everything. Adding, stopping or removing containers in general is easy. I have a script running as a service which will stop a container, create a BTRFS subvolume snapshot, start the service again and start borg backup to backup from the snapshot.

For me using Proxmox would just an extra layer of complexity I don't need. I only have one server and I am the only user.

Questions:

• Do you use Proxmox instead of a bare metal installation?
• Do you use containers or do you install manually?
• What is you use case that requires your setup the way it is?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52289547

Hey Lemmy, longtime open source developer here. After about a year of work on a side-project I dropped the first release candidate of Plume, a self-hosted, Markdown-powered, flat-file publishing platform and I'd love this community's feedback. Read the release announcement or check out the demo and let me know what you think.

What is Plume?

Plume is a publishing (i.e. blogging) platform. It's designed to make writing and publishing frictionless. Your content is just files, plain Markdown in a flat-file structure without a database. You can write locally and upload via SFTP or keep everything in Git and sync automatically. It's Dockerized out of the box for easy set up. Full-text search (powered by YetiSearch) is built in so there's no external service to wire up. Plume also includes details you'd expect like Shiki syntax highlighting, automatic light and dark modes and an auto-generated RSS feed.

The stack

Plume is written in PHP using Slim Framework + PHP-DI, tested with PHPUnit, statically analyzed with PHPStan, styled with PHP-CS-Fixer. The front end utilizes Alpine.js bundled with Vite. The architecture leans on Directory Lister, a project I've maintained for years.

But why?

I primarily developed Plume for my own use. I occasionally like writing short-form on Bluesky (or previously Twitter) but have been growing tired of handing my content to someone else's platform. And long-form writing came with too much friction, killing my motivation before ever actually getting published. With Plume, publishing is as simple as creating a file and writing.

The AI caveat

Most software ships with heavy AI involvement these days. However, Plume was developed in my spare time over the past year, initially without any AI assistance. I've only recently adopted AI, and only sparingly, mainly for debugging, tests and help with documentation. However, every line committed exists because I put it there with intention. I'm not claiming perfection but I know how and why everything works, which matters for the long-term maintenance of the project.

Feedback wanted

Despite being designed for my own use, Plume was intentionally built so it could be shared. So try it, break it and tell me what's missing. Ideas and questions can be posted on GitHub Discussions or Bluesky. For bugs open a GitHub Issue.

Resources

Plume is fully open sourced on GitHub with full documentation is available at docs.plume.pub.

I'll be hanging out in the comments, so ask me anything.

Good news, a security issue that was blocking the draft for the new DNS-PERSIST-01 challenge mode for TLS certificates has been resolved, meaning the challenge can resume moving forward.

Some background for those who aren't up to date:

• TLS challenges are how self-hosters and many other TLS certificate users prove who they are in order to automate cert renewals.
• The most popular challenge methods are HTTP-01 (which involves having a live web server answering on port 80 somewhere) and DNS-01 (which involves putting a key given by the TLS authority in your DNS zone in a TXT record temporarily).
• All the current challenges are conducted "live" and require active online participation on the part of the domain owner each time a cert is approaching expiration.
• The new DNS-PERSIST-01 challenge would let owners keep a proof in their DNS zone indefinitely (or with self-imposed expirations), eliminating the need for those online sessions.
• DNS-PERSIST-01 was slated to come out in Q2 this year at the latest and all the popular tools (ACME bots, reverse proxies etc.) have been chomping at the bit to implement it.
• Unfortunately there's been a security snag. Trying to do things the way DNS-01 did (record only the server-provided proof in DNS) would open DNS-PERSIST-01 to middleman attacks, because unlike DNS-01 where the proof is only there temporarily for a few seconds or a few minutes at the most, in this case the proof would be long-term.
• Hence issue #64, which has been trying to come up with a way to keep only a partial proof in DNS, and combine it with something issued by the server and something issued by the domain owner to make the whole proof, thus rendering the stuff stored in DNS impossible to use for malicious purposes, yet still sufficient for verifying ownership periodically.

Hopefully now that this hurdle has been passed things will proceed faster and we'll get to use this in the near future.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/48313374

Promotional

Im not affiliated to Fermi/Harmony chat in any way, im just a user who liked it and want to share my experience of the app i find worthy of sharing

so i wanted to share a promising project that I have been using for a few months.

made this post to promote and share this platform since it needs more people, theres arent many atm and it deserves way more.

