Notes on new homelab setup

Bullet point notes on recent acquisition of home server and set up so far:

  • Aim was to consolidate my various servers and perhaps save some money

  • I had a (somewhat underused) dedicated Hetzner auction server running mostly dispensable health information system and other experiments, plus a large VM for paperless-ngx, the super-useful tool for managing your PDFs.

  • I also had a few cloud VMs with Hetzner; the main one ran CapRover as a Platform-as-a-Service for Nextcloud, my wife’s blog, several other Docker containers and my various app experiments. CapRover is great and served me well for a long time, but I feel I’ve outgrown it a bit. The other two VMs run Mail-in-a-Box as the mail server for a local sports club and RustDesk to enable me to remotely fix my mum’s laptop - I don’t plan to touch those at the moment.

  • I treated myself to a Minisforum MS-01 (Intel® Core™ i9-12900H / 32GB RAM+1TB SSD / UK) just before Xmas.

  • My plan was to install Proxmox as a virtualisation environment and then deploy virtual machines/containers to provide my various online services. I use Nextcloud for tasks/notes/miscellaneous files, Calibre-Web-Automated for ebooks and Paperless NGX for my large collection of PDFs. I wanted at least those services to be in separate VMs/containers for greater flexibility. I also wanted to have the flexibility of CapRover (though not necessarily CapRover) for running various services that don’t really deserve their own VM/container as well as my own web apps. I also wanted the option to play with Kubernetes a bit if possible.

  • I downloaded Proxmox 8.3.1 and flashed the OS image to a USB drive with balenaEtcher.

  • After fiddling with the boot options on the server I installed Proxmox onto the server and configured the network (static IP address and gateway). I connected the server to the home router and then hid it, as I could do everything else via the LAN. Didn’t bother with RAID or any fancy file systems, though I might come back to this.

  • Ran the Proxmox Post Install script from Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts, copied over my SSH keys (ssh-copy-id) and set the locale.

  • Set up BassT23/Proxmox: Update your Proxmox VE to help with updates.

  • Apart from multifactor authentication, I haven’t done much else to secure the server or configure remote backups yet, but I will come back to that. I might use a separate VLAN and set up Google Drive for backups.

  • I experimented with the Nextcloud options from Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts but eventually decided to go for nextcloud/all-in-one: 📦 The official Nextcloud installation method. Provides easy deployment and maintenance with most features included in this one Nextcloud instance..

  • I initially experimented with Tailscale for secure access, but as I needed to be able to access things from my work computer I decided it was simpler to go with Cloudflare Tunnels. Not all features of Nextcloud All-In-One will work behind a Cloudflare Tunnel apparently, but I haven’t had any issues with the features I need.

  • I installed an Ubuntu 24.04 VM for Nextcloud, and used this to set up Cloud-Init, resize the disk (after I had allocated it more space) and install other things including Docker and Docker Compose.

  • I initially started Nextcloud with the docker run command given, but then decided to use Docker Compose instead (after cleaning up images, containers, volumes etc first), using this from (Solved)AIO working with Cloudflare? · nextcloud/all-in-one · Discussion #2845:

    version: "3.8"

services:
	nextcloud:
		image: nextcloud/all-in-one:latest
		restart: always
		container_name: nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer 
		volumes:
			- nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:/mnt/docker-aio-config 
			- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro 
		ports:
			- 80:80 
			- 8080:8080
		environment: 
			- APACHE_PORT=11000 
			- APACHE_IP_BINDING=0.0.0.0
			- SKIP_DOMAIN_VALIDATION=true

volumes:
	nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:
		name: nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer

  • After docker compose up -d, it soon shows a /setup page where you get a passphrase to log in to the system. After that you go to a /containers page where you can select which additional options you want (I chose most of them).

  • Then you wait while it sets up. It then gives you an initial admin password which you should change. Nextcloud was then accessible on my local network.

