I did the same thing when I started self hosting. I followed some guides that recommended all these tools. The more I learned, the more I realized I hardly used some of the stuff but when I disabled them it broke the stuff I did use. That’s when I took the time to wipe my system and build from the ground up, but this time actually understand what I was doing and not just blindly following guides.

Good luck!

I don’t think you’re crazy. Sometimes when my shit gets bloated and I start getting confused about how things go together, I wipe everything and start fresh to refresh myself and organize better.

That might be the case. But I have done a great job of reducing the power load of my server from 1200 watts down to 65 watts. And I am slowly trying to get the point that I can off load my servers to solar and battery. I live in a place with not so great of sun.

But I realize I didn’t include that in the original post. So, fair point and thanks for the info!

I would want to do a cluster. Just to learn how that works. But just thinking of the electricity cost, I would personally donate them.

I never used Plex. Up until my kids were born I used to just watch my videos on my desktop, but now I find myself watching on my phone and TV more often. My Jellyfin server has been super stable for the last 6 months or so running on a super low powered machine and external hard drive. The only issues I have is with movies with Dolby digital, they tend to get out of sync when scrubbing the timeline. I am assuming that is due to the lower power of the machine. But, I have a 400watt desktop with a 7th gen i7 and a pascal Quadro P1000 that I am planning on migrating to. Then adding a 20tb internal drive for storage. Hopefully that will resolve the small issues I have seen with it.

I use traefik. I like it. Took a bit to understand, but it has some cool options like ssl passthrough and middlewares for basic auth.

This is a good point. Generally if can accomplish what I want with my own scripts, I will go that route. I’ll probably avoid adding additional software to the mix since what I have works fine enough.

I’ll check it out! Thanks!

I run a Fedora server.

All of my apps are in docker containers set to restart unless stopped by me.

Then I run a cron job that is scheduled at like 3 or 4am that runs docker pull on all containers and restarts them. Then it runs all system updates and restarts the server.

Every week or so I just spot check to make sure it is still working. This has been my process for like 6 months without issue.

I just tried tailscale in the last month and it will now be my preferred way to access my services outside of my network.

The ability to read, and maybe watch a video. And then persistence for some of the trial and error you will run in to. All skills you need can be picked up with the above.