Fermi/Harmony Chat is free and open source discord like guild/community centered chat platform with most of the features that are expected from those platforms like message channels, vocal chats, threads, screensharing and more. Importantly the chat platform has a strict stance against LLMs AIs and AI generated slop like vibe coding and other abusive usage of AI that replaces human work and slop it in the process. sadly fermi/harmony is unique of having a strong stance against AI. (other similar projects sadly uses AI and excuses AI usage and vibe coding)

the platform also allows users to create their own client for the platform. harmony chat is the API and fermi is just the currently only working client on the platform (was a spacebar client previously until harmony was created as a spacebar fork with the goal of fixing the many issues and bugs present on spacebar) and in the future, instances are going to be federated and the process will be managed directly by the client (fermi and other clients) without being tidious and for advanced users like on matrix, so more easy and beginner friendly.

the platform also is more lenient on its acceptable policy and have a no bullshit moderation. (sadly not the case for other alternatives which sucks very much)

IMPORTANT

currently the project in its early stage and still has lots of bugs, glitches and various issues.

it is currently only accessible through a web browser (there is no app neither on desktop or on mobile)

lots of features are not finished and the platform still need major improvements. but i hope it is going to grow and become a viable alternative.

currently there are around 800 people are registered on fermi/harmony chat.

fermi.chat the main website currently (use this one to register) melodychat.org the organisation's website (its called melody on codeberg and on the website since harmony was taken)

codeberg link of both harmony and fermi :

https://codeberg.org/MelodyChat/Harmony https://codeberg.org/MelodyChat/Fermi

credit to Mathium5, eliza, devs and contributors for developping and maintaining fermi and harmony chat.

Recently it's come to my attention that Caddy has an AI sponsor so I have been looking at moving away from Caddy.

I'm currently looking for another reverse proxy to use in place of Caddy. For TLS I am looking into using CertBot and it appears there's a module (https://github.com/desec-io/certbot-dns-desec) I can use that works for https://desec.io/ to handle my certs.

I have two questions, the first is about CertBot. Since Caddy is handling my certs automatically, how often would I want to renew my certs? Desec.io has this command to obtain a cert:

certbot certonly \
     --authenticator dns-desec \
     --dns-desec-credentials /etc/letsencrypt/secrets/$DOMAIN.ini \
     -d "$DOMAIN" \
     -d "*.$DOMAIN"

Would I be required to run the same command periodically to renew my cert?

My second question is a bit more open ended. I am looking to hear any suggestions or experiences about different reverse proxies that are preferably free of AI. There is a list here with some suggested alternatives: https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#web-servers

I’m currently running Proxmox on a single Lenovo ThinkStation P330 Tiny. As my VMs workloads have grown, the 64GB of RAM is consistently sitting near capacity.

To spread the memory load and get proper HA, seamless VMs migration, and easier node maintenance, I’m considering adding two more matching units to build a 3-node cluster.

Planned Per-Node Specs:

. Chassis: Lenovo P330 Tiny . CPU: Intel Core i9-9900T ES . RAM: 64GB DDR4-3200 (running at 2666MHz platform limit) . Boot/Local Storage: 1TB NVMe

Networking: Upgraded to 2.5GbE

Shared Storage:

Synology NAS via iSCSI (SSD cache enabled) over 2.5GbE

Does this setup still offer good value for money, or are there better alternatives in this form factor?

I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

1. 9900T ES stability: Long-term reliability and virtualization quirks under Proxmox.
2. 2.5GbE bandwidth: Is it sufficient for 3 nodes sharing iSCSI, especially during backups or migrations?
3. Synology iSCSI + SSD cache: Practical experience with this as primary VM shared storage across multiple P330 tiny nodes.
4. Any other bottlenecks, hidden traps, or limitations I might be overlooking?

Hey guys, since I got into hosting my own servers, any electronic device I see I wonder - can it become a server?

This is probably not a crazy and new idea with android phones, but I had to share it with you. If you don’t know, there’s this thing called postmarket OS, full linux experience on an android phone.

