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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

#271

Post by flyinghamster »

It really wasn't until I got myself a Pi 4 that I really appreciated what an improvement it was over the earlier generations. I have the Pi 4 and a 3B+ running BOINC, crunching away on World Community Grid[1], and the 4 is at least twice as fast at completing work units (it's too early for RAC numbers to settle down, yet). The Cortex-A72 is a huge step up from the A53. [ETA: both are actively cooled.]

Also, the Pi 4 eliminates the USB2 bottleneck the old Pis have, and has a couple of USB3 ports.

[1] Be sure to boot with arm_64bit=1 in config.txt or you will get no work units.

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

#272

Post by christian_fei »

flyinghamster wrote: post #271

It really wasn't until I got myself a Pi 4 that I really appreciated what an improvement it was over the earlier generations. I have the Pi 4 and a 3B+ running BOINC, crunching away on World Community Grid[1], and the 4 is at least twice as fast at completing work units (it's too early for RAC numbers to settle down, yet). The Cortex-A72 is a huge step up from the A53. [ETA: both are actively cooled.] Also, the Pi 4…

Thanks for the hint! Will include this in my config.txt

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

#273

Post by _lacroix »

t-writescode wrote: post #152
_lacroix wrote: post #20

Setting up a pi-hole DNS server for my wifi network was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Horrifying to see what percentage of traffic is on the ad server blacklist though...

My favorite one continues to see the 1000+ dns requests that my Philips Hue lights send after disabling diagnostics on them. It was the same beforehand :)

Hah, what a strange dystopia we live in where it's impossible to stop your LIGHTBULBS from tracking you via the internet!! I'm a total curmudgeon about smart home stuff, I don't want any of it beyond a TV in my house if I can help it. It freaks me out seeing people with no technical knowledge outfit their entire home with Nest/Ring/Google Home/Echo/Phillips Hue and even smart refrigerators, while they know virtually nothing about how much privacy they've just relinquished to these companies and they don't have the technical skills to even attempt to mitigate it. I feel like a paranoid doctor who's starting to notice the damage done by cigarettes while the general public is still blissfully puffing away...

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

#274

Post by _lacroix »

encom wrote: post #124
_lacroix wrote: post #20

Setting up a pi-hole DNS server for my wifi network was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Horrifying to see what percentage of traffic is on the ad server blacklist though...

I wanted to do that, but I had a look at Pi Hole and ran away screaming. Instead of proper packaging, they have a 3000 line install script they want you to pipe into Bash. I went a saner route, and used dnsmasq and a blocklist[1] updated nightly via cron. Dnsmasq in turn queries Stubby that talks to uncensoreddns.org via DNS-over-TLS. Boom, DoT on my entire LAN. [1] https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists

They acknowledge that piping to bash is controversial in their install guide and they provide other options for installation. I think they were intending for it to be as accessible as possible to non-technical users and piping to bash was the easiest way to make installation a one-line command that requires zero additional knowledge and still works on the tiny raspberry pi zero w. I can't say I agree with it as a general practice but it wasn't enough to turn me off since their software takes like 15 minutes to set up, provides a nice monitoring dashboard, and runs on the raspberry pi I'd relegated to my junk drawer. Your route may be saner to you but it certainly isn't for a lot of people who tinker with raspberry pi and want something like pi-hole but don't have extensive technical knowledge (I am not one of those people I am just a lazy engineer so it works for me too).

https://docs.pi-hole.net/main/basic-install/

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

#275

Post by _lacroix »

cptskippy wrote: post #24
liability wrote: post #4

I recently thought about getting an RPi4 but ultimately spent about a hundred dollars more to get a cheap NUC. It was a bit more expensive but it seems like a more robust platform. A real AC adapter instead of USB (apparently the RPi4 kind of botched it in some revisions? What I read wasn't confidence inspiring), takes normal SO-DIMM ram and a typical SSD, doesn't have a reputation for overheating.. it seems generall…

I'm torn, I don't think of Pis as traditional servers and have two dedicated servers on my network. AND I have a half dozen Pis that I use for hosting OctoPrint, DNS, SSH, IoT, Pi-Hole, etc... which are traditionally Server functions. I tend to think of Pis in terms of single function appliances. They're obviously capable of more but they're so cheap you can just throw one at a single problem and forget about it.

Yes! They're the computer equivalent of buying a water filter for your kitchen sink or a dimmer switch for your bedroom. No point in redoing the plumbing or rewiring the entire house but you can throw one tiny cheap appliance in there and solve a single discrete problem pretty quickly.

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

#276

Post by flyinghamster »

_lacroix wrote: post #273
t-writescode wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite one continues to see the 1000+ dns requests that my Philips Hue lights send after disabling diagnostics on them. It was the same beforehand :)

Hah, what a strange dystopia we live in where it's impossible to stop your LIGHTBULBS from tracking you via the internet!! I'm a total curmudgeon about smart home stuff, I don't want any of it beyond a TV in my house if I can help it. It freaks me out seeing people with no technical knowledge outfit their entire home with Nest/Ring/Google Home/Echo/Phillips Hue and even smart refrigerators, while they know virtually…

You are not alone. It's pretty heartbreaking to see how so many promising products are really surveillance nightmares. I've noped right out of using some nice-but-not-necessary features on some things, because their app wants location access, contact lists, or other things they have no business accessing. WTF?!

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

#277

Post by gyrgtyn »

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…

You can make public DNS records for your zerotier/wireguard/tailscale ip addresses (and make lets encrypt certs for them).

some routers block rfc1918 addresses from dns lookups, but you can turn that off, or put your virtual lan in a different range.

Then you can have sql01.example.network point to 100.13.14.15

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

#278

Post by intricatedetail »

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…

You can run zerotier and have your services on your own private network accessible from anywhere.

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

#279

Post by acoard »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #169
gonehome wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, yeah Tailscale looks like it basically does everything you'd want for this: https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works/ I didn't even realize this was possible: https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/ I had seen some of the people working there comment on twitter, but I don't think those blog posts were written when I last looked them up and I didn't understand what they were actually doing. This…

When I was young I served my websites off my home network. Dynamic DNS would update my A record if my IP changed, but I managed to trick my ISP into effectively giving me a static IP. DMZ'd a host on my network and set up a firewall, and you're off to the races. Nowadays I just pay for a $5 VPS somewhere -- my uptime is significantly better this way!

Do you use the $5 VPS as like a reverse proxy and you're still self-hosting at home? Or did you move your self-hosted applications to the VPS?

I am setting up a self-hosted lab and looking at (securely) setting up remote access. Was leaning towards OpenVPN as pfSense supported it, but have been considering a locked down VPS remote proxy too (at least for some services) and happy to hear thoughts.

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

#280

Post by apenwarr »

acoard wrote: post #279
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young I served my websites off my home network. Dynamic DNS would update my A record if my IP changed, but I managed to trick my ISP into effectively giving me a static IP. DMZ'd a host on my network and set up a firewall, and you're off to the races. Nowadays I just pay for a $5 VPS somewhere -- my uptime is significantly better this way!

Do you use the $5 VPS as like a reverse proxy and you're still self-hosting at home? Or did you move your self-hosted applications to the VPS? I am setting up a self-hosted lab and looking at (securely) setting up remote access. Was leaning towards OpenVPN as pfSense supported it, but have been considering a locked down VPS remote proxy too (at least for some services) and happy to hear thoughts.

[Tailscale founder] One thing you can do here is use tailscale to connect all your devices together, including that VPS, and then set up a reverse proxy on the VPS that forwards queries to your various devices over tailscale.
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