Selfhosted @lemmy.world zpoex @sh.itjust.works 1y ago

Best things to host on a raspberry pi

Hey yall, I want to get into self-hosting. I want to start from hosting on a raspberry pi, and I am just wondering if yall have any recommendations (I've never hosted anything before, but have experience in linux and programming). Sorry if it's bit of a stupid question.

36 comments

Pihole is the best starting point in my opinion, helped a lot of my friend to get started !
- Goes against the spirit of self-hosting but for some stuff(Email, DNS, Passwords), I just SaaS it out. As much as I love my lab, nothing self-hosted in my prod environment is critical.
  
  Exactly, I can barely maintain a media server I really don't want to be responsible for my passwords and photos. There are secure alternatives that are private and open enough for my needs...
Pihole is easy and light enough. I used to host Transmission (transmission-daemon) on a 3B+ and it worked alright for seeding around 300-500 torrents. FreshRSS also worked alongside.
- Pihole my is choice too. It’s pretty good, but for some reason video ads still get through even off YouTube? Is it possible to block them?
  
  uBlock Origin gets rid of every single one.
  
  YouTube ads don't come from a separate server. They come in the same way as the video. They pretty much need to be filtered out at the player end (e.g. browser plugins).
  
  You can't do that with Pihole as the ads come from the same domains, and basically need a browser extension or an app with a built in equivalent.
  
  If you're in the UK though, it does block the ads on All4 which was a nice surprise. It even works for the TV app.
  
  Pihole blocks ad domains. YouTube ads are still from youtube.com, so you have to block them on the browser level with something like Ublock Origin
For the cost of a rpi, just get actually capable hardware. Once you actually get anything running you'll wish you had real hardware.
- I've been leaning this way lately. From a cost/capability standpoint, RPis were easy to justify when they were ~$30, but not as much at their current inflated prices unless you have specific power consumption and form factor requirements. Used/refurbished Dell thin clients and MFF PCs can be had for $40-100, ranging from fanless systems with low-power Atoms and Celerons to full-fledged desktops with Core i-series CPUs, all with memory and storage included more often than not. I personally just picked up a Dell OptiPlex MFF with an i5-9500T, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD for $100.
I'm hosting https://www.home-assistant.io/ on raspberry pi's.
- I just started with HA as well and it's a massive rabbit hole haha. So far set up thermostats for rooms, motion sensors with smart lights and integration with Frigate for my security cams. Also set up a tablet with HA which displays all our photos from the NAS as screensaver.
If you have a 3d printer also check out Klipper, Octopi etc. I run mine off a pi zero 2 and it is a leap in performance over the stock board on the Ender 5.
Pihole is a good start, though I personally use my Pi 3B+ for printer server over WiFi since I have a dumb Epson printer.
@zpoex Nextcloud is always a handy one
Some things that haven't been proposed here might be to use it as a nas. If you want to access your films and shows from outside it's easier to set up Plex instead of jellyfin for now. You can use it also as a steam machine streaming from the pc to the tv, or as Kodi/Libreelec mediacenter to make your tv smart
- use it as a nas
  
  If you do this, whatever you do make sure at the very least you get NAS-grade hard drives. But preferably, use some sort of RAID system as well.
  
  I just lost years worth of data because I used a consumer external HDD as my NAS drive connected to my RPi, and I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to get it back.
  
  for starting out any existing hard drive is enough though
PiVPN is a simple home VPN solution that's worth exploring.

Is you are interested in smart home/home automation Home Assistant is an open source home automation platform and makes a great Pi project.
- I’ve recently set up pivpn with duckdns. Are there any security related steps I should take or is the out of the box config good enough?
honestly it is good to start with and for controlling machines like an array of 3d printers but a dumpster dive laptop will be faster. RPI4 is quite old now.

with that done:

jellyfin

smb server

syncthing

tftp with wake on lan / clonezilla to backup your other machines
- jellyfin
  
  How good is the performance of that on a rpi4? Does it work for transcoding videos?
  
  It doesn’t. Not well. And for larger files, even on cable connection without transcoding performance is god awful, sometimes it doesn’t play, or stutters or you get awful audio desyncs. Don’t do jellyfin on rpi
One suggestion might be to load a Debian build on it and use it for docker containers. With docker containers you can do so many different things. I have a PI 4 and it does all of the following:
PiHole - For blocking ads. (Everyone should have one of these)
OpenMediaVault - For NAS
Portainers - For loading docker containers
Radarr - Downloading Movies
Sonarr - Downloading TV Shows
Tautulli - Monitors my plex server
Overseer - Allows members of my plex share to request content.
NZBGET and Real-Debrid Torrent Downloader Clients - For downloading content from usenet or real-debrid.

I have one Pi4 running all of these as docker containers. Have fun!
I have two Raspberry Pi (4 / 2) and I use them to selfhost:

AdguardHome (two instances)

HomeAssistant

NextCloud

Forgejo

VaultWarden

NTP server

Those are all as Docker services so I can easily switch to new devices in case I need to. All of them work like a charm.

36 comments