Of course, not all phones are supported, but a phone like Galaxy Note 9 is a great candidate - it supports LAN over usb, postmarket OS fully supports it (the Exinos version) and setting up a phone as a selfhosted server has it’s real perks. Pis got really expensive, not to mention they don’t have a built-in UPS (phones have batteries), they use slow SD cards, while phones have faster UFS memory, phones draw way less power.

What do you guys think? I will for sure get a used Galaxy Note 9 and explore this idea, and if all goes well, I might even buy more of them and create a cluster.

Firstly: Yes, I like Synapse / Cinny / Element too...don't hate me...but needs must when the devil drives...

For reasons that are too complex to get into (TL;DR: hodge podge of equipment from the dawn of time, from intransigent family members, complexity over HTTP vs HTTPS...they usual nonsense when you volunteer to become the family sysadmin) I've been looking at different methods for a persistent, family chat experience that I can "self host".

Does anyone know much about Jami?

https://www.jami.net/

From what I can see, it has the following worthwhile features:

• FOSS/GPL
• Android, Windows, Linux, macOS and iOS.
• Text messaging ,group chats, video calls
• File sharing, E2EE etc etc
• It apparently works over a LAN with no Internet connection at all, which is particularly interesting to me.
• Federation not required.
• CA not required
• Transparent handoff with Tailscale

From what I can see, there's a headless jami-daemon for Linux. Jami's own docs specifically suggest putting an existing account on an always-online server to facilitate message exchange, with multiple servers possible for redundancy.

So...that's...good.

OTOH, there isn't a Synapse-equivalent central Jami server holding everyone's accounts and rooms. Accounts and conversations are distributed across the participating devices, though as I said above, it looks like Jami does support an always-online daemon/device to improve message availability.

I dunno what to make of it. It seems...too good to be true.

Has anyone use it? Particularly, is the always-online jami-daemon actually dependable for store-and-forward behavior in practice?

https://github.com/savoirfairelinux

EDIT: This was an interesting experiment, but Jami is far too unreliable even without UnifiedPush / DHT (which I think is the main issue). I presented the work done so far and the consensus is to look at using IRC (as most of the users are familiar with that) and having Janus as the video chat / WebRTC server. It seems to work on all of their devices and doesn't have any of the cute issues we encountered with Synapse / Matrix

TL;DR the fam has settled on -

• Ergo as IRC server: https://ergo.chat/
• The Lounge as PWA IRC client: https://thelounge.chat/
• Janus for video calls: https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/index.html
• I will host all this on the Pi at my place and they can tailscale in.

I'm tied, boss. Never volunteer.

I just spent the past 2 weekends migrating from Lightroom CC with just under 1TB of photos, mostly RAWs, making up about 50,000 files. I kind of made it up as I went and I spent a lot of time testing and validating. I'm going to do a writeup here to hepefully help ayone else coming acrross this and/or in case someone has ideas.

My Requirements:

1. Move all photos off Lightroom and preserve both RAW files and snapshot renders at high quality. I intend on staying on Lightroom because it's my editor of choice. I've litigated Darktable in comments on Lemmy, and while I love the software and the concept, I use Lightroom for my semi-professional work
2. (The hard part) Metadata. I absolutely need my album organization, my picks, and my star ratings from Lightroom. More on this below
3. All data must move to my self-hosted Immich with a TrueNAS pool behind it. The stack is Proxmox running a Truenas VM and a Debain VM. The Debian VM runs docker where Immich runs. Connectivity is driven by Netbird mesh VPN. That is a limitation for sharing and I'm ok with it.

Getting your pictures out

• Adobe doesn't make this easy just below the surface. There are open source tools intended to help one migrate from Lighroom Classic catalogs to Immich, but CC is very different. The export options are very particular.
  • Adobe lets you export a massive dump of pictures and renders as a real export option. It's through their website and it will email you when a dump is ready. Said dump will contain multiple zip files each with RAWs and renders. NO Metada or structure is included and NO edit data.
• You can "Archive" from Lightroom CC (tested on Mac) and that will output originals + the edit file AND it will preserve the root album from which your photo came. But no metadata beyond that (no ratings, folder structure, picks). The bad part is that this deletes your files once it's done. You can still restore fromTrash but this is definitely a hostile action against users.
• You can just output EVERYTHING. This is for the truly insane as you sit there and wait for Lightroom to render each one of your pictures individually. If you do original + edits, that returns the same thing as Archive but without structure.
• The secret 4th option: you can (as of this writing) parse Lightroom's internal catalog and get Albums, picks, star ratings, and folder structure. This was a massive unlock for me. This file was at ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/

My solution going forward

Because I was discovering this as I went, I tried some version of all of the options above, but going forward, I have a process which should be much easier.

