I used pihole for years, but the recent updates made me look for alternatives. There was a major (v6?) update fuckup, but also some random freezes and block lists going missing…

Looking for alternatives, I tried out Technitium. Extremely easy to set up, rock solid, running steady for about 6 months (with frequent updates), and they recently introduced built in high-availability.

I mean, I wouldn’t call tcpdump a “hacking tool”…

I have a similar setup, with a public domain hosted by cloudflare. Internally, I use caddy with the DNS feature pointing to the cloudflare using their API and letsencrypt certs.

Something like this: https://webenclave.com/2024/11/07/setting-up-a-secure-local-network-with-caddy-cloudflare-dns-and-lets-encrypt/

I can also share more details, maybe my compose files and caddy setup if you need them.

Yeah, I still use the latest readarr builds with both ebooks and audiobook, and with rreading-glasses they still work. I am also in the chaptarr discord and got access to the alpha build, which looks really promising. Still rough around the edges, though.

On the phone app you go to Library -> People -> “Add a name” at the top.

Client availability is valid. I use an android tv, that’s been easy for me. There are mobile clients for every phone and tablet.

• I don’t know what smart collections are, but I do get automatic collections for franchises (like all “28 x later”) via a plugin. I don’t have playlists, but I guess I never felt the need for one… What would you use them for, binge watching franchises?
• skip intro and credits is a thing, built in since a few versions (used to be a plugin)
• the UI is subjective, and I don’t know any other one… I personally like how it looks, I customized quite a bit, easy to do via CSS.

I’ve never used Plex. What are some of the features that you’re missing in Jellyfin? Genuinely curious.

It’s always good to read the docs, but I often skip them myself :)

They have this nifty tool called pve8to9 that you could run before upgrading, to check if everything is healthy.

I have a 3 node cluster, so I usually migrate my VMs to a different node and do my maintenance then, with minimal risks.

This was my starting up machine. Of course, an nvme makes sense, especially running windows on it. I went for Proxmox, and now I have 4 different machines, a cluster of 3 similar sffs, and a chunkier boi with an i7, 64gb ram and a quadro gpu. This one was the most expensive, around 250€.

Beware, this is how it starts. From a single machine in my office, I went to a mini Datacenter in my cellar, with 4 “servers” (micro-pcs), two Nas devices, a raspberry pi cluster, a dell wyse cluster, new switches and access points, and so much more :))

you can get away with half that. i run my setup (similar to what you wrote) on a dell micro sff with an i5 6500t and 16gb ram that i paid 90€ for. not the snappiest, but works just fine.

I don’t use any GUI… I use terraform in the terminal or via CI/CD. There is an API and also a Terraform provider for Proxmox, and I can use that, together with Ansible and shell scripts to manage VMs, but I was looking for k8s support.

Again, it works fine for small environments, with a bit of manual work and human intervention, but for larger ones, I need a bit more. I moved away from a few VMs acting as k8s nodes, to k8s as a service (at work).

I do the same in Proxmox VMs, in my homelab, which is… fine. I was talking more about native support, manageable via an API or something.

Say I need to increase the number of nodes in my cluster. I spin up a new VM using the template I have, adjust the network configuration, update the packages, add it to the cluster. Oh, maybe I should also do an update on all of them while I’m there, because now the new machine runs a different docker version. I have some Ansible and bash scripts that automates most of this. It works for my homelab.

At work however, I have a handful of clusters, with dozens of nodes. The method above can become tedious fast and it’s prone to human errors. We use external Kubernetes as a service platforms (think DOKS, EKS, etc), who have Terraform providers available. So I open my Terraform config and increase the number of nodes in one of my pre-production clusters from 9 to 11. I also change the version from 1.32 to 1.33. I then push my changes to a new merge request, my Gitlab CI spins up, who calls Atlantis to run a terraform plan, I check the results and ask it to apply. It takes 2 minutes. I would love to see this work with Proxmox.

Man, I’ve been living and working in Germany for close to 10 years now. Proxmox is like that 50yo colleague of mine. Hard worker, reliable, really knowledgeable, a treasure trove of info, but he can’t be budged. He insists on installing any new VM using the GUI (both Windows and Linux), he avoids learning “new things” like Docker or Kubernetes, and really distrusts “the cloud”.

I will keep using Proxmox, as I have for many years both at work and at home, but we are migrating from a VM (with Docker) setup to Kubernetes. It would have been great for Proxmox to offer some support there, but…

I see what you mean, interesting. Didn’t really look at NixOS as a server os. I personally prefer using multiple compose files (in the process of migrating to k8s). I share resources too, like in your example, I just point to the existing DB instance, not create a new one for each new service.

May I ask what you mean by NixOS support? There’s a docker compose you could use in their repo…

I believe R-- stands for Readarr and G–R-- stands for GoodReads.

Not really, you can get a 26tb (new) for 340€… Best €/TB would be a 12tb (refurbished) for 120€.

https://diskprices.com/?locale=de&condition=new%2Cused&capacity=12-26&disk_types=internal_hdd

Hosted with Jellyfin, for clients I use Symfonium on Android and Feishin on desktop.

ansible can seem like just a fancy way to run shell scripts with extra syntax, but the real power shows up when you start managing more than one machine or need repeatable, “idempotent” (i love this word) setups. ansible handles state rather than just running commands, so you can describe what you want instead of how to do it step by step. it’s also easier to maintain over time, especially if your setup grows or changes. just add that new vm to the inventory list.

if you’re already comfortable with shell scripts and just want to get a few vms going, you could totally get by without ansible. but if you’re planning to do this more than once, or want to be able to rebuild things cleanly, it’s worth it, imo. it could save you a lot of headaches later on.

i use it at work, i manage about 40 vms in our pre-production environment with ansible. if i need to install a new package on all, it’s one line and one command (ran in a pipeline). if i need to change the settings for unattended-upgrades on the debian machines only, same thing.

however, our “production” environment is k8s and a handful of external services, and we use terraform to manage all that.

i guess it all depends on your needs.