I’m writing this partly because I think others might be interested, partly because I want to know what others think of my setup, and partly because I’m going to upgrade my hardware and need to review my setup so that I can re-create it on the newer hardware.
I have an old 2009 iMac at home that wasn’t being used anymore, so I installed Ubuntu server 2022.04 LTS. I have two printers, so I installed the CUPS manager, which allows my to print wirelessly from iPad, iPhones and my MacBook Air. For media, I run PlexMediaServer (video) and Navidrome. For content, I run Transmission, which I can manage from a web browser. For e-books, I use calibre which I access via a web browser (on my iPhone or a Kobo). For coding, I’ve installed Nginx, MariaDB and PHP.
My router has a built-in VPN, but I’d like to install WireGuard on the server. I’d also like to be able to collect and manage my family’s photos. For now, I use MacOS Photos, but since we rarely plug our phones into the computer to sync them, they are usually only backed up to iCloud.
What else should I consider?
Re: VPN and Wireguard, I was looking into doing the same on my unifi router, but came across Twingate (through a networkchuck video) and decided to try that instead, being a bit of a networking noob. It’s almost too easy…you can share individual resources or whole networks with user and device control over each. I think you get 5 users and 10 resources in the free plan. I’d recommend looking into it.
I had been pondering Nabucasa for external Home Assistant access but am very happy I found this. Now my wife can have remote access to HA and Plex and I can access the whole network remotely.
I’m planning to start with a self-hosted option, but if I get tripped up, that sounds like a good plan B.