First, I will parse the catalog which is a SQLite db and extract the newest "version" of each picture and the content I care about. I will store it in a CSV for long-term holding.

Once metadata is stored, I'll go and request the archive through the website. That will take a few hours to possibly days (it took me about 2 hours on a Friday night). Once that's done, you get an email and a link to a personalized site. You have to parse the (for me) 50+ links and download them sequentially. It took me a few hours to download 1 TB limited by my local bandwidth (for which I'm eternally grateful). With my TrueNAS storage, I have the luxury of landing the data and uploading it to Immich separately.

For XMPs, the edit data, you have to get that from a local source so either export originals or the desktop app "Archive All" option.

You'll have to decide what you need and maybe you have fewer requirements than me.

Landing the Pictures

The next challenge is grabbing all of that data, pictures and ratings and applyhing them in Immich. Luckily, it has a fantastic API so I can script the whole thing. Most of the mapping happened by picture name and there were a few times where I had to dig into exif to identify a picture. Overall, i think I had 40 or so files out of 50k+ which couldn't be mapped.

Encountered Problems:

• As mentioned before, this was a try-it-until-it-works situation for me. I had to download all of my pictures 2 times by 2 different methods (I didn't document this but there was an SMB share involved).
• Stars are a new object and I had to manually enable it in Immich
• I couldn't replicated nested album functionality in Immich and chose to keep the root album name + a tag of the folder structure. That worked well for me
• Lightroom tags could not be exported. I don't use them a lot but that could be a blocker for some.

Disclaimer

• Every word in this write up was written by me on my keyboard
• I used a self-hosted local AI to do this work.
• I know enough to be in control even at a technical level, but the time savings on this project with AI really made it possible
• The AI found the catalog and parsed the data out of it. It would not have occurred to me.

Future

• I have all of this work on my personal Forgejo and if there's enough interest, I may post publicly, though this write-up should serve as a starting point for anyone who wants to replicate my process

As much as I love Google (not even a little, my love for that company is negative and becoming more negative per second) I would love to run far far away from it. Here's another ball and chain I need to break.

Where can I find a simple parental control access system for my phone and or computer that I allow my kids to use?

What are your personal opinions about having a deficated rss reader like miniflux (or others) vs just having a notification bot linked to a matrix room? The public matrix rss bots never worked for me and were essentially useless missing months of notifications, so now that I have my own homelab server, I finally want to take matters into my own hands. But I’m still unsure if I should want to stick with my own instance of matrix-rss bot or if something more, like miniflux is better. What are your opinions/experience?

Good news selfhosted crowd! I pitched the idea of setting up a server, and she is down with the idea!

I want to run Linux and host things like Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, Navidrome, maybe Plex (I currently host it off my Mac desktop but would move it to a dedicated server).

I know you can host Plex et al on something like a Raspberry Pi, but I want a bit more power. I want something that can push at least 2-3 4K streams.

I'm considering targeting 12th gen i5 with 16GB DDR4. Maybe 32GB if I can swing it. Is that overkill? I know you want 8th gen Intel for hardware transcoding of either x265/HEVC or AV1 (probably the former as the latter is newer).

There are other projects I'd like to run. I'd like to be able to host my own LLM/AI but I'm not trying to go performance overkill here. This would be my first server.

