Selfhosted

I'm about 90% decoupled from Google, it's been a journey.

I'm at the difficult stage of contemplating how to decom my gmail email, and the Google account itself.

I'll throw my hat in the ring and offer any help if you need it. Similar to others here, I suggest you start with something discrete like photos.

I'm 100% self taught & was in exactly the same place. I'd never used Linux before I got my first Pi. I spent a bit of time trying to familiarise myself with & made some notes regarding command line (notes I still rely on).

There'a so many ways to achieve the goal, you'll eventually find a way that works for you. My personal preference was Docker/Docker Compose deployed via Portainer.

Even that was confusing. Until I found this excellent video on how to read Docker requirements & apply them step by step into Portainer. He explains slowly & methodically exactly what he is doing & why.

Portainer is a method of handling Docker stacks/containers via a web UI. Both Docker & Portainer are simple to install.

It's easier to use Docker Compose files and/or .env (environment variable) files (both are even simpler to deploy through Portainer) but this video taught me what was going on & gave me confidence to have a go. What attracted me to Docker is you can easily remove stacks/containers if/when you make a mess rather than wiping the drive & start again, which is how I went about things initially.

This gave me the tools to set up Nginx Proxy Manager & I never looked back.

As you've realised, a robust backup solution is essential (plus off site backup for particularly important stuff) as things will inevitably go wrong along the way (I see Borg, Restic mentioned often, I went for Kopia).

I can't recommend highly enough making detailed notes along the way, I rely on Joplin.

If you start using Docker, dont fall into the trap of using the "latest" tag. If you know the version number you're running its far easier to re-deploy if an update is bad.

Enjoy your new time consuming, teeth gnashingly frustrating ...and yet rewarding hobby 👍

This post inspired me to audit my firewall rules, had put it off for too long

At first, you have to decide what do you need. You can selfhost almost everything, but in my opinion there is no need to do so.

Second thing is hardware to host it. I saw a few comments recommending NAS. It is of course good thing, but my suggestion is just building your own NAS. You need only decent computer to do it.

The easiest way is just installing TrueNAS on it - with that you can setup file sharing and your apps via docker.

But what apps would you need/want? I can recommend a few from my stack:

• vaultwarden - for storing passwords, 2FA codes
• immich - for storing photos, videos, autoupload from phone
• adguard - for getting rid of ads, tracking They are really easy to deploy.

As an alternative to file shares via SMB, nextcloud is really good option. It’s google drive on steroids. Also includes photo gallery with great app on android/ios with autoupload option.

Start with a nas, the rest will naturally come when you try to access your data for outside, or organize your data, or save more data types to your nas.

Your nas should be the central device and you build the rest around it.

Now, The question is, which nas? I would recommend synology, they are not too performance, a bit expensive and the company is lately doing suspicious moves, but the sw and the hw are rock solid and they are quite good for beginners from almost all angles. Extra point for how many howtos and tutorials are present in internet.

Once you are comfortable with them, you will realize the rest

Yikes. Before you dip into any of the self-hosting, take and get a WD Gold drive - from Western Digital directly (wd.com) - do NOT go through Amazon or NewEgg or any third party merchant. Send in the warranty that goes with it and register the drive (this is for covering the off chance it's a DOA unit) Then get a good quality enclosure to pop the drive into and take your time and back up EVERYTHING onto that new HD.

Don't use an SSD.

You want a spinning platter drive, as this is backup only, so once it's full with all of your content, it gets dated and labeled and popped into a drawer for safe keeping. If you have countless terabytes of data, get more drives and swap them into the enclosure, date and incrementally fill. A fine tip sharpie to note what's on the drive is fine, or if you're obsessively anal about it, make a spreadsheet with that info.. If your drives are kept dry and stored with care they will last for DECADES..

The truth if being honest here - I'm a data hoarder and most of the stuff I've tucked away since I first came online (in 1999) is now on drives that I maybe spin up once a year. I used to have the notion that it was critical that all my shit was accessible all the time and I ended up dropping money on networked storage.. and over time, realized that as long as I knew where the files were, DID have the most important stuff - family photos and scans - tucked away not only in long term storage, but on multiple drives in multiple machines, (home, work, laptop) it was okay not have it served up instantly.

Just reading your post made me go cold inside - I can only imagine what you were going through until it got sorted. From a bonafide old school data hoarder.. Please, back your shit up locally. Use enterprise drives.

Then sort a self-hosting soultion.

Unless you have experience with ethernet equipment and such it is probably better to start with some hosted service of an open-source app like Nextcloud or Immich or (slightly more advanced) a VPS somewhere. Doing it immediately from home with your own server has a steep learning curve.

