Recently, I’ve found myself walking several friends through what is essentially the same basic setup:
- Install Ubuntu server
- Install Docker
- Configure Tailscale
- Configure Dockge
- Set up automatic updates on Ubuntu/Apt and Dockge/Docker
- Self-host a few web apps, some publicly available, some on the Tailnet.
After realizing that this setup is generally pretty good for relative newcomers to self-hosting and is pretty stable (in the sense that it runs for a while and remains up-to-date without much human interference) I decided that I should write a few blog posts about how it works so that other people can set it up for themselves.
As of right now, there’s:
- An introduction (with Ubuntu basics)
- Tailscale setup
- Optional Docker Explainer
- Dockge setup with watchtower for automatic updates
- MicroBin as a first self-hosted webapp
Coming soon:
- Immich
- Backups with Syncthing
- Jellyfin
- Elementary monitoring with Homepage
- Cloudflare Tunnels
Constructive feedback is always appreciated.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that I am planning a backups article
Set up automatic updates
Immich
You like to live dangerously, right?
Raid is a backup
Here. You dropped this: /s
Yeah a little xD but FWIW this article series is based on what I personally run (and have set up for several friends) and its been doing pretty well for at least a year.
But I have backups which can be used to recover from the issues with breaking updates.
Photoprism > Immich
I haven’t tried photoprism in a while, but when I tried it, it wasn’t even close.
Photoprism seems more suited if you’re a photographer to index your professional work where immich aims to be a google photos/icloud alternative.
Immich has native mobile apps to do the syncing and provide a (great) interface for search, it has much better multi-user support, including sharing albums, and much more features than I’m willing to type out here.
The only thing missing, for me at least, is better support for local files to eliminate the need for another gallery app/file picker.
This is very cool, but also very dangerous. Many projects release versions that need some sort of manual intervention to be updated, and automatically updating to new versions on docker can lead to data loss in those situations.
Here’s a recent example from Immich:
https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/tag/v1.133.0
It is my humble opinion that teaching newbies to do automatic updates will cause them to lose data and break things, which will probably sour them from ever self hosting again.
Automatic OS updates are fine, and docker update notifications are fine, but automatic docker updates are just too dangerous.
That’s reasonable, however, my personal bias is towards security and I feel like if I don’t push people towards automated updates, they will leave vulnerable, un-updated containers exposed to the web. I think a better approach would be to push for backups with versioning. I forgot to add that I am planning a “backups with Syncthing” article as well, I will take this into consideration, add it to the article, and use it as a way to demonstrate recovery in the event of such an issue.
Been in it since the web was a thing. I agree wholeheartedly. If people don’t run auto updates and newbies will not run manual updates, You’re just teaching them how to make vulnerabilities.
Let them learn how to fix an automatic update failure rather than how to recover from ransomware. No contest here.
I’m with you on this. It has to feel at least somewhat low-fuss/turnkey or people aren’t going to stick with it. The people who don’t get this are the same people who can’t see why Plex is more popular than Jellyfin despite the latter’s overall superiority
My experience after 35 years in IT: I’ve had 10x more outages caused by automatic updates than everything else combined.
Also after 35 years of running my own stuff at home, and practically never updating anything, I’ve never had an outage caused by a lack of updates.
Let’s not act like auto updates is without risk. Just look at how often Microsoft has to roll out a fix for something an update broke. Inexperienced users are going to be clueless when an update breaks something.
We should be teaching new people how to manage systems, this includes proper update checks on a cycle, with appropriate validation that everything works afterwards, and the ability to roll back if there’s an issue.
This isn’t an Enterprise where you simply can’t manually manage updates across hundreds or thousands of servers, and tens of thousands of workstations - this is a single admin, small environment.
I do monthly update checks, update where I feel it’s warranted, and verify systems afterwards.
I don’t disagree with any of that, I’m merely making a different value judgement - namely that a breach that could’ve been prevented by automatic updates is worse than an outage caused by the same.
I will however make this choice more explicit in the articles and outline the risks.
Immich is still unstable. This shouldn’t happen to a stable project.
What it tells me is that you need a regular backup
This absolutely can happen to stable projects. This has happened with Mastodon many times, and Mastodon has been stable for years.
It also has happened with Nextcloud many times, and again, Nextcloud has been stable for years.
It’s not a stability thing, it’s an automation thing. We as devs can only automate so much. At a certain point, it becomes up to you, as the administrator, to manually change things. Things like infrastructure changes, and database migrations, where the potential downtime if we automate it is something we need to consider.
Thanks 😊👌🏻
