I got Jellyfin up and running, it’s 10/10. I love this thing, and it reinvigorated my love for watching movies. So I decided to tackle all the other services I wanted, starting with Paperless-ngx…
What a nightmare. It doesn’t have a Windows install so I made an Ubuntu VM. Don’t get me started on Ubuntu. I just spent about 12hrs trying to get Portainer to cooperate and had to give up. I tried just installing Paperless the “normal way” and had to give up on that too.
My point: if you’re getting started selfhosting you have to embrace and accept the self-inflicted punishment. Good luck everybody, I don’t know if I can keep choosing to get disappointed.
Edit: good news! Almost everything I wanted to do is covered by Jellyfin which can be done in Windows.
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I know linux isn’t for everyone, but self hosting on windows is self-inflicted punishment. It’s just not the right platform. Sure it’s doable, but it’s death by a thousand papercuts.
also Ubuntu will add more complexity to things, Debian will cover most of what you need.
I wish I knew this before I started.
But my headless Ubuntu is working now, so I am not changing it.
Don’t rush it. You will have plenty of opportunities to change into Debian when your Ubuntu stops working.
Be me whose server is on Ubuntu 18.04 and needs upgrading to get Bluetooth into home assistant 😭
For what it’s worth, I usually install Ubuntu Server instead of Debian because it comes with a few more things out-of-the-box that I would install anyway. I have several installations of 22.04 that have been upgraded since 16.04 and they work no problem. (I also have a few Debian installations working similarly well.)
I made my jump from Ubuntu Server to Debian when I containerized everything onto a single proxmox machine.
How so?
Took maybe 5 minutes total to install paperless-ngx in docker on a Debian vm. No hassles, no headaches.
The problem is trying to install tools built for Linux on Windows.
You’re better than me
I didn’t mean it that way.
If you have a spare computer, install proxmox on it.
There are loads of tutorials how to do this, it has a good installer, after which it’s all a web based GUI.
Use it to spin up VMs to your heart’s content, create scripts to automatically provision a new Ubuntu or Debian or whatever flavour. Or run up some Windows VMs. You can pass through GPUs and other devices (tho this can be difficult, again lots of tutorials out there).Be prepared to spend some time learning proxmox. It took me 2 or 3 installs to figure out the best way to set up networks, storage etc. Mostly cause I just jumped in, found something that could be better, googled that and found a useful tutorial on it so started again.
But once proxmox is running, everything else become so much easierI don’t think proxmox is great if you don’t know Linux yet. It’s an additional tool to understand. But I do regret not getting into proxmox earlier, since it makes trying new things so much easier.
could you share some tutorials? i’m thinking to rebuild to setup better storage for VMs and backups
That’s a pretty broad question.
How many nodes are you running? Are you using CEPH? Or another flavour of distributed storage? Or external nas/san? Or just local arrays? Zfs? Btrfs?
What’s your backup strategy? Do you use Proxmox Backup Server?If you can figure out what you don’t like about your current setup, there will probably be a tutorial or article about alternatives.
Sometimes they can be applied without having to reinstall (actually, 99% of them probably can. Sometimes I just find it easier to start from scratch tho)
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I’ve got Docker up and running, but getting anything to work within Docker or getting a machine to access the services that it says are running is a different story
I have worked with Docker/WSL for a number of years and it is more difficult compared to Docker in Linux. There are a lot a unique quirks and bugs that are an absolute pain to deal with.
Would not recommend for any relatively complex use case and certainly not for a server.
This sounds like ports aren’t forwarded correctly. At least that’s a regular problem I have.
ss -tunlpshows which ports are open and helps me often to find out if I’m just too dumb again ;DI do think that if you continue to set up services on Linux (with or without docker), you’ll get quickly to a point where setting up a new service takes only a few minutes.
TECHNICALLY (yes, I’m fun at parties) you need 3 commands, as you also need to do an “apt update” after adding the repo. But we can chain commands of course. Do chained commands count as one? We could debate that for hours. Like why I prefer vi.
My point? None really, just having fun.
You forgot “sudo”! Try again
Joke’s on you, I login as root (no I don’t, but I do sudo -i instead of each command)
Windows is just not ready for this stuff. Most of this stuff is built for Linux. Linux is THE server OS. And windows is painful for developers too, so there’s less solutions for it.
You’ll be a lot better off with Linux for self hosting.
Absolutely do not do this on windows. It makes everything a nightmare. Bare metal install ubuntu server and install docker/portainer. Its 5 copy pasted commands and you never have to look at the terminal ever again if you don’t want to.
My point: if you’re getting started selfhosting you have to embrace and accept the self-inflicted punishment. Good luck everybody, I don’t know if I can keep choosing to get disappointed.
I would say that your self inflicted punishment is using windows. Switch to debian and thank me in six months
I respect your opinion, but I’ll pass
Well then maybe you should also pass on making generalizations about selfhosting?
What generalization? You mean the widely accepted pain that comes from it?
It’s a lot more painful if you don’t know what you’re doing and disregard good advice.
To put it another way, you’re having difficulty staying motivated to ride your bicycle with square wheels.
“You should try using round wheels.”
“No.”
Have you considered Docker?
I will be one of many saying this: if you want to self-host you need to learn Linux. It can be done, but this is not like taking a pottery class and you don’t really get to show anyone, the only people who will understand are people who are also able to do what you do. It’s rewarding on many levels, but pleasure and sociality are not among those rewards. :>
You must imagine selfhosters happy.
Nice. Sad, but nice
None of this should have been a hassle, to be honest. Even if you were taking the hard route there.