I am somewhat comfortable using the command line, and I would be remoting into the server via my Macs (I have a desktop and a MacBook). However, Linux can run Windows games via Proton and that's something I'm interested in for some older titles that aren't on Xbox (like Deus Ex, which came out in 2000 and should run on integrated graphics). I'm not inexperienced with Linux and have been using it off and on (mostly off unfortunately) for over 30 years. My go-to would be Ubuntu, but I've heard great things about KDE lately and I know the Internet is in love with Mint these days. Would the distro really matter all that much as long as I have the required services?

hi. i'm looking for an extremely simple selfhosted photo gallery software. i have photos from my laptop, a camera, and my phone. they are all rsync'ed onto my server. so on the server I have ~/Pictures/Laptop ~/Pictures/Camera ~/Pictures/Phone filled with JPEG/PNG/HEICs and no subdirectories.

i want to view photos from all three directories on a single timeline/feed, from the web (and if possible, via a mobile app). currently I VNC onto the server to run XnView and check each directory and this is a terrible user experience especially on a phone.

i don't want to run a separate database or anything complex, so things like Immich or Photoprism are not an option. would be nice to be able to assign a tag to some images ("work", "computer", ...) but it's not a necessity. and i don't need the ability to edit/remove images from the gallery.

i've considered rolling my own solution but thought there might be something already available.

thanks!

I had an old Google Pixel 3a XL sitting around and decided to see if it could handle running as a fully offline, self-contained web server.

I flashed postmarketOS 26.06 (headless Alpine Linux base) to it and set up a portable media node that broadcasts its own Wi-Fi AP, serves static pages, and streams video over a captive portal - no cell data or upstream internet needed.

Quick Hardware/Tech Stack Breakdown:

• Device: Google Pixel 3a XL (2019)
• OS: postmarketOS 26.06 (CLI base with OpenRC)
• Networking/AP: hostapd for the AP, dnsmasq for DHCP & wildcard DNS routing
• Firewall: nftables redirecting port 80 requests to trigger the captive portal popup automatically
• Web Server: Lighttpd handling HTTP requests and MP4 video range requests

Performance & Power Draw: Under a test load streaming 720p video to 4 concurrent devices, total CPU usage averaged around 5% (load avg 0.51). Power draw stayed around ~2.4W off the internal battery, with temps holding steady at 54°C.

Why build this? Mainly as an offline entertainment and information node. I run a non-profit foundation providing SCUBA training to young survivors of childhood abuse, and having a tiny, battery-powered web node lets us provide offline information and videos to people while traveling. I will also be able to use it to provide training videos if I am teaching in a location that does not have internet access available.

I wrote up a complete overview covering the setup, and performance metrics if anyone wants to replicate it or build something similar. Over the coming weeks I will be posting configs and some other information to Github with a link from my site.

https://www.muttmutt.us/geeky-stuff/portable-web-server-on-an-android-phone-for-offline-access/

Happy to answer any questions about postmarketOS setup or the networking config!

I know that I can simply make my own private certificate authority that only I and my family trust. But is there some public provider like letsencrypt that is in a free-er part of the world than the US?

It is so difficult to find modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy and use directly without worrying about telemetry or advertising.

The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206. Please note that this list may contain errors.

• Laptop: Framework Laptop, System76, MNT
• Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?

i have been following Chinese models for about two years now because they are open-weight and qwen is fun to run on my kubernetes cluster, the news about this Apache licensed model complete with a recipe to make it again with potentially different ingredients is making we want to abandon them for something more ideologically sound and way more interesting

this new model, couldn't universities rebuild it with different contexts and study it in ways you can't reproduce in other models? like, is k2 horizons a good scientific foundation on which to study machine learning?

or am i just lacking way too much context and falling for hype?

I host my own instance of invidious behind a reverse proxy. It's awesome. I use Redirector for Firefox so that when I'm on the interwebs, YouTube videos and embeds redirect automagically to my self-hosted invidious instance. I used the setup instructions in the Invidious-Redirector documentation.

Recently, I was on a new website and the embed didn't redirect. I tried to figure it out, but couldn't. The best I could do was try changing /embed/* to /oembed/* but that didn't work.

So I thought I'd ask here: How would you go about setting up a rule or multiple rules to sort this?

Edit to add: If you go to the new website, make sure you either have AI chatbots blocked in uBO or create a rule ||autonomoustechnology.ai^. Otherwise there is an annoying AI chatbot that pops up that you'll want to block.

I've been using Planka (https://planka.app/) for years, to manage my to-do lists and other general lists of things (like gifts given, movies I want to watch and so on). But it's been ages since I looked around for other, better apps. I really like the kanban board / trello approach they use as the lists are easy to maintain, add items to, and I can see the whole list in one glance.

