I’ve tried to figure some of this stuff out but I really don’t know what I’m doing. Most documentation is written with a vocabulary I don’t understand. Tutorials assume a high-level understanding of coding, software, CLI and a bunch of other stuff.
So far I’ve got an old gaming PC with a R7 2700x + 2060 Super and I think maybe it’s overkill. I’ve got TrueNAS running on it but that’s about as far as I got…
Thinking maybe we can have an open Jitsi meeting and just anyone who needs help can get it (myself included 🙂)?
Would anyone be interested in something like that?
E: some people have imagined up some things that I said so let me be clear about what I did not say:
At no time did I insist, beg, or demand that anyone help me.
I did NOT ask anyone to help with a specific issue, nor should I be required to.
I asked if anyone would be willing to help myself and possibly others to get some services running, and I asked to do it in a videoconference setting where we can have a discussion and where you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it, out of respect for both of our time.
If you are not interested, you do not need to come in here and announce it, and you sure as shit do not need to speak for anyone else on whether they will want to. Just keep scrolling.
E2: special thanks to those who actually reached out and offered to help!
If you need something running fast and easy buy a synology nas. Not the best hardware and expensive geat if youi dont have the time to mess around with stuf like unraid etc. There a lots of great guides on setting op docker containers on that. https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/ is a geat example of easy to follow guides.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IP Internet Protocol IoT Internet of Things for device controllers NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
[Thread #239 for this sub, first seen 24th Oct 2023, 19:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Appreciate that but it doesn’t tell me what they actually are haha
That’s a bot lol
No shit lol
Yeah at this point I’m ready to pay someone for help. I wasn’t expecting setting up a mastodon or piped instance in docker to be so hard.
How much?
Lol
Honestly, Switch to a basic Linux distro and use docker directly.
I ran TrueNAS for a while and it’s just too complex and janky. I dropped back to void (for ZFS) and have a directory of compose files for radar/sonar, jellyfish, mediawiki, Lemmy etc.
Thank you. Someone else also suggested this.
I’d suggest proxmox. Sinple web UI for management, but debian backend. Very powerful virtualization. Supports GPU passthrough, LVMs, ZFS, and a bunch of other stuff out of the box. If you get another machine, you can also put them into a cluster.
Since the other people don’t seem too helpful to you, we can gladly setup a meeting and see where it goes :) I don’t have exeprience in all these software like TrueNAS you’re using but I have a lot of experience in a lot of other things, so I’m sure I’ll be able to help!
Thanks. Maybe we can learn some things together and from each other?
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Start by walking us through what you’re trying to do, and where you’ve run into problems.
That’s not what I’m asking for.
We know. What you’re asking for is the wrong to thing to ask for, here in these forums. Aint nobody got time for walking a strqnger through thw entire install process of five or eight different self hosting programs. My own personal process has taken several months and is still ongoing.
Wow I hope English isn’t your first language.
…why is that?
I just love when people are bilingual.
Oh yeah, English is actually my only language, sorry.
Then why did you make this post?
I don’t understand the question. The intention of the post is explained…in the post.
Point 1. If you’re asking someone to donate their time to help you, don’t be surprised if they have a few questions first. Wanting to know more about the exact nature of your problem is a good start to figuring out, for example, if they’re even the right person to assist you.
It doesn’t do you any favours to insist that someone commit to teaching a class over video chat without even being willing to go so far as to give them a syllabus first.
Point 2. When begging for a free ride, don’t complain that the car didn’t come with seat warmers. If you’re going to insist on dictating the manner in which people help you, the result is just going to be that people don’t want to help you.
For instance, after posting my first comment, I actually considered offering to PM or chat on Discord so that we could sort out your problem together. I have since reconsidered; this is, in fact, exactly why people who know how to do this stuff usually aren’t super jazzed about the idea of an open jitsi meeting or similar. You’re going to end up dealing with far too many people who feel entitled to make demands of your time.
