Hi, just recently it’s foss had an article about homelabs. Of course I digged in, since there is a small nuc working tirelessly in the corner of my routers closet. So far it just crawls some web pages for me and sends emails accordingly to my filters. So I hoped to find new exciting stuff to let it crunch through. The articles content did not spark my interest though.
Well, I’d like to know what you are using on your homelab. In hope you’ll do something I’d like to follow. Cheers
Thank you all for your recommendations. You are awesome. I really need to go through it one by one.
To make it easier for myself, this is a small summary of all your recommendations. Thanks again.
Virtualization and Infrastructure:
- Proxmox VE - Virtualization platform
- NGINX Proxy Manager - Reverse proxy manager
- Tailscale - Secure network access
- apt cacher NG - Package caching tool
- neko - Virtualized browser for secure browsing
Monitoring and Notification:
- Uptime Kuma - System monitoring tool
- Netdata - Real-time monitoring
- Zabbix - Enterprise monitoring solution
- Ntfy - Notification tool
Media Serving and Management:
- AudioBookShelf - Audio book management
- Jellyfin - Media server
- Syncthing - File synchronization
- Calibre-Web - Ebook management
- Spotweb - Usenet indexing
- Plex - Media player
- Komga - Comics and eBooks
File Sharing and Collaboration:
- Syncthing - File synchronization
- Gitea - Git hosting platform
- Sharry - Secure file sharing
- Vaultwarden - Password manager
- Stash - Data repository
- Baserow - Database management
- wiki.js - Wiki platform
- Wordpress - Content management system
Development and Version Control:
- BOINC - Distributed computing
- Forgejo - Git repository
- Gitea - Git hosting platform
- Development environment LXCs with VS Code
Networking and Communication:
- Traefik - Reverse proxy
- Portainer - Container management
- Matrix (dendrite) server - Chat server
- Navidrome - Music server
- Joplin server - Note-taking server
- RSS-Bridge - RSS feed aggregator
- SearXNG - Metasearch engine
- Dashy - Homepage for services
Miscellaneous:
- ActualBudget - Budget management
- SabNZBd - Usenet downloader
- Traccar - GPS tracking
- Restic server - Backup tool
- dump1090 + fr24feed + pfclient + piaware + rbfeeder + adsbexchange - ADS-B data tools
- Stirling-PDF - PDF management
- Miniflux - RSS feed reader
- Pihole - Network-wide ad blocker
- Huginn - Automation tool
- LimeSurvey - Survey software
- Omada controller - Network management for TP-Link devices
Kyoo – Self-hosted media browser (Jellyfin/Plex alternative)
It’s kinda standard but Pihole is how I got into the general realm of home labbing.
Oh yeah, that was it for me as well. Great recommendation! That reminds me to check, if there is a release for the new version yet. I think they rewrote a lot of code.
Had some “conversations” about why Google shopping doesn’t work anymore… Wasn’t able to convey the reason properly :/
- Jellyfin
- Audiobookshelf
- Navidrome
- wiki.js
- Joplin server
- Wordpress
- Matrix (dendrite) server
- Ntfy
- Vaultwarden
- Baserow
- Forgejo
- more that I can’t think of off the top of my head
edit: added Forgejo
That’s a great list. Thank you. I thought about vault warden, it is great as a self hosted alternative to bit warden. At the same time, I am not sure if I would be able to properly secure it.
I just read about forgejo, while reading up on Codeberg, which seems to be very popular here.
I am intrigued about baserow. What are you using it for?
I’m really happy to be hosting my own password manager.
Regarding baserow, I use it in a couple of ways. First is as a replacement for Google Sheets. For my use case, I only ever really used sheets as a dumb database, (home inventory, etc…) so I don’t need the spreadsheet parts of the spreadsheet much.
The other thing I use it for is a backend for my automations for data. Baserow has wonderful api documentation right in the gui, and I use that a lot with data logging for myself.
- dump1090 + fr24feed + pfclient + piaware + rbfeeder + adsbexchange - ADS-B data tools
That’s rare. Would you mind to elaborate how do you actually setup when you are free? Ty.
Infrastructure:
- Proxmox VE - everything’s virtualised on Debian, mostly in docker inside LXC’s for neat backup/restore and moving between nodes
- NGINX Proxy Manager - in front of most of my homelab services so they have https certificates
- Tailscale - access everything, everywhere, including on phone, securely
- Uptime Kuma - monitoring, with ntfy notifications
- apt cacher NG - unnecessary caching of apt updates
Apps:
- AudioBookShelf - Audio books (download them from here into BookPlayer (iOS) to listen in the car)
- Kavita - eBooks.
- BOINC - curing childhood cancer
- Forgejo - git repository. I do a bit of dev, but everyday self-hosters should probably still learn git to manage their configs
- Jellyfin - TV/Movies
- Syncthing - I replaced dropbox with Syncthing and FileBrowser, and Evernote with Syncthing and SilverBullet
Currently in testing on the dev server:
- neko - virtualised browser. Been experimenting with this in a container with a VPN for really simple secure browsing - ie launch it, do your online banking and then destroy the container.
- Dashy - I go through periods of wanting a pretty home page with all my services, set it all up, then fail to actually use it and eventually delete it, then hear about another cool one…
- Sharry - securish file sharing. I don’t love just emailing my accounts off to the accountant.
- LimeSurvey - survey software (like Survey Monkey) - just something I’m testing for work
- Omada controller - I’ve got a TP-Link switch and WAP that don’t really need centrally controlled, but you know, can be.
- A couple of development environment LXCs I use VS Code in
I still have not landed on a music system. I’ve put some of my library on Jellyfin, and tried a couple of apps with, but haven’t hit on a good combination yet. [edit:formatting}
Wow, that is an extensive list! Impressive. I guess, your home lab doesn’t live just in an pi or old nuc. What kind of hardware are you using for all that?
I’ve got three of these little 1L HP’s, one for production, a spare, and one for development. But really, it’s a small load - that list would happily run on an old nuc. The constraint is really memory which I’ve mostly addressed by moving from VMs to LXCs. And I could be even more efficient by just running all the docker containers on one host if I had to.
Storage for media and backups is a Synology NAS.
Thanks for sharing. That is not what I expected. My nuc sometimes seems sluggish, even with a fairly small load. Guess i have something hogging the resources. 🤨
