this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Hey yall, I want to get into self-hosting. I want to start from hosting on a raspberry pi, and I am just wondering if yall have any recommendations (I've never hosted anything before, but have experience in linux and programming). Sorry if it's bit of a stupid question.

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[–] wheelcountry@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Pihole is a good start, though I personally use my Pi 3B+ for printer server over WiFi since I have a dumb Epson printer.

[–] nicman24@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

honestly it is good to start with and for controlling machines like an array of 3d printers but a dumpster dive laptop will be faster. RPI4 is quite old now.

with that done:

  • jellyfin
  • smb server
  • syncthing
  • tftp with wake on lan / clonezilla to backup your other machines
[–] SpaceCadet2000@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

jellyfin

How good is the performance of that on a rpi4? Does it work for transcoding videos?

[–] spite@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It doesn’t. Not well. And for larger files, even on cable connection without transcoding performance is god awful, sometimes it doesn’t play, or stutters or you get awful audio desyncs. Don’t do jellyfin on rpi

[–] bitterb@feddit.nl 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Are you talking about 4k files? Because I have been running Jellyfin on my pi400 for the past two years and I've not had those issues at all. My content is 1080p max though.

[–] spite@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yep, 4k, sometimes with HDR. It was happening mostly on those. But 1080p files were also sometimes affected

[–] DevilBoom@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I ran JF for about a year on a Pi 2B. Transcoding off at the server. No issues at all playing any file using Direct Play - including large 4K rips. I moved to an Odroid C2, again, absolutely no issues with playback.

If you’re seeing trouble with Direct Play I’d bank on it being network or storage related rather than the power of the Pi. E.g. the network hasn’t got enough throughput to serve the files. In Direct Play you need very little in terms of server resources as it’s handed off to the client.

[–] spite@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Dunno, maybe it was storage. I had a SATA to USB3 drive hooked up to it. Couldn't have been network. I got some old office PC with i3-6100 for free, hooked it up to the same cable, same router port and everything is working mostly smooth now, on similar drive but connected directly to SATA

[–] Krafting@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Pihole is the best starting point in my opinion, helped a lot of my friend to get started !

[–] cyanide@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Pihole is easy and light enough. I used to host Transmission (transmission-daemon) on a 3B+ and it worked alright for seeding around 300-500 torrents. FreshRSS also worked alongside.

[–] Senseibu@feddit.uk 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Pihole my is choice too. It’s pretty good, but for some reason video ads still get through even off YouTube? Is it possible to block them?

[–] cyanide@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

uBlock Origin gets rid of every single one.

[–] Spy@kbin.social -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You are not wrong, but uBlock needs to be installed on each device and only works on the browser, while pihole blocks adds across the whole network for all devices.

I have pihole but still use ublock on my personal computer

[–] cyanide@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I did recommend Pihole in my original reply. But there's no way to block Youtube ads using it, as was being asked in the reply to my original reply.

[–] cupricreki@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

For the cost of a rpi, just get actually capable hardware. Once you actually get anything running you'll wish you had real hardware.

[–] achensherd@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've been leaning this way lately. From a cost/capability standpoint, RPis were easy to justify when they were ~$30, but not as much at their current inflated prices unless you have specific power consumption and form factor requirements. Used/refurbished Dell thin clients and MFF PCs can be had for $40-100, ranging from fanless systems with low-power Atoms and Celerons to full-fledged desktops with Core i-series CPUs, all with memory and storage included more often than not. I personally just picked up a Dell OptiPlex MFF with an i5-9500T, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD for $100.

[–] Heastes@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Refurbished thinclients really are fantastic if you don't specifically need a pi for the formfactor. I got a bunch of Fujitsu S920 with 4GB RAM for roughly €35 a piece and I've been pretty happy with them so far.

[–] pi11@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

What kind of hardware, with a similar price point to the rpi, do you think of?

[–] Heastes@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Refurbished thinclients can be had for about €35. I got a few Fujitsu S920 with 4GB RAM and 8GB MSATA for around that price per piece.

Datasheet: https://content.etilize.com/Manufacturer-Brochure/1036232289.pdf

[–] stankmut@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This reminds me of the old "build a gaming pc for less than a console" thing was popular for a while.

So let's assume a $90 raspberry pi (someone really splurged here)

  • $90: case
  • $0: cpu, get used from a friend
  • $0: motherboard, get used from a friend
  • $0: ram, get used from a friend
  • $0: power supply, steal from work

You can drop the case and just use a cardboard box, which would allow you to afford storage. I'm just going to assume you boot from a usb and keep everything in memory.

[–] pi11@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What do you think about refurbished micro-pc's? Like this Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Tiny (i5-6500t; 8GB RAM) for 130 euro's?

[–] stankmut@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I have a refurbished dell that I got for ~$150-$200, the cpu is an i5-8500t. I think those are great deals, would absolutely recommend them for a home server. As your needs grow, you can even replace the RAM inside later.

[–] green_dragon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Agreed. I picked up the M910q for $100 including shipping from a corporate sell out on Ebay. It does everything I need; and has the ability to do so much more.

[–] GustavoM@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago

You could install docker and pihole + 2 dns resolvers -- which saves you money considering you can't do that via "standard" installation methods.

[–] umbrella_dev@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago

One suggestion might be to load a Debian build on it and use it for docker containers. With docker containers you can do so many different things. I have a PI 4 and it does all of the following:
PiHole - For blocking ads. (Everyone should have one of these)
OpenMediaVault - For NAS
Portainers - For loading docker containers
Radarr - Downloading Movies
Sonarr - Downloading TV Shows
Tautulli - Monitors my plex server
Overseer - Allows members of my plex share to request content.
NZBGET and Real-Debrid Torrent Downloader Clients - For downloading content from usenet or real-debrid.

I have one Pi4 running all of these as docker containers. Have fun!