I actually like helping people learn about computers. Part of my job involves teaching IT skills, and I genuinely enjoy it. Under the right circumstances, I would be exactly the kind of person you’re looking for. And I genuinely do appreciate your frustration; self-hosting is a mess of bad documentation and incomplete guides full of jargon, poorly explained ideas and assumptions of prior knowledge.
But looking at your behaviour throughout this thread, I don’t think you’re ready to be a student. You’ve been nothing but combative and demanding, while showing absolutely no appreciation for the time that people are taking to try to help you. It’s a bad look, and it just reinforces exactly why people generally prefer to do this stuff at a remove, if at all.
If you’re asking someone to donate their time to help you, don’t be surprised if they have a few questions first.
The entire purpose of my inquiry is to not sit here and waste each others’ time going back and forth for hours on end over text trying to figure it out. It’s for us to be able to have a discussion and so that you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it. If you’re not interested, that’s fine, keep scrolling. No one is trying to twist your arm.
Wanting to know more about the exact nature of your problem is a good start to figuring out
I don’t have an exact problem.
It doesn’t do you any favours to insist that someone commit to teaching a class over video chat
When begging for a free ride, don’t complain that the car didn’t come with seat warmers.
You’re going to end up dealing with far too many people who feel entitled to make demands of your time.
You’ve been nothing but combative and demanding
You’re literally just fabricating all of this. None of that happened. I didn’t “insist”, “beg” or “demand” a damn thing. I simply asked if anyone would be interested or willing. Because, as you’ve said, that’s the sort of thing you enjoy.
I’ve been combative because I’ve almost exclusively been met with hostility for daring to ask such a thing.
The entire purpose of my inquiry is to not sit here and waste each others’ time going back and forth for hours on end over text trying to figure it out. It’s for us to be able to have a discussion and so that you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it.
I only post on forums because if everybody used discord and other non-searchable communication mediums, the internet would be a complete failure, or about as available as peoples secret mushroom spots. I promise you that the issues you face are not original. Everybody else who comes across this thread looking for a good place to start is going to be pissed because there’s only one or two listed, when there could have been an entire thread full of good places to start, with commentary about specific tutorials and why they suck or what parts a new person could get stuck on.
These forums are not just for you to use as a dump to vaguepost and hope someone will spend several hours of their life cheering you on while you figure out how to do stuff. They are for everyone in the thread, and everyone who comes after while looking for similar solutions. Trying to take whatever support you end up getting away from everyone who comes after you is called pulling up the ladder after yourself, and is the exact opposite of why forums exist in the first place.
If people had actually been rude when you asked a basic question, it would be different. But it isn’t. You’re not trying to engage with the way this forums actually works and it really shows. As far as I can see, most everyone here is trying to help. You just don’t want the great help that is being offered. You want an unpaid private tutor who will cheer you on and sometimes give you a tip to make things easier, while you avoid doing things like reading the manual, looking through tutorials, or heaven forbid, googling what aomething is.
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If you’re not interested, that’s fine, keep scrolling. No one is trying to twist your arm.
When everywhere you go smells like shit, check your shoes.
It doesn’t 🤷 just here. Bye now!
If you are successful in this, perhaps a twitch channel walking through the basics running on a regular ish basis
What do you mean? Like hosting a Livestream and asking the viewers for help?
I was imagining a “I just wiped my hard drive and flashed the current version of Debian. Let’s get basic services up.”
I wish there was a “hey watch me code/self host” channel that helped noobs see how to approach the problem of starting. Usually their is a “hey watch me code” YouTube that is old enough to have a critical breaking point (some library updated) so a noob finds it impossible.
This will forever be the problem with video tutorials.
Development often moves fairly quickly and videos on most platforms can’t be edited after posting.
The result is your best outcome is if they make an update video to address the changes. Unfortunately that’s also one of the least likely outcomes.
