My idea: A local everything server for family and friends.
Discourse notes:
It’s brilliant. Bastard to get it running without further containerisation, rails and gems and db migrations are always fussy bastards in my opinion, and the configuration fixes versions that don’t match what apt provides, so you need to manually fix a lot of the install, and if you’re not intimately familiar with the many web layers, then you’re in for a few frustrations.
I have a working LXC backed up with a clean install of Discourse dev, has a script that will serve http on port 4200. ufw is set up and opened, and nginx is installed and mis-configured as a reverse proxy, because it won’t ever be served outside the local net.
The image is backed up from proxmox. I don’t know how to get it running on a standard Linux host, proxmox is mostly for convenience and easy configuration.
I think it’s perfect home server fodder, you can use it to catalogue and store whatever you want, photos, documents, videos, sound files, most things, and if the internet goes down, then you have the whole lot right there, all you need is a browser, or even a phone. You can categorise stuff however you like. You can copy stuff from an existing Discourse server, and even link to specific content. You can restrict access to information and fully control user access (handy for families and multi-person households). It’s a truly amazing system to also have a local instance of, like a copy and paste everything machine, fully searchable, easy to use.
I built the whole lot for £400, a nice compact HP G3 with a healthy specced proxmox server, which is incredibly easy to work with. Machine consumes under 65W. A nice sized external USB drive, and you also have an easy, scheduled way to back up the server.
Why aren’t IT people installing these all over the place? It will take literally 5 minutes to show people the basics of Discourse, and they will love their new toy. Don’t let them be admin, unless they somehow insist, but as long as stuff is getting backed up, then it should all be cool in a SNAFU. Add an external USB drive onto the £400, and it’s a complete setup. Most routers can sit comfortably and neatly on top of the mini format PC. As long as either the box or the drive in intact, either can be restored or rebuilt, there is no SPOF.
That’s a hell of a setup for around £500 cost. I’m going to make one for my tech savvy niece, I think she will love it, if other people want one, then it is easily replicated, it uses only what configuration is need to make it work, and freely (so far, proxmox..) available software. All they have to pay is the cost of the hardware.
As far as security goes, a firewall can be built on the proxmox server which allows for VPN (Wireguard), then people can access their server securely and directly. Opnsense generates QR codes for Wireguard, so you would have to set that up for their devices on the spot, but it’s pretty easy. Maybe I should get on with that..
Like I said though, it’s only for family and friends, shouldn’t be a way to make money.
What you need:
- @£400 computer.
- @£100 storage.
- Perhaps network, USB cables.
- Under an hour for basic config and tutelage.
If anyone wants the working LXC image, I’ll upload it somewhere, that was the most time consuming thing to set up, and I defo want to avoid it again in future, although I’ll have a slightly better idea of it.
Just an idea.
