Every single time I talk to my friends, whom also want an *arr/Plex/VPN/Home Assistant setup like I’ve got, I can see the fear in their eyes when I mention Debian, Docker, and the terminal. It could be a case of “git gud”, but I want to help them out with a setup like this, but with as low friction as possible. Ideally something completely GUI based, and very low maintenance.

I know of unRAID, and Portainer, but does anyone have any experience in setting up something like this for people whose knowledge of self hosting and networking aren’t as good as yours?

  • Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    The moment you help them set it up you also agree to being their IT Support when anything goes wrong. Do you really want to deal with that?

  • Oliper202020@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    My recommendation would be help them learn, ask them if they really want to do it, and then teach them the basics and help them with what to search for, and teach them how to google properly, because though most people use google, most people don’t know how to really find something on google because they don’t understand the basics of how it works

  • Brownian Motion@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    2 years ago

    I know this is not the answer you are looking for, but if they happen to have a spare Windoze license laying around (or willing to shell out) then all that stuff can be done on an OS they are probably comfortable with. Yes, it still means learning some stuff, but there is no overwhelming need to learn an entire OS to do it.

    Another option is to use a Synology NAS. All those things you are talking about are packages, point and click install and setup from the NAS browser. Again pricey, but far more intuitive for non-techos. This also has an advantage of being able to upgrade as their media store gets larger.

    (I don’t do either of these things, but I know we support a lot of people radarr/sonarr/lidarr/nzbget/plex/emby/HA/openHAB etc in a win environ.)

    But I would teach them how to git gud, and learn FOSS and read HOWTO’s to install all that stuff (without the need for Docker, so they actually learn). Honestly after the first 5 installs on a VM (which can be deleted and recreated if fscked up) running sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade and git clone … etc. with you looking over their shoulder while reading the HOWTO with them. That would be quite rewarding for them, probably make you feel good too.

  • Isaac95@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    2 years ago

    Make them an unraid usb and then they can just stick in a spare pc and they should be good to go. Then they can use the gui to download and install docker images. Would be the path of least resistance IMO.

  • bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I have a couple friends like this over the past few years that I just built their server and taught them how to install updates on the terminal (or write a maintenance script for them to run) and how to open a port if I need to fix something remotely and it has been great.

    Also, Depending on the user once it’s set up I usually recommend either Portainer or Cockpit are more than enough with watchtower to keep things up to date. If that is too much I usually just suggest a Synology/qnap or TrueNAS/unRAID for roll your own.

    ETA: Cockpit also has a web based terminal and can execute package manager updates as well.

  • dustojnikhummer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 years ago

    Well, TrueCharts (with TrueNAS Scale). The problem with TrueCharts (and IX-system’s implementation of Kubernetes) is that it likes to break itself often, for no reason and with very little you can do to fix it. I’m actively moving away from TrueCharts.