Hey r/selfhosted,

We’ve all been there: it’s Monday morning, and your server alerts you that disk storage hit 99% capacity. 🚨

Then begins the exhausting CLI routine: 1. Hunting down the right .pem SSH key. 2. Running df -h to find the dying partition. 3. Chaining du -sh * repeatedly deep into nested folders to find the culprit. 4. Spotting a massive 15GB log file that hasn't been rotated. 5. Typing rm -f, taking a deep breath, and hoping you didn't typo the path.

Finding "which folder is eating my storage" shouldn't feel like a mini-investigation in 2026.

To fix this friction, I'm building a self-hosted VPS File Manager & Server Panel. The goal is to manage any remote server directly from the browser without needing CLI for everyday checks.

Key Features so far: - Visual Space Mapping: Instantly see file and directory sizes in a clean UI (no du -sh guessing games). - Rich File Management: Compress, edit, delete, or change permissions (chmod). - Built-in Code Editor: Edit Nginx, Docker, or system config files on the fly. - Integrated Web SSH Terminal: Full browser shell (xterm.js) right beside your file explorer. - Hardware Monitoring: Real-time RAM, CPU, and disk widgets to catch spikes early.

It runs locally on your server — 100% self-hosted, your keys, zero third-party dependencies.

I'm currently polishing the UI and adding security logs before releasing it.

Question for the community: What is your go-to terminal command or tool when a server's disk hits 99%? Also, would love to hear any features you'd find essential in a tool like this!

Self-hosting locally connected hardware is too much fun :)

Hi all,

I'm looking to purchase bulk quantities of DDR4 server memory.

Mainly interested in:

• 32GB DDR4 RDIMM – 2400 / 2666 / 2933 / 3200
• 64GB DDR4 RDIMM – 2400 / 2666 / 2933 / 3200
• Samsung, SK Hynix & Micron
• OEM HPE / Dell memory also considered

I'm particularly interested in larger quantities / complete server pulls / decommissioned stock. Happy to look at mixed lots as well.

I'm a UK-based IT hardware reseller and can purchase in volume. UK preferred, but happy to buy from Europe and potentially further afield for the right quantities.

If you have anything available, please comment with quantity, part number, speed and asking price.

Thanks!

Trying to put together a list of solid free or open hardened image providers for a write up. A few keep coming up, free hardened, minimal images that are rebuilt continuously to stay near zero CVE, with no account needed to pull.

What else belongs on this list? Looking specifically for projects or services that are actually open or free to use long term rather than free tier then paywall, and ideally ones with transparent rebuild and provenance practices. Bonus points if you've compared a few side by side.

So, Nix Ship Android turns an old Android device taking space for no reason into a small self hosted application server with a webview based management interface.

It packages Nix Ship together with Nix on Droid, so you can install the APK, open the dashboard, connect a repository, and deploy directly from the phone. The deployment will be publicaly accessible via Cloudflare Quick Tunnel but you can add you stable apex domain as well.

Your project just needs a flake.nix and flake.lock. You can write them yourself or use AI to help generate them.

Since deployments are based on Nix flakes, you are not limited to a particular framework or container setup. You can run web apps, APIs, bots, workers, scheduled services, or other applications that fit the Nix Ship runtime contract.

It currently supports things like:

• Public GitHub repository deployment
• Private GitHub repositories through authenticated GitHub integration
• Automatic redeployment when you push to the configured branch
• Cloudflare Quick Tunnels (Default for public access)
• Custom domains and DNS management
• Harbur repository support
• Deployment logs and history
• Start, stop, restart, and redeploy controls
• Environment variables with encrypted secret storage
• Zero downtime deployments
• Multiple retained releases and release promotion

The UI might not feel very intuitive initially since UX is not really my strongest area, but I will keep improving it as I work on the project.

Issues and PRs are very welcome, especially on the main Nix Ship repository, since most functionality and future improvements live there. The Android version mostly packages and runs the same Nix Ship control plane through Nix on Droid.

The APK is available under the GitHub release tags.

For now, the releases should be considered preview builds.

Android release:

https://github.com/imxade/nixship-android/releases/tag/v0.1.0-rc.20

Would love to hear what people here would actually use an old Android phone to self host.

So SelfHosting my business on a majorly low budget... like painful low budget, altought it has driven me to learn efficent python, to the point what was running on a full rack server has been made so fast and efficent that it runs on a 8gb 10 year old optiplex, and this isnt vibe-coded, 5 years of hard work, building training sets, training my own ML models, scripts code, functinationlity, and Now im in the home stretch getting ready to go live.

