109 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
# Idea
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## Abstract
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Ever find yourself Googling "how do I build a home server" only to get
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overwhelmed by enterprise-grade documentation? Welcome to our journey from
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confused beginner to building a home server that's actually useful.
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Join us as we walk through real-world projects that solved actual problems:
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backing up family photos, hosting private Git repositories, running local AI
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models, managing home media, and yes—even running multiple Minecraft servers on
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a single box. We'll explore hardware choices, operating systems,
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containerization vs VMs, and the pain points that motivated each decision.
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This isn't a theory-heavy presentation—it's a story-driven exploration of
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building infrastructure for real people with real needs. When you're done,
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you'll leave with a roadmap for your own server that balances automation,
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redundancy, and the "I just want this to work" factor.
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Some prior sysadmin knowledge required. All projects are from personal
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experience, with stories about what went wrong and how we fixed it.
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## Structure
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"I'm lazy, I don't want my family to kill me, and it works"
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1. I want this in my house
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2. I want to connect outside my house
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3. I want my friends to connect
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4. I don't want this to go down
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5. I want to recover if there's an error
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6. My house burned down, what now?
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## Thoughts
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Give 2 ideas per section. First for "I can't let this break my family will kill
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me". Second for "I have an understanding partner who is my cat and won't care."
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Story driven presentation
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I have decided to make a strong home server. Where do I even start?
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Hardware: you find a box (old laptop, rpi) you're set.
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- Operating system (proxmox, truenas, fedora, arch linux)
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- Alex: truenas apps
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- Reese: Fedora, osbuild
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1. Install native app (npm, pip, apt, dnf, etc)
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2. Containerized (kube, docker, podman)
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3. VM (vm, pick one or two)
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- Ingress (nginx, caddy, haproxy)
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- Backups (rsync, borg, btrfs send, zfs send)
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1. I want to install a new app while I'm at friend's house
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1. Truenas web portal (app page, both official and community)
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2. VPN and I need access to my computer
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2. I want to check my server status on my phone (updates, disks, memory pressure, error logs, services running)
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1. Truenas web interface
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2. Cockpit web interface
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3. I want to add more storage
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1. Truenas ZFS storage pools
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2. BTRFS pools
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4. I want to install a new alpha app without much support
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1. Truenas custom docker compose images
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2. Fedora clone and run (in a VM for style)
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5. I want to backup my photos
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1. Google Photos: don't use git, images aren't meant for git
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2. **Immich, with backups (tell stories about losing my image data)**
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6. I want a local copy of my code
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1. Github
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2. Gitea/Gitlab (talk about that transition)
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7. I want private document editing
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1. Google drive, Obsidian (forces use of markdown as my standard)
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2. VSCode + pandoc (commit markdown files as your documents)
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3. Nextcloud (Collabora)
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8. I want a local, offline LLMs
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1. llama.cpp, stable diffusion cpp, bifrost
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2. Ollama is switching to cloud based models
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9. I want to watch media I own
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1. Plex boi - I know that ruffles some jimmies. Give example: add letterbox support into Plex.
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2. Jellyfin if you're cheap
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10. I want to know when something goes wrong
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1. Uptime Kuma!
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2. Truenas sending emails if there's an error
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3. Fedora requires a custom solution.
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11. I want "reasonable availability"
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1. Truenas hits 90%+ availability. Updates take it down for reboot (5-10
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minutes). Disk failure requires full shutdown, disk swap, and rebuild.
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This could be half a day.
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2. Fedora hits 90%+ availability. Updates take it down for reboot (<1 min).
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Disk failures can be ignored by rebalancing. Disk failures still require
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full shutdown and resilver. This can take half a day.
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12. I want to host multiple minecraft servers (SRV records)
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1. AWS Route53 for automating SRV records.
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2. Pihole is in the territory of making your family mad
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13. I want to automate my house
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1. Home Assistant (raspberry pi or green)
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14. I want backups of all my data
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1. No backups is an option
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2. Local weekly backups to usb drives via Truenas data replication
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3. Borg backup via CLI or Pika.
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4. Full disk backups, app directory backups, hybrid model
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5. Backblaze and S3 integration for Truenas
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6. 3 copies of your data, 2 different media,1 off site.
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15. I want a private VPN
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1. Tailscale, moved from wifiman, also moved from pivpn
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2. unifi wireguard server, rawdog wireguard on a pi |