While YUNO is a great way to get started, I strongly encourage you to understand basic concepts, like docker, and maybe try to run something outside of it for fun. While not even remotely the same thing since YUNO is just the OS and "app store", you would be very similarly tied to that ecosystem the same way you are to Google now. Not to mean that YUNO would have any control over your stuff, but you would be dependent on them for what you can self host.

In addition to what another poster said about getting an off-site backup hard drive, I would recommend looking into setting up a raid array for data redundancy with your online storage. You don't want one hard drive failure to make all of your data inaccessible.

@MTZ saving this for later! I aim to go the same path soon :)

Install Virtualbox (or some software to handle virtual machines).
Install Debian (or some other OS of your choice, I won't judge if you prefer Windows).
Update your OS (apt update && apt upgrade -y on Debian).
Take a snapshot of your VM's current state after updating. Saves a lot of time if you mess up or want a clean slate.

Now you decide on what you want. Do you want to install n8n or Node-RED for automation? Do you want to use Immich for pictures? Paperless to save papers in a digital format? Audiobookshelf to listen on your books or podcasts? Jellyfin to stream your media? Set up a Minecraft or Factorio server?

Once you have decided on what you want to do, try to do it in your virtual machine.
Once you understand how to set it up and configure it to your liking, decide on how you want to host it. I took an office computer, added a few HDDs and replaced the case with a bigger one and it's now my home server, but any old laptop will do. Just make sure to take backups.

I used to have a Dell R710 and a virtual machine for each service I hosted, but I have moved to docker because it as simple as taking the often provided compose file, tweaking it a bit (where to store data etc) and running it with docker compose up -d.

Hi @MTZ , #selfhosting could be a move in the right direction for you. I started managing my own servers over 10 years ago, locally, from my home, later VPS and finally again from my home. Eventually I moved toward @yunohost - it simplifies a lot of things! I documented some my experiences at https://wasi.ovh/
Start small: setup file/photo sync (@nextcloud), calendars and contacts and gradually start adding data from old backups once you feel comfortable.
Have fun and good luck :)

if it seems daunting, which it is!, maybe it would be a good piont to ask yourself if you really need to run a server and these self hosted web apps in the first place. i did for about 10 years but i realised at some point i didnt need half of it.

if youre planning on having multiple users or want to share one of the services (like real time editing of files or passwords etc) then thats where self hosted stuff makes sense to me, but if not then syncthing can do a lot without needing any complicated setup

keepass is a good example. or note taking apps like jopin or obsidian where the data is store in plain text and where you can choose where the data is stored works great with syncthing

for about a year before i did any self hosted stuff i was running only syncthing on my laptop and phone without any server so its do-able and you can get started right now and worry about getting a server later.

tailscale is a huge help as well and is very easy to setup. say you repurpose an old laptop as a server for now and install whatever services on it, jellyfin for example, you will only be able to access that when you are on your home network but not when you are away, and thats where tailscale comes in. as long as its installed on each device you should be able to connect to your apps/services from anywhere.

basically you can start small and then over the coming months and years as you learn more you will get more confident about moving onto more complicated setups

@MTZ@lemmy.world Good luck! I'm looking forward to following your journey! I've been playing a lot with #selfhosting lately too, and feel quite happy with my current setup (@nextcloud@mastodon.xyz for photos and docs, @gitea@social.gitea.io for code, dots and docs, and #snac by @grunfink@comam.es to replace corporate social networks/media. I'd like to go further with #vaultwarden and who knows what else, so the advice you've gotten is really valuable to me as well.

Like you I also had a terrible experience, only with Apple and my Iphone where it didn't accept my (correct) pincode, and I couldn't log in to Apple ID due to not having access to my phone. I ended up having to reset my phone after much banging my head against the wall. I decided then that I would not be reliant on that thing for access to everything else. I've ordered a #JollaC2 Community Phone by @jolla@techhub.social to replace my Iphone. No more #bigtech for me.

Check out YUNOhost - it's pre-configured for you and designed for beginners. Mine's been running for about three years on a VPS with no problems and I had no previous experience with self-hosting.

Definitely keep your files backed up locally though. No server is invincible.

What exactly do you want to do? Just have storage that you upload all your media to, which is also backed up somewhere else?

Instead of self hosting, why not try better offerings?

Most anything you probably use Google for, you can do with a disroot account. Riseup is a great group, with many similar services (not all). The tildeverse also has myriad replacement services.

Just try to support them, financially.

get your password situation squared away! every time i spin something new up i am grateful to have a pw manager to keep it all unique and maximum character limit

don't even have to memorize the user of a lot of em