April 23, 2020

Homelab Options covid-19: day 42 | US: GA | info | act

Ispent a bit of my “executive time” considering options for the homelab, since my original vision to run a small web server is up in the air.

I’m happy to say that options abound for self-hosted software. There are almost too many. These sound interesting:

• Caddy is attractive for a web server. My first time trying was not a success, but it seems the install on RP is pretty straightforward. I’ll probably try this one, though it will have to go on my RPi with less RAM, but I don’t think that will be an issue really. If it works, I can have the bigger RPi for other applications.

• Lidarr for organizing and upgrading music. Managing my music collection has always been difficult. If I were only using iTunes, it would not be so bad, but since I use Sonos, if seems like my music is all over the place. Sonos can play flac but iTunes cannot. Neither can play hi-res files, but Plex can. Autumn has, frankly, a lot of random stuff that I would like to separate from mine. It would be cool, too, to even start a collection for Henry. I’m not sure Lidarr would solve all of these issues, but it would allow me to organize my music. Install on RP.

• Speaking of organizing, Organizr also looks cool. It works with Lidarr and Sonarr and even Plex—all services I use (or will). Install on Debian (which should work on RP).

• Polar looks super cool. It could really be a boon for teaching and research. It has client software, but I can’t figure out if it has a server back end. I assume so, since it appears on the self-hosted list.

• Everyone seems to use Docker. I’m not sure why, but it seems convenient for installation and upgrading. Maybe this is the best way to try new software? I’m really not convinced, but it can be installed.

. . .

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