I am setting up my NAS right now, and I need some suggestions for apps that I can run on my NAS or self-host.
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I have seen some online articles, but they are too confusing because they list too many apps for each category.
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I want backup apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. (It would be great if they could back up automatically).
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I want to sync my calendars and contacts.
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I want to download media like TV shows and movies. (And music, too). “Of course, only legal obtained from the internet cough.”
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I want apps that let me access my data from anywhere.
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I saw this cool thing where you could use a Raspberry Pi to access your NAS bios from your PC.
Os - Unraid
You should host the internet.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Syncthing for back ups. Lovely and easy to use.
As long as it’s set to keep copies. Else it’s just a way to sync accidental file deletions.
Adguard Home or pihole is a must. Jellyfin is also pretty cool.
Also, privacy-wise, what do you guys use to keep your home server anonymous/hidden and protected? Is VPN enough? If yes, what VPN do you recommend?
Totally go with Tailscale, can’t stress how nice it is.
How does it compare with a VPN?
This article explains it better than I could
It’s a mesh network, so there’s no open ports on your router. In that way it’s more secure than a VPN in my opinion. You do have to trust Tailscale themselves, but they’ve documented why that’s not a concern.
Mesh network clients on your home network make an outbound connection to their respective discovery servers (or whatever theyre calling them). Companies like Tailscale host these servers so your mesh clients can find each other.
I’m using wireguard but I hear a lot of good things about tailscale.
Tailscale is a mesh VPN. Its a level of abstraction passed a regular VPN, lime wireguard or OpenVPN. Tailscale uses wireguard under the hood.
My recommendation: host OpenVPN, change the default port and only access your NAS from the internet using your VPN. Also only allow the VPN port on your router firewall.
this is a great idea but it will only work if they have a public ip
Depends on your router. I have an Asus and it has a free ddns option through their domain. I point my Wireguard client at this address and never think of it again. That way, the only port that’s open on your router is a Wireguard port and they don’t respond to sniffing.
If that’s not a possibility, I had a ddns service before that for like $2/month
maybe is specific to my country, but here the majority of network plans have a CGNAT down the line. So we have a private ip at the router and there is no way to reach it, unless you reley the traffic to a third point.
if you want a public ip (even dynamic) you need to pay up
You can grab a static public IP on a VPS for free. That’s what I do — works well, though the VPS speed is capped pretty low.
I have a vps for 2€/month. It’s not a powerful machine, but easily enough to host wireguard and caddy.
No he doesn’t mean a static IP, he means a publicly routable IP. That’s not something DDNS will help you with.
True. But pretty much the same applies for dynamic DNS services, except you have to trust your dynamic DNS provider.
DDNS won’t help you if your IP isn’t a public IP
It makes a tunnel through to you and links to that.
DDNS doesn’t do tunneling. DDNS is a solution to a changing public IP, not something like CGNAT. You’d need a separate service with a relay server to do something like what you’re suggesting, like how Zerotier or Tailscale work.
Ah, I’ve only ever seen it in combination with a tunnel, so I assumed it’s part of that.
Yeah definitely a good idea. Routing your mobile traffic through it so your carrier cannot access your traffic and the services you don’t want to share location with can’t snoop as much on you.
I meant more because people generally don’t have as much time to spend on IT security as companies, but yeah, it works for privacy as well.
If this, then I would highly recommend Tailscale or Headscale. Just simplifies this process so much. Tailscale is so darn good, my number one tool of choice.
For accessing files from your smartphones, I know there’s Nextcloud; what other foss file management tools are available, especially on the phones?
My personal lists:
Adguard Home Channels WireGuard for remote access (this is the only open firewall port) Firefly-iii (for personal accounting) Nextcloud for files,calendar,and contacts
Is it custom build NAS or something like Synology?
As already mentioned for proper backups you should locate the NAS somewhere else.
I’m not an expert by any means so don’t take my word for it. I’ve tinkerd with some pies befor but this was my proper first project: a NAS for my family (multiple households).
If it’s for personal use, you can use a VPN to your local network. It’s by far the safest option and easier to setup.
I went with OMV (openmediavault) for local sharing as OS + Docker + portainer. For the backups and access I went with Docker Nextcloud and Docker Swag (letsencrypt) and a reserve proxy with duckdns since I don’t have a fixed IP. Nextcloud setup was the easiest part and not really a hassle. With a VPN you won’t need to tinker with the “access from net” stuff.
For syncing files on Android I would recommend Autosync since it’s the most reliable one IMO. No other OS tested so far.
Nextcloud can handle a lot on its own and for something special you will find a proper plugin. For the download needs you may find some docker containers.
Custom build NAS
I just discovered this and it’s awesome, if you’re into gaming at all. It’s a containerized console emulator suite, and I think it is very well done. https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-emulatorjs
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT DNS Domain Name Service/System Git Popular version control system, primarily for code IP Internet Protocol NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation Plex Brand of media server package VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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For the downloading media part:
The *arr stack is what you’re looking for + Jellyfin for streaming (Opensource, 100% free, and much better than Plex).