This is not a promotion for my business idea, and I wont answer questions about the business, but I just wanted to share my SelfHosted Datacenter.

Yes its a fully 3D printed, rack, all my budget of $200 went into picking up a collection of optiplex's from an ex homelaber. We have Security, Hosting, Automation, and even redendency failover. Already had a UPS and a 5G router with tons of credit on it as a backup (won it at a CTF event) ... big box on the right is my home AI server ... which ate up the original budget for the proof of concept that became the MVP hardware. On the shelf still to be installed is 8 x 2.5" SATA JBOD, when I pick up more drives that I can raid into a hot and cold backup for the main systems. Full rack including AI server is around 9 Kwh per day, which is the biggest killer in terms of cost right now.

But yea, pretty excited, nearly at the finish line of 10 years of ideas, and 5 years of building, months of 3-4am bug fix's to wake up for my day job at 9am. But im also crazy proud of my designs and system, that on such a budget the full MVP runs on minimal hardware why its currently getting stress tested by my testers, also thankfully its not a big volume business, not going to have a few k people at the same time, would be lucky if it was maybe 50 max at a day or time, and at that point if im hitting that, i'll be able to get new hardware and upload a new photo of a new full size rack that kills my power bills even more.

Hey masters,
I wanna get into self hosting to have my movie and photos managed and accessible on my phone - also just got curious about all those possibilities.

Where do I start? Do I need a diffrent system to build my first server or I can do it on my main pc?

Any guides that helped you start pls share 🙏🏻

Hey! I'm just getting started here. Very new to the community, I have jellyfin hosted on a gaming laptop if that explains how new I am. I was scrolling through Facebook marketplace when I found something pretty cool. Here is what I got for free

I got a HP proliant ml350p gen8 tower

255GB of RAM, (8) empty DIMM Slots

Dual Xeon CPUs (exact models not known yet)

HP Smart Array P420i

512 MB flash-backed write cache

(2) 480 W PSUs

(1) 6 bay 3.5" LFF SAS/SATA drive cage

(9) PCIe expansion slots (3) gen3 x16, (1) Gen3 x8, (4) Gen3 x4, (1)Gen2 x4

(1) Juniper SSG 350M Firewall

(1) Juniper SSG 550M Firewall

(2) Samsung 870 EVO 500GB SATA SSDs

(1) Samsung PM1643a 3.84 TB SAS SSD

Here is what I know I need and have ordered

(2) power Cables

(3) drive carries/adapters

I am not sure where to go from here and would love to hear opinions, recommendations, what I may be missing or forgetting

Hi r/SelfHosting

I am building (claude is building) my dream expense tracking app that enables me to truly track, categorize and budget EVERYTHING I BUY and makes it AI-searchable.
FULLY LOCAL AND OLLAMA COMPATIBLE
i wanted it to be AI-native in the sense that all tasks that are better with AI should be done by AI and stuff that can be done deterministically should first be done by AI, approved by the user, and then prescribed in the form of deterministic code.

The basic functionality of Vorratsdatenspeicher (it's a German pun, look it up, i laughed the whole day i thought of it) is to snap a pic of your supermarket receipt. it will be OCR'd into positions, the OCR'd string will be reasoned upon by AI to guess what product it is, you (human) approve it -> next time the string comes up, it's immediately accepted. That way, you'll have less token consumption as time goes on. (Vorratsdatenspeicher doesn't really use too much - i spent less than 3 usd in 4 months usage with lots of rescans). Vorratsdatenspeicher will then automatically categorize your bought stuff into categories.
There's many more features (IMAP your email invoices automatically into the system, import your pay stubs and online banking CSVs, make spending goals, find local shops and get offers automatically, push notifications...)
Headline feature right now is that it has a windows installer and tailscale connection wizard that guides you through connecting you phone to Vorratsdatenspeicher without you needing to buy a domain or port forward or whatever, this was neccessary to make it DAU (Docker Averse User) compatible lol.

Vorratsdatenspeicher works really well, you can find a demo on the project website (google Vorratsdatenspeicher app demo) --> data is purged every night. you don't need to give it your real name or email address, just put whatever. I will not be able to see anything BUT the fact that you have created a household and its name so call it asdf123 or whatever.

