I’m a techie by trade who matured using proprietary technologies like Windows, but reached my breaking point once ads were introduced at the OS level. Since then I’ve been on something of a personal vendetta against big tech. It’s been about 4 years now, and I thought I’d share my experience.
My first and predominant interest was securing a means of private communication that wasn’t centralised. Like many before me, I stumbled upon Matrix. Adoption was problematic; I couldn’t help people understand why using WhatsApp, Discord, etc. was a bad idea. But ultimately I managed to convince most of the people in my circle to migrate to my Matrix server by adding IdP (using Keycloak). The login is also tied to various other services, but the carrot that drew most of them in was my Jellyfin instance.
It’s running on a home server with ~60TB of hard drive space, and each user also has access to Seerr for requesting content, so it’s become quite an extensive library over time. Building the server cost somewhere in the region of 5k to set up (it hosts far more than just Jellyfin), plus a small monthly fee for the VPS I use as a reverse proxy. I offer everything free of charge as a labour of love for the people I care about.
I also provide free tech support to any of my users running any instance of Linux, both hardware and software. Windows users are advised to search their issues online, or allow me to install a dualboot Linux option to help them reach a resolution. I even go as far as offering a free 256GB NVMe for this purpose, provided they’ve a free M2 slot in their builds.
In my experience, bringing the layperson into the open source world is definitely possible, but it comes at great personal expense. People don’t like change, but evidently they hate adverts even more so.
I’m keen to hear about others with similar experiences this far down the rabbit hole. what have you found that works in helping with wider adoption of open source technologies in your communities?
I’m just starting to learn and it’s all very overwhelming
You got this, bro 💪
I’d really love to get all my people to use FOSS software or, at the very least, stop using WhatsApp and Co and switch to Signal.
The thing is, most people (including my people) just don’t care. At all.
The response is always one of these:
- I don’t care, let them read all I send / see all I do
- You’re just paranoid because you’re working in IT
- You can just ignore the ads
- You just gotta deal with it
It got to a point where it became so frustrating and the “paranoid” bit just pissing me off so much, I gave up. I don’t even talk about IT anymore with them, they wouldn’t (want to) understand anyway.
I feel like I’m on the only inhabitant of an island in the middle of the ocean.
I honestly think the only way to get people to care is, if the consequences themselves kick these people between the legs. Which will probably not happen in a way where they would understand “this wouldn’t have happened with FOSS software”.
Building the server cost somewhere in the region of 5k to set up (it hosts far more than just Jellyfin), plus a small monthly fee for the VPS I use as a reverse proxy. I offer everything free of charge as a labour of love for the people I care about.
I also provide free tech support to any of my users running any instance of Linux, both hardware and software.
man youre a fucking angel! mad respect
Haha, thanks; I’m certain I’m not the only techie fighting big tech in this way, and if I can help other self hosters on the journey, I’m more than happy to.
The real angels are the many unsung heroes that develop these open source projects. Without their dedication to the good fight, people like me wouldn’t be able to do what we do.
This was basically my plan before the $3,000 of parts I settled on became $7,000 where I live. Always interesting to read about people’s less exciting projects
What does the reverse proxy to jellyfin path look like? What are you using to configure and secure that?
Its pretty rudimentary reverse proxy via VPN setup. Just Client - VPS - server, using a separate wireguard connection for each service for a zero trust setup.
I’m using an oldish github project called selfhosted-gateway for setup. It hasn’t been updated in some time, but I’m still using it as the overhead on the VPS side is tiny compared to any other solution (like netbird for example) and honestly, it just works.
The setup is pretty simple, a docker container for the wireguard setup Is spun up on both sides creating a wireguard tunnel, with the home server container running nginx, that will expose the relevant container depending on config. The VPS side uses caddy which automatically handles TLS too, so its a quick and easy implementation once you get your head around it.
hahaha well met I’ve been doing the exact same thing 😂
Come for the Jellyfin Stay for the free services (Matrix, Nextcloud, Fedi…) IdP is Authentik
Glad to hear others are doing the same! I actually started out with authentik, but just could not get emails to play ball. It was no doubt something I was doing wrong though, as I remember finding nobody else with the same issues when trawling support forums, which is why I ultimately jumped to keycloak.
I definitely prefer the customisation in authentik to keycloak. I have to use a git project for compiling my keycloak ‘theme’, that allows basic UI changes like logos. Safe to say the theme hasn’t changed since it was first setup.
What did you do about authentik always loading several seconds before login someone into a service?
that only happens on the first login. I configured Authentik so the sessions last a year.
how much media do u have on your jellyfin server?
i installed Linux on my kids laptops. that’s all they use right now. wife is on a Mac…
The total space used is somewhere in the region of 20tb. I recently expanded to it by another 30tb by adding a seagate ironwolf pro hard drive to the build.
It’s overkill in all honesty, and I don’t have a raid setup/backups on any of my jellyfin drives, I figure none of it is irreplacable, and opted for maximum space possible over redundancy. But one day drives will inevitably fail, and a lot of content will be lost. I also have a pretty hands off style with the content added, so there’s no doubt plenty of space I could reclaim if I were to more actively manage the content.
My servers configuration files as well as irreplacable content like immich data etc. are all running on much more modestly sized (but just as expensive) 4TB NVMes, which are in a basic RAID 1 setup. The server itself is running on a 256gb NVMe, with no consideration for redundancy. If the OS dies, I’ll just reformat, and spin up services using the compose files stored in the RAID setup.