  • I configured my profile and set up email via the football club mailserver. I then installed all the Nextcloud apps I have used previously, plus some exciting new ones. I even got Nextcloud Office to work! However the Tables app still seems a bit flaky. I used the “OCCWeb” app to run commands like maintenance:repair to check/fix things. I also tweaked the config file for my phone region - I still have no idea why this can’t be done in the GUI.

  • I logged into Cloudflare and created a tunnel - it is ridiculously easy. Name your tunnel, copy the code provided into the VM console, specify the port and you’re done. I could now access my Nextcloud login page on the public Internet.

  • I use the nextcloud/desktop: 💻 Desktop sync client for Nextcloud to synchronise files to my desktop machine, so I paused that, removed the connection and then connected it to the new Nextcloud instance.

  • I use Tasks.org Android mobile app to synchronise my tasks with Nextcloud. On the mobile app, I moved all my tasks into local lists, connected it to the new Nextcloud instance and then moved my tasks back into their original lists.

  • I also use Nextcloud as backup/sync location for various mobile apps such as Moon+ Reader for Android ebook reader (which I use a lot) and XilinJia/Podcini: Open source podcast instrument for Android supporting contents from YouTube and YT Music as well as normal podcasts., so reconfigured those.

  • Next I installed an Ubuntu 24.04 VM (from a template) and installed Ghost: The best open source blog & newsletter platform from scratch for my wife’s blog, which has only one post so I just copied and pasted it over.

  • I backed up all my VMs/containers on my old Proxmox and scp’d them to the new server, which took ages. Restoring them taught me a few things.

  • Firstly, I think I only had storage called local on my old Proxmox, whereas my new one has both local and local-lvm. I should have restored things to the flexible storage local-lvm not the root file system local, as local soon filled up. Proxmox did tried to warn me but I changed the settings of local to allow container directories. But once I realised what I was doing I backed them up and restored them in the right location.

    • Restoring VMs: e.g. qmrestore /var/lib/vz/dump/vzdump-qemu-100-2025_02_16-13_59_09.vma.zst 100 --storage local-lvm
    • Restoring LXC containers: e.g. pct restore 103 /var/lib/vz/dump/vzdump-lxc-104-2025_02_16-13_55_14.tar.zst --storage local-lvm

  • Secondly you have to reconfigure network settings for each VM/container. For LXC containers this is done on the host (any changes to /etc/network/interfaces in the container will be overwritten at reboot), e.g. vim /etc/pve/lxc/103.conf. For Ubuntu VMs you configure network settings in the VM with e.g. sudo vim /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml. Restart after any changes.

  • I was able to restore all of my backups on the new server.

  • After restoring my Paperless NGX LXC, I added the new public URL to the config file and created a Cloudflare Tunnel. I also reconfigured the mobile app and set up integration with Nextcloud - now I can send files from my phone camera or from Nextcloud.

  • For my ebooks I then set up a Docker VM with Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts. I increased the disk size and then grew the file system in the VM using growpart and resize2fs. I created the folders required for volumes, amended the Docker Compose script for Calibre Web Automated, docker compose up -d’d it up, scp’d my ebooks into the ingest folder, checked the settings and made it accessible with a Cloudflare Tunnel.

  • I cancelled the Hetzner server as I had no further need for it. I still have a few things running behind CapRover but I will get to those soon.

  • I then set up an LXC container with Vikunja: The open-source, self-hostable to-do app as it’s something I’ve been interested in playing with for task management. I’m not convinced it is worth moving from Nextcloud Tasks at this point.

  • CapRover isn’t intended to be run behind a Cloudflare Tunnel, though I think you can do it. So I decided to try out CasaOS - A simple, easy-to-use, elegant open-source personal cloud system to give me at least some of the flexibility of CapRover for trying out apps or arbitrary Docker containers. There is a handy script to automate most installation (as an LXC) here: Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts. CasaOS looks very nice and has a small but useful app store. I’ve set up the Cloudflared app as per here: How to use Cloudflare Tunnel in CasaOS? - CasaOS / CasaOS - Tutorials - IceWhale Community Forum. This is where I am up to, installing various apps and seeing what I can do with this.