I don't need fancy stuff (teams features, sharing, advanced triggers or other automation). It's just for me, running on my home server. Apps should be FOSS and installable via docker, ideally. I've looked at a few of the apps on selfh.st ( https://selfh.st/apps/?search=to-do ) but nothing stood out as really interesting.

Any apps you think of as new and interesting in this area?

Thanks!

EDIT: I've installed Vikunja and I'm giving it a try. So far, it was super easy to install and get started with. We'll see how it looks after a few days, but thanks all for the ideas shared here. 👋🙂

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.nocturnal.garden/post/913747

NoteTrace is a self-hosted alternative to Google Keep, Evernote and Apple Notes: notes, checklists and reminders in a card grid, on your own server. AGPL-3.0, a single Docker container, a web app that works offline, a native Android app, and a Wear OS app. No telemetry, no cloud. This is the first stable release.

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

What it does

• Notes and checklists. Pins, colors, nested labels, archive, trash, version history, and full-text search that also finds words in voice transcripts and in photos.
• Reminders and Tasks. Repeating reminders that keep their local time, exact alarms on Android, and one view of everything that's due.
• Offline everywhere. The installed web app keeps editing with no connection and syncs later; Android and the watch work offline too.
• Wear OS. Tick off lists, read notes, see what's due, and speak a note ("call the plumber tomorrow at nine" sets the reminder), with a tile and a watch face complication.
• Voice notes and drawings. Record with the screen off and get a transcript you can tap to jump to.
• Bring your notes with you. Import from Google Keep, Evernote, Memos, Blinko and Markdown vaults; export everything as Markdown with images.
• Optional AI. Tidy up, summarise, or turn a note into a checklist, with the provider of your choice. Off unless you set it up.

Links

• Repo: https://github.com/TraceApps/notetrace
• Docs: https://traceapps.github.io/docs/notetrace/
• Release notes + signed APKs (phone and watch): https://github.com/TraceApps/notetrace/releases/tag/v1.0.0
• Docker: ghcr.io/traceapps/notetrace:latest (mirror: traceapps/notetrace:latest)

AI Disclosure

Per Rule 7 / [AIP] disclosure requirements AI was used during development as a coding assistant. Level per category:

• Design (architecture, system design): Hint: I make the architectural calls; AI suggests trade-offs and edge cases I might have missed.
• Implementation (production code): Pair: roughly 50/50. AI drafts, I review, adjust, test on real hardware, and only commit what I've verified. Every commit is manually reviewed before it goes to my dev repo.
• Testing (writing tests, test plans, QA): Assisted: real-device testing is manual (I test on my own PC and mobile devices before every release). AI helps draft test plans and think through edge cases.
• Documentation (docs, comments, README, CHANGELOG): Pair: release notes and changelog entries are drafted with AI then edited for tone; comments and code docs are mostly Pair as well.
• Review (code review, PR feedback): Assisted: I'm the reviewer; AI helps with security sweeps, audit passes on complex changes, and consistency checks.
• Deployment (CI/CD config): Hint: Docker/GitHub Actions/release pipeline is largely conventional; AI-suggested improvements only.

Hey all, I manage a number of domains and homelab services, and keeping track of certificates becomes annoying once there are more than a handful — especially for services and appliances that don't support ACME.

So I built a lightweight iOS app that periodically checks the certificate actually being served by each endpoint and alerts before expiry.

I'm giving away a few promo codes if anyone wants to test it: 👉 https://getfree.app/app/ssl-certificate-monitor

Would love to hear your thoughts or feature requests.

Disclosure: I'm the developer.

Several of my self hosted services need to be able to send minor occasional emails for things like changing passwords or other notifications.

I've never been interested in the hassle of self-hosting my personal email, since I've heard about it being difficult. But for my little local services to have one admin@ or noreply@ to send from, with just a small handful of friends and family as users, maybe it's simpler than a full personal email replacement would be? I'm not too concerned, for example, if they have to check their spam folders. As long as the email still lands. And probably wouldn't need to worry about incoming emails.

What are you using for this type of thing? Hoping to have something not too complicated, and FOSS.

Edit: I also would like it to come from ____@mydomain.com