New home server

Decentralization, Self-hosting ·

During this past year, I have been coming up with a variety of services that I want to host from home. The problem was that I didn't have a computer to host them on, so I decided to buy one before my Christmas vacation, when I would have time to tinker with it. Because of the gifting tradition, I was asked if there was anything that I wanted, so I ended up getting it for Christmas instead. In case you are curious, the computer is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, I decided to go with a Raspberry Pi because it's the only device I have experience with and it has worked great, on top of having good specs at a good price. I already have a server running round-the-clock (the one hosting this website), so why did I need another machine running nonstop? For two reasons: control and proximity.

When I talk about "my server", I mean a virtual private server (VPS) that I rent. "My server" can be more accurately described as a virtual machine that lives in someone else's computer and that I can administer for a certain fee. This is great for many reasons which can be summarized in "I don't have to deal with any infrastructure-related matter": the server's owner takes care of maintenance, broken parts, refrigeration, etc. On top of that, the server has a very fast internet connection and a static IP. So it's a machine that has all the needed features to start serving content to the internet. However, because this is someone else's computer, they have complete access to it. My guess is nobody is accessing my data—it probably takes some effort to automate scraping virtual machines, and I think I'm not interesting enough to be a target—, but that is not a reassuring argument, so I don't trust my VPS with my private data. With a computer at home, I have full control of everything that is happening, and I am more comfortable saving personal data there.

That was related to control, let's look at proximity. The VPS is hosted somewhere far away (I believe in Germany), so the only feasible way to connect to it is through an internet connection. This comes with limitations—you need internet, and internet connections are slower than local ones. Moreover, I want to be able to unplug external hard drives and plug them into my computer to have instant access to any data (for example to make a copy to give to someone), as well as the other way around: I want to be able to grab a USB drive, connect it to my local server and have all the data available from all the devices in the network. For obvious reasons, I can't do that with my VPS. Finally, because my home server is not exposing any service to the internet, it is much harder to hack it or for some data to get leaked.

More arguments come to mind of why some things are better hosted at home, but I think by now the general feeling has gotten across, so let's jump into what I've done so far and what are some ideas I have for the future.

What I currently have:

  • Media center: Well, something like it... I originally thought about self-hosting Jellyfin or Plex, but the first time I wanted to use the media center I didn't have much time to set it up, so I made a very minimal Apache site with an HTML file linking to multiple videos and podcasts I had downloaded. Surprisingly, this setup has been working great so far. I have created a script that autogenerates the page from a JSON with all the metadata of the files I have and I have added some features (like marking media as "seen"). Now, all I need to access the files is a web browser and, in some cases, mpv or VLC if the format is not supported on the browser (did you know you can stream videos with them?)
  • Git backup: It backs up all my Git repositories from different providers. It does so with a Python script I made some time ago that given some authentication tokens, will mirror all my repositories (and any others that I tell it to).
  • Syncthing: It runs Syncthing as another peer for all my folders. This way, all my devices are always synchronized with the Raspberry Pi. Previously, two of them had to be on and connected to have any synchronization. This also acts as a quick transparent backup for my data, since the RPi is backed up daily.

My plans for the future are the following:

  • Expanding the media center: Add more functionality to the scripts generating the webpage, add functionality to the website to be able to do some basic operations without the need to SSH into the Raspberry Pi, and add more types of content.
  • Backup center: I'm not sure if "backup center" means anything (or if I'm using it correctly), but as my backup center, the Raspberry Pi would be in charge of backing up all my devices. Syncthing already helps with my phone and some other small folders, but I'd like to improve my backup system so that a lot more data can be automatically backed up. I think with my home server it will be much easier to regularly pull data from the services I use as well as have a centralized location to which send my files.
  • Calendar and contacts synchronization: Right now, I use my email provider to synchronize my contacts, calendar and reminders using the CardDAV and CalDAV protocols. I would like to stop sending that information online and just have it synchronize with my home server (ideally with the same protocols).
  • Photo and video library: I want to centralize all the photos and videos I have (and the rest of the family's as well) and have a good interface to access them. This will include sorting them out and will probably take a lot of time, so I'm not sure if I'll end up doing it.

... and anything else that comes to mind! I enjoy playing around with new software and I have been enjoying every step of the move towards a more self-hosting setup, so I am sure that more things will come up!