Otherwise the options are:
- Take the video down and lose any income it generates
- Put a note in the description linking to a document addressing the updates
- Keep the outdated video up and keep making money from it
If you’re lucky you might get option 2, but in most cases you’re gonna end up with option 3.
In the vast majority of cases content creators aren’t going to pull or replace a profitable video even if it becomes outdated.
It’s a tough situation, I can’t really blame them for doing what is in their best interest as a business.
Ideally you should try to get comfortable with non-video tutorials.
You don’t need to use the cert, but I’ve got a basic setup here that you could get running in docker, then play around with understanding it / adding to it:
Sorry can you explain what I’m looking at here.
A quick docker setup to get you going with a reverse proxy (Traefik) and insights/management (Portainer).
I don’t know what any of those things are :( is there a tutorial?
Not to be a dick, but to explain why forming the question the way you did will not get you any assistance or responses for that matter.
The truth is, not a single person here went to self-hosting school, we got to where we are because of our love for the craft. I hope this doesn’t discourage you from trying. The high you’ll get from finally solving that one error you’ve been trying to resolve for hours is one I love experiencing over and over again which is why I self-host.
This shit is so annoying and I’m done explaining why. I gave a detailed account of my situation and what I’m asking for but you want to pick apart the title of my post. Go away.
I guess so. Your question was
Would anyone be interested in something like that?
Which most of us have answered with a clear “no”. So I guess we’re done here.
Which most of us have answered with a clear “no”.
Literally no one has done that. Most of you criticized me for daring to ask the question. If your answer is no, feel free to just move along with your day.
I didn’t read the other comments, only the main post in which I do not see what you define as “detailed account of my situation”. You said that you have an issue with some software (you did not even bother to specify which) and that you want people to hop on Jitsi to duke it out with you. Had it been me, I would’ve posted logs, posted what I’m trying to achieve and why I’m unable to do it so far or where I would appreciate additional explanation. You want people to help you but you do not make it any easy for them to do.
But that’s okay, stay arrogant and we’ll see how far it gets you.
I didn’t read the other comments
It wasn’t in any other comments. It was in the original post.
You said that you have an issue with some software (you did not even bother to specify which)
Actually I did.
Had it been me, I would’ve posted logs
Logs of…what, exactly?
posted what I’m trying to achieve
I did.
why I’m unable to do it so far
Did that also.
Maybe try reading more carefully before calling someone out for some bullshit.
Actually I did.
No you didn’t. You said that you had set up TrueNAS, that means it’s working. I inferred from a different comment that you’re actually experiencing problems with TrueNAS and even left a reply to hopefully help you.
Logs of…what, exactly?
It was an example. I did not expect you to take it literally. If things aren’t working, then we need to know which things aren’t working. Screenshots, logs, even “I can’t connect to my own server” is better.
I did
I had to infer from other comments that you’re having trouble with TrueNAS. Perhaps it’s because English is my 3rd language, but clearly the point didn’t get across to others in this thread either.
Nah they were quite clear they need help setting up “some services”, isn’t that specific enough for you? Ha! They really do not know the magnitude of what they are asking for. I tried to be helpful and encouraging and point them towards a path of self learning but after reading all the comments and the way they respond to people, I’m done and they’re going on my block list. It’s clear from their attitude that this person does not want to do anything for themselves and is doomed to fail at self hosting. Anyone getting involved is asking for pain.
I just read some their other comments on this thread… lmao… don’t think I’d ever seen such entitlement in this community.
You said that you have an issue with some software (you did not even bother to specify which)
Actually I did.
You didn’t. You very specifically asked for someone to commit to helping you personally with nonspecific issues rather than asking for help from a general group for a specific issue (which would have been more likely to get help).
posted what I’m trying to achieve
I did.
Maybe, but what youre trying to achieve isn’t getting a helpful answer for a specific question. You’re trying to get someone to commit to helping you for an unspecified amount of time with an unspecified amount of problems. CriticalMass is telling you that is a bad way of obtaining help for a problem anywhere except in school and a job classroom. This is neither of those.
why I’m unable to do it so far
Did that also.