Prowlarr: manage your indexers
Radarr: find/automatically download movies
Sonarr: find/automatically download tv shows
Jellyfin: streaming your media
Look up trashguides for setting up all this stuff, very detailed guides. They are compatible with torrents and Usenet. I like using docker with portainer for easy management and if you use a VPN container you can selectively route these containers through the VPN so your other services that dont require the VPN dont need to route through it.
Jellyfin for streaming (Opensource, 100% free, and much better than Plex).
*Better for your wallet and the privacy, not better in any functional way.
I’ve used both extensively and stand by my statement, from a functional standpoint as well.
That’s a bold opinion given its barebones UI, widespread playback issues, and lack of basic functionality like a proper intro skip. Like even Emby is miles ahead of Jellyfin. Which isn’t surprising given JF is free but let’s be real lol
Clearly just upset you got conned into paying hundreds for an inferior product
No I would love to switch to Jellyfin. I ditched Plex after some of their more recent shenanigans but Jellyfin is just so vastly inferior on almost every front that it’s difficult to even compare the two. For now I’m using Emby which is another fork of the same project Jellyfin is and it’s a lot closer to feature parity with Plex. And I’ll gladly pay money for a quality product over settling for a free product that doesn’t really get the job done.
I just hope that one day Jellyfin reaches a maturity that it’s actually worth switching to.
Plex gotten around to av1 transcoding yet?
I think it depends on your clients. If you’re using Roku, you can skip Jellyfin…sadly.
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Well not better, just cheaper.
I have them both running. The only thing Plex does better for me is remote access. Everything else like UI features, collections, series identication, and CPU usage has been simpler and better looking on Jellyfin.
Never used Plex, but if being open source is a feature Jellyfin is better than Plex.
Not requiring an external authentication server is the biggest drawback of Plex. I don’t want Plex to have my watch history and info about my media library.
With Findroid supporting the intro skip plugin I’m fine since I don’t need many platforms.
Still gotta pay for guide data iirc. Has that changed?
An update for the Roku app was released 5 days ago which massively improves it (finally an OSD!). It’s getting there.
I use zap2xml or whatever it is. Simple script and crontab job and it’s worked without issue for near two years now I guess (since I initially configured it.) All free. I’m in the States so not sure if it’s location dependent or not.
And Android TV, it’s gotten better, but generally still sucks.
I use Jellyfin because it’s FOSS, private, and it’s also written in a tech stack I’m very familiar with.not because it’s better than flex, because it really isn’t.
Theres so many. Check out the awesome list: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
I think your stategy should be one service at a time. Do everything in docker, and start by tackling a simpler service. For example, you should try paperless-ngx. Absolute game changer. I didnt realize how much managing ny own directory structure sucked until I used this. Then, grow your service list more and more!
This is a fantastic list I’ve bookmarked, thanks. But I do want to highlight OP’s first point where it says:
…they are too confusing because they list too many apps for each category.
Might be a little more beneficial for OP to highlight a couple useful for their use case that are fairly beginner friendly? I’d do it but I’m basically in the same boat as OP right now, lol
I saw this cool thing where you could use a Raspberry Pi to access your NAS bios from your PC.
That’s PiKVM
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3-2-1 means 3 copies total on 2 different media with 1 copy off-site. An easy way to implement would be make a local copy outside of your NAS/RAID(different NAS or external HDD) and create a copy of that somewhere in the cloud or hosting(backblaze for example)
You should probably not look at your whole storage when thinking about Backup, but create different logical pools. For example I have 3 pools: media files, personal files&photos, app config files for my docker.
I don’t backup the media files because I can reacquire them, I have a very strict backup policy for my personal files and a more relaxed policy for my config files.
I use duplicacy to manage a local copy and a cloud copy and do restore tests sometimes. Duplicacy can also manage retention of its snapshots so I can keep years old versions of my personal files but only a few weeks worth of config
Thank you for the info. I thought I was going to have a lot of data, but I don’t; that including media, which, as you said, can be reacquired with no need to backup, saves a lot of storage space. I have approximately What do you use for local backup? I’m also looking at cloud storage for offsite backup.
I use backblaze as a target with duplicacy, pretty cheap and allows free downloads of up to 3x your data per month. I use about 500gb there.
I would avoid self-hosting backups at the same location where your devices are currently kept. There is a reason off-site backups are a thing. So many failure causes are shared with devices in the same home, from electrical issues (lightning and technical defects among other things) over water and fire damage to theft.
I’d say it’s about designing a good strategy. I have local backups on my NAS and a nightly incremental backup to cloud locations from there. That way the capture from my local equipment to the NAS is lightning fast and it’s not a big deal to have it take a few hours to reach the cloud. Also having a NAS on a power backup is a must-have.
Will need to research it as I’m not aware of it. Thanks for the heads up.
That being said: backing up to a single, central, local location and then syncing those backups to some offsite location can actually be very efficient (and avoids having to spread the credentials for whatever off-site storage you use to multiple devices).
I should have written “your only backup”, obviously it can’t hurt to have both.
