nshibj

Hi everyone,

I am looking to upgrade my current home server: a Raspberry Pi 4B (4GB) for something more capable, but still with low power consumption. Nothing overkill. My current setup on the Raspberry Pi 4 is based on OpenMediaVault, and I run Jellyfin, Navidrome, Radicale, Trilium and Syncthing as Docker containers. This has two HDDs connected: a 6TB almost full with movies and series, and a 4TB with around 1 TB of music and the data from Docker. It works mostly OK, but Jellyfin eats the RAM quite easily (the library is not that small) and I need to restart it or it will eventually crash the whole thing.

I have seen here and in similar forums people using and recommending miniPCs with an intel N100 processor, often purchased on AliExpress. I have never used AliExpress and don't have a deep knowledge of processors, power consumption, etc. So my main questions are:

• is a miniPC with an N100 processor still a good option these days for an amateur like me (enough power, low energy consumption)?
• is AliExpress a reliable place to buy a computer for this purpose (shipping to EU)?

I already looked around in AliExpress and found some options, from brands like Bmax, MLLSE, GMKTec, FIREBAT... first time I heard of any of them. From what I have seen there my preference would be:

• GMKTec G3 Mini PC, which seems to have the option to upgrade the RAM (this is not fully clear from what I see on AliExpress) and also has the option to add a second SSD drive. It has 4 USB3 ports so I can add more HDDS in the future in addition to the 2 I currently use. It comes in 2 variants: 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD drive for 112.39€ / 16GB RAM + 512GB SSD drive for 133.39€.

or the

• Bmax B4 Plus. This one seems to not have the ability to upgrade the RAM, but it claims to have a 2.5 inch hard drive slot, so I could add an HDD to it. It comes with 2 USB3 ports and 2 USB2 ports, plus a USB-C port. With 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD drive, it has a price of 132.02€.

Does anyone have any of these miniPCs and can confirm if the RAM/SSD are upgradable? Would you recommend them or something completely different?

TL,DR: beginner tries to set up NextCloud via docker components without having a domain. Trying to access via IP doesn’t work. Probably made a few mistakes/missed some important stuff along the way

Hi everyone,

I am completely new to self hosting. Like many others I want to move away from Google, Apple, Microsoft... for my Calendar, Tasks and Contacts, and I thought I would try self hosting all that in NextCloud. I have already tried a 3rd-party hosted NextCloud instance and I feel comfortable with it, so now I want to do the next step and host it myself on a RaspBerry Pi 4 (4GB) that I recently purchased.

I have read around and searched for tutorials, and although I am still a bit lost I decided I would start working on it and see what problems I find along the way, and learn from this. Once I’m done I hope to have learned properly, and I plan to wipe everything and do it again, this time knowing better what I’m doing.

So, to begin with I decided to do it using Docker Compose, as I’ve read it makes setup and troubleshooting easier. I found 2 tutorials that looked good to me: tutorial 1 and tutorial 2, but going through them I see the most frequent case they require that I have my own domain (tutorial 1 has only that option, tutorial 2 offers that option or using an IP address). Do I need to have my own domain to have NextCloud calendar, tasks and contacts shared between my computer and my smartphone? If both options are possible, is one of them more secure than the other? is there some strong reason to avoid one of them?

Since I don’t have a domain (I’m completely new to this), I opted to try tutorial 2 with IP address, but I got stuck in the end, where I am supposed to access my NextCloud Web Interface. Tutorial 2 suggests getting my Raspberry Pi IP address with hostname -I (step 17), but this way I get five different IP addresses (4 IPv4 and one IPv6), not just one. When I try any of those IPs on a browser (step 18) none of them work. I guess I am missing something basic here, so I’d be grateful if someone can point me in the right direction.

Searching for an answer I found a comment on reddit saying that I can skip getting a domain and host locally (no domain) and set up a VPN.

Would it be necessary in my case to get a domain? If I skip the domain, what steps am I missing to be able to access my current NextCloud docker installation? What mistakes have I made so far, and what resources can I use to learn about what I’m missing? Do you have any other tips for an absolute beginner (who is comfortable around the linux command line)?