Instead of this post why not try asking for help with what you’re stuck on?
It’d be an obnoxiously long comment chain, plus its starting to feel like its not worth the effort. I’ve found some Windows alternatives to the stuff I was trying to do since I made the point which has been great! Still missing some functionality, but its better than what I was doing a few hours ago
Hey, you do what works for you.
Just suggesting, next time, asking for help before you get to frustrated and give up. We all started somewhere and that’s what this community is good at.
I appreciate it, I was asking for help through Github and (when forced to) Discord, but the help wasn’t consistently helpful so I tapped out on that too
I recently ditched Portainer entirely - it looks good, but when debugging anything it is really not helpful, often getting in the way. And if it runs on the first try I don’t need a web interface.
My tips:
- Run self hosted things on Linux and open their webpages on Windows if you really want or need to keep using Win.
- Prefer
docker compose“stacks” over docker directly or native installs. Personally, I just use 4 sub-commands for pretty much everything I do:up,down,pullandlogs. You (probably) don’t need Portainer. - If after 1. making sure the
docker-compose.yamlis right, 2. setting up the.envfile if present, and 3. following the instructions in their README; a container stack doesn’t run after 2 or 3 attempts: copy the error message and search their GitHub issues - chances are someone else also faced that problem. If you can’t find anything similar, open a new issue.
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I use Portainer a lot and have no issues with it. There’s very little you can’t do without Portainer though, it’s just a convenient web frontend to access Docker tools. It’s helpful if you manage a lot of stuff or multiple hosts. I also use it at work to expose basic management to members of my team who aren’t Linux or Docker savvy.
It’s essentially a GUI for Docker. It has its own quirks that, in my opinion, don’t match Docker’s UX and can make it more complicated to customize deployment. But Portainer can make multiple environments or dozens of containers easier to manage. e.g. I do most of the actual work using compose yamls but use Portainer as a reference to organize subnets, ports, and volumes. Or if I’m unsure what the problem is and just want to see all the details of each container faster.
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I tried that, but it wouldn’t install for me. I went through many guides and videos on setting it up, but something in the process failed every time
I thought this too, I hated docker because it was supposed to be the solution of “works on my machine” and the only thing that did for me was force me to learn more configurations besides the configuration of the service you wanted to install.
And as you said, plus the hassle of having to run some Linux distro.
But little by little I had to get deeper into docker and Linux, mainly because of my work, and now I can easily deploy any service in the VPS I have or test it with WSL. I even started dockerizing some of my own flows like building and deploying my own projects with docker.Believe me, it’s worth all the time to learn docker and linux.
Start small, few lines or keywords each day, you won’t have everything you want to deploy in a day or two if you don’t already know all the technologies.
And remember, if you don’t easily find something you can always come to ask in a post and we can try to help you!I appreciate the post, but I’m gonna pass on ever using Linux again. I’ll just keep my eyes open for when these things get ported to Windows haha because I think I’ll puke if I have to type sudo or curl again
Okay then.
Yeah, Windows and hosting are a tough match. But you have native Photoshop and Autocad.
Doing anything new will require work/pain the first few times. It is just part of the learning process. If that sudden jolt of happiness when you get it working can outweigh the depression caused by hours of trudging through the setup/failures, you’ll constantly be improving. Like all things, give it a fair shot and if it brings you more pain than pleasure, stop doing it.
There are now a lot of people who are making a living from providing self-hosted services to others for small fees. Even if you decide to not self-host, there are multiple ways to get the lion’s share of benefits. Its not a binary choice between Google and self-hosting.
Maybe it’s hard at the beginning but as you keep doing it becomes easier. If you feel overwhelmed take a break for a few days and try again later. I think we all have been there and hit a wall. Self host, open source and Linux communities are friendly you can ask for help and find someone willing to help you, so don’t be afraid to ask for help (as I was before). Just take small steps.
Don’t give up. Have fun.
if it helps, here is my setup from bare metal to 30+ services. https://github.com/simone-viozzi/my-server
including off-site encrypted backups
of course, i wrote this for me, so most stuffs are written like garbage, but fell free to open an issue, and i will fix them
Motivation is a luxury
Been there, done that. Start with something frendlier. I personally love CasaOS (its just 1 command you need to copy-paste on a fresh ubuntu server install)
I get where you’re coming from, really. I’ve been disappointed by Linux for years with the learning curve and random errors that no one can help with. I’d take a long break from anything server related and then once you think your ready to come back, go watch some videos that give you inspiration like Techno Tim. Try to make a game plan and stick to it. Use standard stuff like Debian and Proxmox for software and to get a head start try this. Wish you all the best mate.
People can help you, but there is a way to ask, and learning how to ask is part of learning the OS. We are fascinated by problems actually.
The problem is that people come and say things like “I tried to setup a fleegbat server and it doesn’t work!” and so for the helper it becomes a process of pulling the information out of the asker in a long and painful process of interaction and we just move on. Users who say things like “here is the error message I’m getting when I try to start up my fleegbo server, anyone understand this?” get way better help.
Those who really want to learn it come to understand these things, those who just want to do something neat and not work their ass off will complain that it’s too hard.
Those who do the work are rewarded in many ways. I drove a dump truck ten years ago, now I make twice what I used to, working with people who aren’t racist sacks of shit. They were my motivator to learn, I was tired of being among pigs every day.
You nailed it, the problem is the problem with having to troubleshoot by yourself as a newbie. Once might not be an issue, but every step feels like a new instance of a repeat problem. Thanks for the encouragement
