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Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

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Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#111

Post by fuzxi »

boredpenguin wrote: post #46
gonehome wrote: post #26

How do people access these servers off of their home network (or do they not?). That seems like most of the value to me, hosting some service you can access from anywhere without having to use Digital Ocean. It seems like most residential ISPs don't provide a static IP and some block port 80? I think forcing ISPs to allow home users to serve traffic via some standard method would go a long way to enabling a more dece…

> How do people access these servers off of their home network (or do they not?). Wireguard, listening on the public IP with port forwarding, and using a dynamic dns client to ensure I can always connect even if the public IP changes. > It seems like most residential ISPs don't provide a static IP and some block port 80? Not the case here in my experience (Spain), but if you're fine being the only one with access you…

Yup, Wireguard is what I use. I toyed around with both Traefik and Caddy as reverse proxies (not simultaneously, of course), but found it to be much more complicated to set up than a VPN. I wouldn't touch a reverse proxy for personal use again.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#112

Post by dundarious »

jakobdabo wrote: post #59
antognini wrote: post #6

One thing to watch out for when doing something like this is that the Raspberry Pi will by default put your file system on the SD card it boots from. SD cards aren't meant to support a lot of write/erase cycles, so it's easy to end up with a corrupt SD card after a few months to a year depending on what you're doing on your Pi. A workaround that can save you some headaches here is to only boot from the SD card (which…

Most writes are the logs, I use log2ram [1], it reduces SD writes substantially. [1] https://github.com/azlux/log2ram

Or for those using journald, use Storage=volatile in /etc/systemd/journald.conf and then `systemctl force-reload systemd-journald`. Remove /var/log/journal to get rid of the old persisted logs.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#113

Post by snapetom »

erulabs wrote: post #5

Nice! I recently wrote a blog article about home-hosting on a RPI4 using kubernetes ( https://kubesail.com/blog/k3s-raspberry-pi ). Such a bright future in home-hosting - really looking forward to seeing the movement grow! The https://www.linuxserver.io/ community is pretty great re: home-hosting apps as well.

I've set up a small cluster at home via Docker Swarm. I use it to not only an environment to prototype more complex apps, but also keep my devops knowledge up, too.

I originally had a Cluster Hat (https://clusterhat.com/) which piggybacked four Pi-0's on a Pi 3. Even cut out a nice acrylic case, too (https://climbers.net/sbc/clusterhat-review-raspberry-pi-zero...). It worked fine, and I even had Hadoop running on it for a while. The biggest issue was the ARM7 of the host (pi3) vs the ARM6 of the Zero's. This caused a lot of problems with deployments, essentially eliminating the redundancy you get from orchestration systems.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#114

Post by guywhocodes »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #101
anderspitman wrote: post #82

The hardware is there (RPi + USB storage). The server software is there (NextCloud, Plex, n8n, etc). What isn't there is the plumbing. The next logical step after this blog post is making your services accessible to your phone over the public net. You'll immediately find yourself mired in domain name registration, VPS management, TLS cert management, dyndns, port forwarding, hole punching, etc etc. There are lots of…

I tried running nextcloud on an rpi. It just doesn't cut it. I had the 4gb model and nextcloud runs but its a horrible experience. You go on the web UI and click a photo and it takes 10 seconds to load. Moved my server to a ryzen 5 based setup and now everything is instant. I'm not sure what the limiting factor on the rpi was because the ram and cpu usage was low. Perhaps it was memory or storage speed.

I'm doing the same, my disks are much faster than what should be necessary. Exactly the same setup and observations.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#115

Post by fuzxi »

Waterfall wrote: post #28
entropicdrifter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the built-in advantage of Intel's much better supported QuickSync video encode/decode if you're doing any sort of media streaming.

Won't matter if your main computer does the decoding, and for the price of one good computer that can stream to all devices including crappy ones versus all good ones and a cheap NAS to host, which would you choose?

If it only costs you $100 to upgrade all your non-server devices from crappy to good, you have to tell me where you shop.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#116

Post by devwastaken »

anderspitman wrote: post #82

The hardware is there (RPi + USB storage). The server software is there (NextCloud, Plex, n8n, etc). What isn't there is the plumbing. The next logical step after this blog post is making your services accessible to your phone over the public net. You'll immediately find yourself mired in domain name registration, VPS management, TLS cert management, dyndns, port forwarding, hole punching, etc etc. There are lots of…

It's against cloudflare tos to be doing mostly video/images for free. It would be a great idea as it would solve the problem of IP exposure but if it gained any traction it'd have to be shut down.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#117

Post by ziml77 »

jakobdabo wrote: post #64
gonehome wrote: post #26

How do people access these servers off of their home network (or do they not?). That seems like most of the value to me, hosting some service you can access from anywhere without having to use Digital Ocean. It seems like most residential ISPs don't provide a static IP and some block port 80? I think forcing ISPs to allow home users to serve traffic via some standard method would go a long way to enabling a more dece…

Tor hidden service. Simple to configure, just works.

I've considered that before. Also means it's possible to share with other trusted people unlike going the VPN route.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#118

Post by kingosticks »

noncoml wrote: post #80

My only gripe about Raspberry Pi, and only thing that prevents me from using it as a home server, is that the USB cannot power an external HD

I power a laptop drive with mine. One of those WD passport type things. Works fine for video playback.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#119

Post by Polylactic_acid »

salawat wrote: post #106
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried running nextcloud on an rpi. It just doesn't cut it. I had the 4gb model and nextcloud runs but its a horrible experience. You go on the web UI and click a photo and it takes 10 seconds to load. Moved my server to a ryzen 5 based setup and now everything is instant. I'm not sure what the limiting factor on the rpi was because the ram and cpu usage was low. Perhaps it was memory or storage speed.

On SD card or USB w\UASP enclosured SSD?

This was using an sd card.

Re: Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications

#120

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

anderspitman wrote: post #98
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just setup Tailscale, which takes about two minutes.

Tailscale runs on WireGuard and therefore requires elevated permissions on each client device. That shouldn't be required for simply proxying a local port. Does Tailscale offer domain registration and TLS certs? Also, is there any way to allow public access to certain ports on certain machines, ie if you wanted to run your personal blog on your RPi?

I mean I suppose it requires elevated permissions but frankly it doesn't require any more permissions than most software, so this feels like a weird point to pick on. You need elevated permissions to bind 80 and 443, etc., right?

You mentioned accessing your own devices from anywhere, and that's what I use Tailscale for. It was a dream to set up, and for my own services, I don't need TLS or custom domains, really. I have a few shortcuts on my phone that work everywhere, Tailscale IPs are static.

> Also, is there any way to allow public access to certain ports on certain machines, ie if you wanted to run your personal blog on your RPi?

This is sorta outside the scope of what Tailscale aims to solve, but one of the cool things you could do is just run a proxy somewhere publicly accessible and route requests to your RPi.

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