Maybe try reading more carefully before calling someone out for some bullshit.
No, he read your post just fine. You just don’t like the answers you’re getting. Asking for help with a specific thing is exactly what these forums are for. Asking for help getting started is even okay. We love sharing a good tutorial for getting a new user started with a specific software.
You aren’t doing any of those things. You’re asking for someone to spend hours of their time, in a call with you, to walk you through a process that has hundreds of online tutorials already out there. You’re also getting mad when people tell you that what you’re after is not what this discussion forum is for.
Maybe try reading more carefully before calling someone out for some bullshit.
You didn’t.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s in the OP. Literally everything you need to know is in the OP.
You very specifically asked for someone to commit to helping you personally with nonspecific issues
Yes, that’s correct. Because I don’t have a specific issue.
CriticalMass is telling you that is a bad way of obtaining help for a problem anywhere except in school and a job classroom.
I disagree. Seems like a great way to get help to me.
We love sharing a good tutorial for getting a new user started with a specific software.
And I clearly explained why those tutorials are not helpful. Wanna take a guess where? It’s in the OP.
You just don’t like the answers you’re getting.
Because they’re not the “answers” I asked for.
You’re also getting mad when people tell you that what you’re after is not what this discussion forum is for.
I’m getting agitated because people are being dicks just for asking a question. Who made you the arbiter of the intention of this forum?
If you don’t want to help, just shut the fuck up, and move the fuck on. Not that hard.
I don’t see any specifics in the OP, what am I missing? “Some services” is the opposite of specific to me. What are your goals for the project and what exactly are you stuck on?
I am not being a dick here, I’m just confused about the insistence that all the information is in the OP because I’ve reread it and can’t find anything.
I do hope you solve your problem but unfortunately I still don’t know what it is
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Your self righteous answer, is why Linux will never be a viable solution on the desktop. Or in this case why self hosting will never take off.
Lol OK
why linux will never be a viable solution on the desktop
Has been pretty viable for me for the last 7 years or so.
why self hosting will never take off
Literally who cares, the community stands to gain nothing from another few million novice users who don’t even know or care to learn how to formulate a question or usable bug report.
Don’t worry, the Microsoft support forums don’t lack self righteous answers either. I won’t talk about about desktop Linux because that has nothing to do with this thread and has a plethora of other issues as to why it won’t take off but specifically self hosting won’t take off because it never meant to. We will never get to a point in our lives where 100% (or hell, even 10%) of the population are proficient enough in how a computer works to self host their own software stack, and that is okay. If you self-host services make them available to your friends and family. Never thought that self-host was a movement of some sort where we’re trying to convert people who rely on centralized products into self hosting gurus, guess that’s a first for me.
What services are you looking at? TrueNAS can be good for some situations but isn’t always the best it terms of flexablity. It really depends on what you are trying to host
I mean I want to run a lot of things. Some of which include
- Home Assistant
- Jellyfin
- Own tracks
- PeerTube
- Frigate
- BitWarden
- Jitsi
- Possibly hosting my own website(s).
Etc. None of these are things I explicitly need, I just want to mess around and learn.
In that case I would either go with proxmox, debian or Ubuntu server with docker.
If you are wanting to do virtualization then go for proxmox but if you want to just run the services as containers I would just use Ubuntu or Debian. Once you have Ubuntu or Debian installed I would look into how to write docker compose files. There are plenty on the internet and they make setup very straight forward. If you want a web interface you can install cockpit.
Sorry to be a bringer of bad news but I believe your truenas install is going to be the limiting factor.
Thank you for that. I went back and forth for a while trying to figure out which one might work best and eventually just picked one.
Can you elaborate as to how it is limiting?