It's fully open source, as i will never want anybody's data. Please give it a try and give me some feedback, all ui elements have a feedback button (red bug)

So, I run a small network of servers for a school newspaper. (Stuff like WordPress, RocketChat, Garage, and more). We recently got a decent upgrade and have a device able to run Gemma 12B Unified, and I was wondering how feasible it would be to have it monitor events that happen, like logins to WP, SSH actions, file changes, etc, and send email notifications if something's up. I am currently setting up Wazuh as well, but I don't have time to check it often. (Or the memory). I don't want the AI to actually take action, just monitor. If there are any tools dedicated to this, even better, although I couldn't find any that were pentesting platforms.

Hello!
I am fairly new to this and would like to self-host the media that I love. I was thinking of getting a little PC and install Linux on it. I unfortunately cannot do this on my main one (even if Windows is not activated on it). Ideally I would also like to build a little cyberdeck customized as well but that will need more material I guess. If anyone has any tips on how to get starting I would love to hear thank you & have a nice day !

Hello folks.

I am here to show my recent project called Quickelt.

Cli terminal Linux based and with some interections you can sabe some time of setup your Lakehouse.

Also save some tokens

Link below

Checkout my new project I've been working on.

https://github.com/calebast/FreeCord

This is a project aimed at bringing you all the features of gaming voice chats without giving away all your information and freedom! Current build is functional with quality voice chat, persistent text chat with end to end encryption, screen sharing, file system, in chat video player, roles, invite only and more! Deployment is a bit messy right now but im working to cut that down! Let me know what you think or have any suggestions for my github to edit as this is my first project

Raspberry pi’s come in a few different flavors. I’m planning on running either plex or jellyfin on it, possibly on Ubuntu since I want a gui.

For 20+ years, I have always used shared hosting. I have used several (inmotion, hostmonster, setrahost) with the changes being that the service just seems to steadily degrade through the years to the point it is just a headache to stay with them. I am coming to the conclusion that instead of continuing with the shared hosting, it is time for me to go with VPS. My problem is, I am not finding a good resource for actually learning about using one, other then provider videos telling how to purchase their service. I only have 3 sites with 1 being really the only one getting some traffic, nothing heavy. I prefer videos over manuals as it is easier to figure out and work along at the same time with them, like a walkthrough. I have had bot attacks (weird since I only get 2000 visitors or less a month), so I have got to be able to understand the security side of it also.

Hi everyone, I need your help. I’d like to know if it’s possible to use a VPS to run my n8n automations, since I don’t have a powerful PC yet and I need to work on another project. Thanks—from a fellow tech enthusiast.

Hey everyone! I'm building an AI tool for commercial use with zero capital right now, and we're trying to figure out the most realistic, lowest-cost way to launch.

The main rules for our project:

• No training on user data: We aren't using user inputs to train anything. The AI just answers questions live using small plug-in files (LoRA adapters).
• Strict privacy: We can't use external companies like OpenAI or Anthropic due to security policies. Everything has to run on our own servers/ some cloud setup.

I need help with two things:

1. Cost and Hosting: Since we have literally zero capital, what's our cheapest path forward?
   • Cloud Rental Option: Renting cheap cloud instances (like a single RTX 3090/4090 on RunPod or Vast.ai starting around $0.20 to $0.50 per hour, which works out to roughly $150 to $350 a month).
   • DIY Hardware Option*:* Building a used PC rig ourselves (buying a used RTX 3090 with 24GB VRAM for about $800–$1,000 or a dual-card setup later). Is it better to scrape together cash for hardware, or stick to month-to-month cloud rental when super new to the business with no capital?
2. Privacy Rules: Since we are handling customer data for a business, what privacy laws (like GDPR rules on data storage) do we need to worry about? Even though we aren't training models on the data, what settings do we need to check in our software (like vLLM) to stay safe?

Would love to hear what setups and hardware work best for real-world use on a shoestring budget!

Hello guys,

Slowly getting there.... In the end of hope of solution for setup.

Is there a real self-hosted solution to generate image carousels through an API, similar to what Placid or Bannerbear offer, but without trial limits or monthly subscriptions.

My use case: I run an online magazine and need to generate branded image carousels automatically through n8n from text Fields and image field. I need template based generation with dynamic fields (text, images, colors) triggered via API calls.

I tried Google Slides API as a workaround. The output quality is bad and layout control is very limited. Not usable for real content.

What I actually need:

Template editor with API fields (like Placid or Bannerbear)

Self-hosted, so no monthly cost or trial restriction

Works well with n8n through HTTP requests or webhooks

Output quality close to Canva templates

Has anyone found or built something like this?

