Not self hosted, but I’m a huge fan of Broccoli!

We are all learning and we all make mistakes. It’s part of the journey.

Not a server, but a storage box from Hetzner I use for my most important off-site backup. At home I have a small Dell Optiplex that runs Jellyfin and is exposed outwards via Tailscale. It does consume a lot of electricity, was cheap, great performance. I don’t know what is holding you back from self-hosting, but it does not need a lot of effort.

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But why is the list not hosted in a repo or something but instead needs to be over at lemmy.ml?

That sounds interesting — can you show me how to reverse a linked list in Python?

That’s a nice setup. I actually let restic do my backups. Is there an advantage of using EncFS/rsync? Like not having to use SSH?

A Hetzner Storage Box, 1TB for 3,89€

I actually use the document_exporter of paperless-ngx. I have a small bash script backup-paperless.sh that runs the paperless-ngx document_exporter and also makes a database dump using pg_dump. It sets up the restic backups logic with daily, weekly and monthly backups. I run that bash script using a systemd service paperless-backup.service. This service is run daily with the timer paperless-backup.timer, randomly at 3 am ±30 minutes. restic is smart, so it does only backup if there are changes. The incremental backups are great, in case the database corrupts without me noticing. I’ll share the scripts in case you are interested in how it works:

backup-paperless.sh

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

COMPOSE_DIR="/home/user/paperless-ngx/"
DUMP_DIR="$COMPOSE_DIR/sqldump"
EXPORT_DIR="/usr/src/paperless/export"

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="sftp:abc123@abc123.your-storagebox.de:/backup/restic"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE="/home/user/.config/restic/password"

mkdir -p "$DUMP_DIR"

cd "$COMPOSE_DIR"
docker compose exec -T webserver document_exporter "$EXPORT_DIR" -p
docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U paperless paperless > "$DUMP_DIR/dump.sql"



restic backup "$DUMP_DIR" "$COMPOSE_DIR/export"

restic forget \
	--keep-daily 7 \
	--keep-weekly 4 \
	--keep-monthly 6 \
	--prune

rm -rf "$COMPOSE_DIR/export"/*
rm -rf "$DUMP_DIR"/*

paperless-backup.service

[Unit]
Description=Paperless-ngx Restic Backup
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target docker.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
User=user
WorkingDirectory=/home/user/paperless-ngx
ExecStart=/home/user/paperless-ngx/backup-paperless.sh

paperless-backup.timer

[Unit]
Description=Run paperless backup every 24 hours

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 03:00:00
Persistent=true
RandomizedDelaySec=30min

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

I use restic to backup my paperless documents to a Hetzner Storage Box. The setup was easy and I am independent of US cloud hosters.

Rule 7+8

Fully agree, so much wrong with it. It should be a phrase of the past.

I access my home server with Jellyfin exclusively via Tailscale. Until now, I thought I was safe, as I haven’t opened anything to “the open internet”. After reading your very nice guide, I feel like I forgot a lot. Supposed I trust Tailscale, is that enough?

I bought a Red Plus NAS 8TB a couple of weeks ago, because I didn’t know better. My mini PC is sitting a meter behind the monitors of my desktop PC and the noise is unbearable. So at the moment I just use the HDD as a backup, but it will be impossible for me to place it somewhere near where I live. Unfortunately I have no Ethernet in the kitchen.

I could have known this before but I didn’t know better. I had no idea those things run 24/7. You seem to be better informed than me, just wanted to warn you!

What you want is Tailscale. The downside of Tailscale is that you have to connect to a VPN to access your services, the advantage - it is so easy to set up on the server it feels like magic.

I have an off site backup that runs every 24 hours with rustic, for my important documents I archive with paperless. That’s about it. If there is no energy anymore I give a shit on my Jellyfin collection but see how I can cook food. If I need to flee I may take an HDD with me, but only the important stuff.

Nah man, this is self hosted, your points are valid and should be discussed. It is true that tailscale may enshittify, however it is only one out of many solutions. Like the other comment said there is head scale, and in the end you still have the possibility to go the way of a reverse proxy server and pipe Jellyfin through the open internet, which will be hard for many in the sense of configuration and hardening. But the underlying software which is Jellyfin is FOSS, that is the most important aspect.

I use Tailscale and it is absolutely fine. The problem is with other non tech savy people - the setup process is not straightforward so you need to help them a bit. They can’t just “connect”. But after that, Tailscale is great.

I don’t know much about Plex but I guess because it is not easy for the average guy. Setting up a remote connection without a VPN is definitely not something I would recommend to someone who is just a media enthusiast.

Why not both?