Glad to hear you’re starting them on the foss path young 😁 Mac users are a tough nut to crack in my experience! They’re usually very invested in the apple ecosystem, and it makes finding an alternative for their everyday usage a busy task to say the least!
wait, what kind of redundancy setup do you have? how did you add 20 TB with just a single HDD?
Using ironwolf pros for the HDD space, they’re enterprise grade high storage SATA HDDs that go as high as 32TB these days I believe.
If you use this approach, its important to make note of the workload rate of the drive you’re looking at. Anything marked as a NAS drive should be designed for 24/7 operation, whereas standard HDDs will likely crap out far sooner, but connectivity wise, the only important step is to ensure the drive is SATA rather than SAS connection, otherwise you’ll end up fiddling with PCI-e adapters which is wasteful IMO.
I’ve not built any redundancy into the media drives. Opting for maximum space possible instead. I don’t consider any of the content to be irreplaceable. Config for the Arr stack (Sonarr, Radar etc…) is held on my RAID NVMes that also has non local backups, so theoretically, when a media drive is lost, any content can be redownloaded onto a replacement drive with little effort.
Hey I’ve been thinking of a similar setup.
For media, and with storage prices being what they are, I was going to forego redundancy for a while.
Do you have a list of media and torrents / usenet indexes that you back up?
I’m wondering how I can easily or even auto Aye redownloading media if a disk blows up.
I use prowlarr to manage my sources, and that container in its entirety is backed up, so if the whole unit were to die simultaneously. I would lose all content, but retain all setup.
The key part for my recovery method is my Arr stack (prowlarr, sonarr, radarr). Loading up sonarr/radarr shows the entire catalogue of content; and highlights/ can search for any that are missing; so once the media drives been replaced its as easy as pressing a button.
If you’re just getting started. I’d recommend checking out yams.media. it provides a strong starting stack including arr containers, vpn setup etc… Its a strong foundation for a successful media server. I believe it also has media separated from app data, which makes a setup like this easy to achieve.
Could you provide some details on your media server setup? How is your data stored? What kind of hardware and software solutions do you have in place for that media library, how does it connect to the server, and do you have a backup solution for that much storage?
Thanks for any and all details you are willing to share. 🙏🫶 I’m looking to migrate my media server (Jellyfin also) from inside a normal PC case to some kind of server setup. Not a whole rack that fits in a closet or anything. Just something less Desktop PC-y.
Sure, I’d be more than happy to! It’s a home server build that started life as a gaming pc, so it’s not a rack setup in any stretch of the imagination. I’m not at home currently so can’t give exact specs offhand, but the setup is essentially:
OS: Ubuntu running on 256gb NVMe (not backed up I just replace if/when it fails)
Jellyfin/Navidrome Media: 3 SATA HDDs totalling ~60TB (2 x 15TBs, 1 30TB, no RAID, no backup. I call this my replaceable media, as I can simply redownload if a drive fails)
Config/compose files and ‘irreplacable’ data stores: 2 x 4TB NVMe (RAID 1, 7 rolling daily backups, 4 rolling weekly to a much more modest machine on the same network. This includes configuration/database etc. for jellyfin)
Entry points are all handled via a single VPS using a wire guard reverse proxy. So I’m using domain based access for all services I’m running. The only one that seems to struggle is Navidrome, which can lose sync. But jellyfin works flawlessly with this setup.
Off the top of my head, I believe the specs are something like:
- 128GB DDR5 RAM (bought pre AI boom thankfully)
- AMD Ryzen 7 9800x3d
- Nvidia rtx 4080
- 2 x fanxiang 4TB NVMe
- 1 x Kingston(?) 256GB NVMe
- 2 X Seagate ironwolf pro 15TB
- 1 x Seagate ironwolf pro 30TB
The case itself is a fractal meshify 2 XL. I got it due to the lack of RGB way back when, but it fits everything listed quite comfortably, as well as an AIO cooling system for the CPU.
If you’re looking for large storage solutions, NAS servers definitely fit the bill, and make setting up RAID a breeze. But you can quite easily find large scale SATA based drives, which fit into most mid to large cases, commercial or personal. My current build is nearly at its limit now (I think there’s a single available sata port left… Maybe another M2, can’t recall), so going forward I will likely invest in a decent NAS, but I’ve never felt the need for a rack solution if I’m honest.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the server is not quiet. The ironwolf drives in particular can drum up a fair bit of noise when busy. I’ve got the server setup in my home office, so it’s no issue personally. But it would definitely cause me sleep issues if it were in my bedroom.
Solid.
I like that you’ve done what I’ve done - considered what’s actually worth backing up and what can be replaced. So many people when selfhosting don’t make that distinction and get overwhelmed when they try to back up /everything/ - so much so they don’t bother, or half-arse it. (No 3-2-1, no periodic restores to test, no offsite or what-ifs etc)
Making that plan to save what’s important reduces the burden hugely.
Thanks, Glad to hear I’m not the only one and there’s method to the madness! I did start out with building in redundancy into the media drives, but once space ran out I came to the same conclusion. Nobodies going to cry if the ~27 seasons of law and order need to be redownloaded, so there’s no problem with a lack of redundancy.