Truenas isn’t a standard system. Its designed to be used as a NAS and lacks the ability to easy install other software. While it does have support for kubernetes and virtual machines, the UI is pretty crude and you will likely get confused and run into bugs. (Source: my personal experience) Don’t get me wrong, I do like TrueNAS but for your setup it doesn’t make a lot of sense. This is especially true since you want to run a bunch of services that aren’t necessarily storage dependent.
Honestly you are probably better off with Ubuntu
Thank you. I downloaded Ubuntu. It’s a tough pill to swallow after seeing so many negative things about the workstation version but it does have a reputation for being beginner friendly and I guess I can always move to something else later.
That’s true I suppose. Honestly I am just kind of sick and tired of the silliness Ubuntu has. Its fine on servers but for desktop use there are better alternatives that I choose.
If you don’t notice an issue that’s good but if you run into any snap related issues keep in mind there are alternatives. Don’t blame all of Linux for a Ubuntu issue. (That’s the big fear that leads me to be so anti-ubuntu)
I asked if anyone would be willing to help myself and possibly others to get some services running, and I asked to do it in a videoconference setting where we can have a discussion and where you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it, out of respect for both of our time.
Sure, I can do that. My rates start at $90/hr, 4hr minimum.
Sorry, I charge $10/reply
You can send it to my Bitcoin wallet:
KekBsodnKhxojHsidkd9nHqisbHsinIjrnnMJJHjeweornva
You want to charge people to help you?
Sorry, I charge $10/reply
You can send it to my Bitcoin wallet:
KekBsodnKhxojHsidkd9nHqisbHsinIjrnnMJJHjeweornva
I’ve been running trueNAS for about two years now. I went with trueNAS for the native emby plugins that are now deprecated? Idk but it still works after learning how to manage jails.
Adguard home. Heimdall. Couple other things I can’t remember. I tried nextcloud but it’s a steep learning curve.
Mainly smb shares. Not too tough to walk through on guide. ACL is not forgiving to learn
But I want to do more cool stuff, and truenas core is kinda not able to play with much more.
So I’ve been pondering docker or proxmox, and thinking about reducing truenas down to a smaller machine that uses less power.
I wouldn’t say that I’m good enough to teach anyone else but it’s fun to learn!
Proxmox as a host for a VM running Docker is the way to go. You can snapshot and restore things when you mess up, and you can install Proxmox Backup Server alongside to take point in time backups that you can restore to a new VM if you have to. I probably have a couple dozen inactive VMs of various learning projects that I can fire up and play with as the mood takes me.
TrueNAS is good but has a steepish learning curve for many people, it’s way more oriented towards being a NAS than running services, which can be confusing overkill (only using ZFS for example).
I recently discovered CasaOS which is now my go-to recommendation for people starting off. It is a good combo of “just works” with the ability to tweak for those who are interested in diving deeper.
Well I did find another taker. I can loop you in if you’re interested?
In truenas go to apps, pick one, and click install.
Also, you may want to add truecharts repository (assuming you’re using truenas scale)
https://truecharts.org/manual/SCALE/guides/getting-started/#adding-truecharts
In truenas go to apps, pick one, and click install.
Not helpful.
Also, you may want to add truecharts repository (assuming you’re using truenas scale)
This is very helpful, thanks.
Guess what all of that is on the getting started page for truenas. Instead of reading that you made a post here.
Why?
Once again, I explained why in the OP.
It took me an hour and a half just to get logged into the server because their documentation is outdated. That’s something a knowledgeable user could have worked out in 5 seconds.
Just from a cursory glance, here are some advanced concepts on the first paragraph of the “getting started” that I don’t understand:
- SSH
- “web shell”
- “go to system --> advanced” where!?
- “link aggregations”
- VLAN
- “default gateway”
You understand what I’m saying? These documents assume a certain level of knowledge that I don’t have and thus cannot make any sense of them.
