homelabbing

hosting my own stuff!

i have a ton of photos and videos on my devices

most of them are basically shitposts that i save from tiktok, but some are memories that i genuinely cherish. there are many experiences of mine that are extremely valuable, yet i still find myself forgetting the details when someone tries to ask me about them

hence why i have so much! they are very important to me.

every time i look back on these pictures i've taken tho, i always see that popup in the Photos app....

Your iCloud Storage is Full --- Get More Storage

yes i pay for iCloud+. 200GB

i could just pay for more storage, but eventually i'll end up filling it to the brim again. and as much as i trust apple, i don't want to keep relying on them to store something i can store myself easily. i'm just dumping more money!

i also have a ton of files on my pc that i can't keep on there forever,, i do reinstall windows every now and then and i can't keep uploading everything to Google Drive and Dropbox with limited cloud storage

my friends and i have also been looking forward to playing Minecraft together, but using some service to host a Minecraft server or playing on a realm is usually paid as it turns out
and bedrock edition is atrocious

so what do i do about this?

homelab

hosting my own services without paying someone else to do it!

i did actually create a homelab with my old HP laptop ,, probably last year or something i don't remember

it was like my own catbox: a fileserver running on debian with a light desktop environment. this setup worked pretty well for me although i knew i couldn't sustain it for long---i funneled localhost:3923 (where you can access the fileserver) to the internet. however funneling is only a temporary thing i think so ummm can't do that sorry

i also had this issue where if i sent a video link from my fileserver on Discord the video just,, wouldn't play on mobile devices for some reason??? i looked into it and apparently cloudflare was stripping some important headers that would allow videos to play properly

so, i eventually shut it down and just used it as a normal laptop running kubuntu, which was not great!

source: "deciding what linux stuff to get"
originally i used to have a laptop and it was...... not the best. i was rocking an intel core i3 (i forgot which generation) with integrated graphics. :')

11th gen btw. it's fine for someone looking to browse the web, but man i had so many issues using this thing as a laptop

and i feel bad when not using it,,, it has a lot of potential to be a great machine doing something cool,,, that 1TB of storage was the reason i started a fileserver in the first place, and i'm sure these specs are more than enough to be a homelab that won't light itself on fire

so a year later, i finally decided to Actually use it and create a new one properly!

immich

my friend xleepree recently told me about how he turned his old laptop into a homelab and installed immich,, which allows you to "easily back up, organize, and manage your photos on your own server. Immich helps you browse, search and organize your photos and videos with ease, without sacrificing your privacy."

basically Google Photos but self-hosted. i was immediately hooked

i had Absolutely No Trouble setting this up. after a few minutes, installing Docker,, downloading the docker-compose.yml and .env from the immich docs,, creating an admin account,, it was ready to back up my photos!

(docker is so nice. images just have everything i need like deps built in and i can just run them in their own container.... why didn't i use this earlier)

i downloaded the mobile app for immich on my phone and tablet and started to back up all of my precious memories... there were some issues with not being able to download from iCloud but that was resolved eventually

probably my favorite part about the mobile app is that it backs up everything for you automatically,,, there's no "Backup" button, only a switch to enable them! so convenient

uploading everything did take a while,, like a couple days,, but after that i was all set! now i can rest easy knowing everything is on my server...

i could delete the photos i backed up off my phone and tablet for more storage now (my phone storage is almost full) but i still need to get some hdds so i can back up everything from my server... you never know

speaking of storage... i looked around on amazon one day and found a 1tb ssd for nearly $200??? i bought that exact item for $80 back when i was messing around with that mid-2012 macbook pro (which i don't use anymore lmao it's so heavy)
the silicon people are hogging everything...

copyparty

welcome back!

copyparty is a very powerful and portable fileserver. it can run on anything with python/docker installed and you can access it with basically every browser lmao

it has tons of very cool features that i won't go into detail here, but the author of copyparty does have a cool video introducing it

any files i would lose when reinstalling windows can be backed up here!

this time i'll keep my files private and not funnel to the internet...

mc server

i didn't set this up with docker,, but i might migrate to it someday

anyways, all i had to do was install java, download the server.jar from the official minecraft site (which is considered illegal by ESA??? what are we doing), enabled whitelisting, and ran it to listen on port 4167!

i could've used aternos, but hey now i know how to host a Minecraft server on my own device!

tailscale

so far these services are only exposed to my home network,, my friends can't even access my Minecraft server,,

that's where tailscale comes in!

it's basically a VPN that creates a private network between all of your devices, allowing you to access them from anywhere without having to mess with your router. again, it was very easy to set up on all of my devices. just download the client for your platform, register an account/log in to your account, and:

tailscale up

now my friends and i can access my server from anywhere! (after sharing the machine with them)

if you're hosting ANYTHING at all and you ever need to access them when you're away please use tailscale. it's a necessity

ending

now i'm left wondering what else i should add,

i can do so much.....

i am thinking of replacing the old HP laptop with a cheap used mini pc and getting some like 2-4 bay sata drive enclosure so it won't explode (batteries,,, very spicy) and so i can backup + have more storage,

but this setup works perfectly fine for me!

if you want a guide on how to do this yourself, you should watch Dammit Jeff's video. he goes pretty in-depth!

ok bye