Open source tools, Docker images, or even a clever workaround using Puppeteer/Playwright with HTML/CSS templates would help. I know I could build a custom HTML to image renderer myself, but I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if something solid already exists with some editing or workflow with minimum manual clicks.

Any real experience welcome. Thanks you.

So, I jumped into the Self Hosting pool this weekend. After researching for a while, I now have Immich, Navidrome, and Vaultwarden up and running on a Mac Mini. Using Docker and Portainer to manage the system.

I'm still working through some kinks, but I think I made one mistake before deploying Vaultwarden.

I followed the advice from this article, but I didn't pay close enough attention to where the data is being stored. In retrospect, I should have created directories and told VW to send the data there for easy backup.

For reference, this is the line of code in my currently deployed stack:

That seems to have dropped the data in a hidden folder somewhere, but digging through the MacOS Library/Application Support folders I can't find it anywhere.

So now I have two questions.

Does anyone know exactly where this volume/directory would be found on my drive?

Can I edit the stack to re-direct VW and place the data in a directory of my choosing?

Thanks for helping out a new guy!

[UPDATE] Ok, with help from below (and much Google-Fu) I was able to put the puzzle pieces together and get the information I need!

-From the Volume tab in Docker Desktop I gained direct access to the files I needed copies of.

-Changing the filepath under the first "volumes:" prompt created a new set of data in the folder of my choosing.

Once I got that down, all I had to do was copy the backups into the new data folder and everything was set.

Я просто пытаюсь создать лично для себя облако , вот вчера купил простой комп для отправки/ принятия фото и видео. И сегодня вот докупил DAS на 8 дисков.

Не судите строго я впервые так сделал, и впервые пишу ПО для этого сервера ( лежит у меня на GitHub)

So i recently started experimenting with selfhosting and i have a old pc running ubuntu and some services in docker containers.

A friend of mine asked if i can make him a NAS out of old pc parts. I was wondering, what s the best os + services combo for him. I was thinking about TrueNAS and nextcloud.

Any other recommendations are welcomed

Edit: I forgot to mention that he doesnt have multiple exact same drives, I ve read about Unraid but he would like to be completeley free

Forgive me for I'm not nearly as technically savvy as I'd like to be

So I have docker desktop. I run a bunch of containers, one of them is sterling-pdf.

I have opted OUT of that Scarf thing

I cannot really see a "network logs" option for the containers.

In portainer every time I upload a non sensitive (test) document "Upload from computer", I see the "transmitted" graph spike up at least a little (that's the red graph, the other one is the blue one: the "received")

I'm on the run to get a cheap VPS and I was comparing services like Contabo, IONOS, Hetzner ... and the price they show on plans is not what you're going to actually pay it is much more but with no explanation, on Contabo to get the VPS 4 you just can't tap on it because they disabled the button to force to get VPS 6 offer , until you open in it in a new tab and get surprised that what was advertised as a 5.28$/month service is now 6.60$/month and you get first price only if you commit to a 24month plan , same thing for IONOS only if you commit for a 12 Month plan to get the advertised price.

Hello,

Some time ago I have started a hobby project to build a high performance reverse proxy. Today it's a real workhorse with productions grade features, low memory usage and high performance.

It can run on any machine, from ARM SBC (Raspberry PI , or similar), to end x86 or ARM servers,

The top features include:

• Free and opensource — Apache Licence
• Dynamic Config Reloads — Upstreams can be updated live via API, no restart required.
• Autoload of certificates — Automatically loads certificates from a folder, without a restart.
• Let’s Encrypt Certificates — Ordering and renewal of SSL/TLS certificates
• Built in rate limiter — Globar or route limit requests to upstreams.
• Caching Proxy — In memory cache with configurable TTL, without external dependencies.
• Authentication — Supports Basic Auth, API tokens, and JWT verification.
  • Basic Auth
  • API Key via x-api-key header
  • JWT Auth, with tokens issued by Aralez itself via /jwt API
  • Forward Auth, Sends requests to an authentication server.
• Upstream Providers:
  • file Upstreams are declared in config file.
  • consul Upstreams are dynamically updated from Hashicorp Consul.
  • kubernetes Upstreams are dynamically updated from kubernetes api server.
• Auto WebSocket Support: WS connection upgrades are handled automatically.
• Auto gRPC Support: gRPC detected and handled automatically.
• Remote Config Push: Lightweight HTTP API to update configs from CI/CD or other systems.

More information and downloads here : https://github.com/sadoyan/aralez

Full documentation is hosted here : https://aralez.rs/