SSH - secure shell. It is a way to connect to your remote machine. On server distributions it is usually open by default. If you’re running Windows on your main computer, you can connect with either the included OpenSSH client (terrible experience) or download a utility like PuTTY. Detailed explanation here: https://bitlaunch.io/blog/how-to-connect-to-ssh-with-putty/
Web shell - Likely refers to the admin control panel of the software. I don’t run TrueNAS so I can only assume. Likely if you open a browser tab and type in your server’s IP and the specified port in the documentation you’ll be able to access it (i.e http://192.168.50.2:8080)
“go to system --> advanced” where!? - Likely in the admin panel. Again, don’t run the software personally.
Link aggregations - This is more on the advanced side and likely not necessary for you at this stage. The idea is to allow you to connect more interfaces and increase bandwidth, likely not necessary for a home set up, would advise you keep it for later.
VLAN - Virtual Local Area Network. In the past before VLANs we had switches/hubs that when you connected a cable to them they would automatically become a member of the same network. VLAN allows you to split one physical network into many virtual networks. This is good because you can them limit access inbetween VLANs or block traffic for your server VLANs (if for example, you don’t want it to collect telemetry and phone home. I personally do it on the IoT VLAN).
Default Gateway - It is the IP address of your router in most cases. If you are on the 192.168.10.0 - 192.168.10.255 network and you’re trying to send packets inside that network then your clients will not contact the default gateway, they will instead just reach each other directly. The default gateway is necessary to send packets outside of your network.
It’s not that hard. Go to awesome-selfhosted to have a look at what you’d like to host. Then, go to YouTube and find videos that host said thing. If you don’t find the specific application, watch simpler tutorials deploying containers (most people will use Docker if you’d like) and go from there. Read some documentation on the container runtime and maybe some networking. That’s it.
I’ve already explained why none of that is helpful. If you can point me to tutorials intended for straight beginners I will try that. It isn’t “hard” but it is complicated, and there’s a lot to learn, and I don’t appreciate you downplaying that.
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I’ve looked at a lot of channels. There are a bunch by DigitalOcean and Akamai that are just ads for cloud machines.
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I don’t use Google, sorry.
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“Just Google it” is just about the most useless piece of advice anyone can give. I know how to use a search engine. I have used a search engine. I came here after that. This is not helpful.
I suppose it feels like an info dump when you’re coming from zero. This community shares a love for hosting and orchestration and it takes a second to get out of that hole. My apologies.
In my opinion, DBTech has some of the easiest tutorials on this subject. Just search for how to set up Docker on YouTube by DBTech. TBH I’d always recommend reading the documentation, Docker devs tell you how to install Docker and he basically follows that. Should be doable if you have a distribution set up. The documentation covers most use cases whilst he just installs on his distribution in the video, but the process should be similar if not the same.
Good luck!
Thank you, I will check out DBTech
It’s better if you struggle, you will learn more that way. For me, the struggle is the fun part anyway. Also, if you need these services to be bulletproof you probably shouldn’t be self-hosting them.
I don’t. Not yet, anyway.
It seems like you have a learning preference for conversational information transfer. Maybe try finding a discord group where people regularly talk about this kind of thing. People on Internet forums tend to prefer written documentation and value search engine prowess.
Written documentation that I can make sense of is fine. Documentation that’s written with a bunch of industry jargon and acronyms, not so much.
So, most of us aren’t in the industry yet we managed to learn the jargon we needed to learn in order to do what we wanted to do. I don’t understand why you are adamant about others helping you when you don’t really seem to care enough to learn some words and their meanings.
What did I say that gave you the impression that I was “adamant” about this?
Maybe you struggled and spent hours trying to research all of this. That’s something I’d like to avoid. I’d like to make better use of my time.
I don’t know about you but I enjoy helping others learn. I volunteer my time to help people fix their vehicles all the time. I don’t just tell them “Google it and figure it out”. I walk them through it and try to explain it in terms they can understand, and help them learn more in the process. I don’t understand why this frustrates so many people.
Several other people have already volunteered so you can just go away now, thanks.
