April 23, 2020

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

I spent 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.

. . .