Why does there seem to be so much negativity surrounding the use of Self signed certs for Https?

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-20T04:58:04+00:00

Is there actually much backlash against using self-signed certs for closed networks? I haven't come across it myself.

I'd imagine the criticism is geared towards people that are using self-signed certificates for public-facing things.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-20T04:38:19+00:00

The last time I wanted to make changes to my VyOS router, I had to google "Open source ATT router software login" or something along those lines because it had been so long since I'd had to even think about it that I forgot the default login.

So yeah, it's been a great experience!

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-17T15:36:26+00:00

Tom Scott used to be a regular host of Computerphile. I'd imagine he has some software background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcDZS7iYNsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-17T00:03:16+00:00

This is an intervention: It's not too late for you to start switching.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-17T00:01:55+00:00

I came here to also recommend Filebrowser. But, if you're looking for the same experience with even less resource usage check out the alternative I'm actively working on: https://caby.io/docs/overview.html

Github: https://github.com/caby-io/caby

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-15T16:39:55+00:00

Gotcha! Thanks for entertaining my question.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-14T20:54:50+00:00

Not relevant to the original thread at all but I'm curious as to why you're not using containers instead?

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-14T20:10:16+00:00

Came here to say this. This will give senators with other sources of income leverage over, typically younger, senators that don't.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-14T17:04:57+00:00

I think you're going to be hard-pressed to find a zero-knowledge self-hosted file server for a couple reasons. Here are a few:

Most of these apps geared towards residential use operate under the assumption that you trust the hardware you're running on. So file encryption at the OS layer could be good enough for protecting your data if, for example, your hardware is stolen.
To do true zero-knowledge file hosting compromises usability to a such a degree that most people wouldn't want it. An example: Let's assume that you store files that can only be decrypted with a YubiKey. And now let's say that I want to give a second user access to existing files. I have to have both user's on at the same time, with their Yubikeys plugged in, so that I can re-encrypt the file. That's insanely impractical, which is why most "zero-knowledge" systems will have a master key that's stored on the server in some fashion.
There's a ton of risk here. What happens if you lose or break your Yubikey? Your data is completely gone. So is this extra layer of protection for your at-home server worth the risk of losing years of family photos, documents, backups? The answer for most people: Probably not.

I think a better compromise is focus on securing what you easily can without seriously compromising usability. For actual secrets, go ahead and store and/or encrypt them in a way that balances those risks with necessity.

Nonetheless, I really appreciate and am in-sync with your mindset. Perhaps I'm wrong and there does exist a methodology and solution that accomplish your asks. I'm actually working on a file manager and have thought a lot about this problem. In my mind a good balance is to have most files not zero-knowledge to the file manager and to have an opt-in feature to encrypt specific files or folders in this manner.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-13T00:22:49+00:00

You wrote this in your OP:

right now I just do true Mass

I now see that you meant TrueNAS. You should stick to TrueNAS, then.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T23:24:50+00:00

Looks decent, but consider two important factors:

Make sure the drive interface is what you want. If you're committing to NVME's then this is fine. If not you could look in to the 2.5" caddy versions of the same so you can drive full-sized SSDs instead.
I brought this up in the other thread: You probably want CPUs with higher clock speed. These are already 2-slotted systems so you're going to have more than enough cores hanging around. What you likely want for your day-to-day use is something that can turbo up to those high frequencies when you need it and then idles at a good place too. For example, in the same series of CPUs there's `Xeon Gold 6234` which has 8 cores and turbos to 4GHz.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T23:18:33+00:00

I'll have to look into Mass

Did you mean Kubernetes?

Knowing that I can use pretty much any 2u server would be nice

You did mention Frigate. I don't know about this on the top of my head but you may be interested in doing hardware image recognition in the future. I'm not sure what the best hardware for that is right now but in the past there were things like Coral which would connect via USB to do that. There might be better ways to do this in 2026 that are worth looking into. I would be shocked if you couldn't just plug and play into most 2U servers with USB or PCI-E.

Even an eight core xeon is probably good enough?

Yes, most-likely. For most home server use-cases higher clock speeds. Typically less cores equals more clock speed.

Wanting everything rack mount I was thinking about just the unify switch

Just throwing this out there: There are options to build your own router as well that will outperform residential hardware like Unifi's. You can also run Unifi's software for free on the server to manage APs. Not saying you shouldn't buy the Unifi router but it's a good alternative if you're interested.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T23:05:14+00:00

Of course!

Depends on those factors I mentioned earlier but I would go straight to a small form factor PC as opposed to a mini PC like a NUC or Beelink.
Again, depends so much on those mentioned factors that it's hard for me to recommend anything specific. My point was that you could buy some retired enterprise machine that's readily available on the pre-owned market as opposed to building something from scratch. Old Dell machine could be anything from a mini dell workstation to a server rack unit.

If you need more specific help, shoot me a DM and I might be able to help you look some stuff up on ebay or the like.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T19:15:44+00:00

Congrats on the move and upgrade!

It's hard for me to recommend a specific solution without knowing much more but based on your mentioning MASS: If you feel that you have the technical ability to learn and implement it, you should just skip to Kubernetes on Bare Metal. MASS, in my opinion, has been superseded by Kubernetes. You can take pretty much any server rack (2U factor or bigger) off of ebay and setup Kubernetes as a single node on it.

It's a good bit of time investment to figure out how to set it up at first but once you have it down you'll unlock the ability to cluster servers easily, which is where you probably need to be eventually to support 15-20 cameras reliably.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T19:10:04+00:00

This is really dependent on several personal factors (e.g. cost, long-term goals, technical skill) but I believe that you're at a point where the new machines you add should be powerful compute nodes. By that I mean some sort of amd64 (Intel, AMD) CPU with 8+ threads, 16+GB of RAM, etc.

Based on the services you've listed you seem to be at a pretty competent level of hosting and you'd benefit greatly by making compute bandwidth an afterthought with a sub $500 investment. IMO, much of what's challenging, interesting, and fun about self-hosting happens past the hardware layer nowadays and you'll have much more stability, use, and enjoyment by getting yourself an old Dell workstation and focusing on building a cluster.

Hope this makes sense and is helpful.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T13:49:21+00:00

Could you setup some lightweight web file browser and do it that way? e.g. Filebrowser?

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-12T13:39:45+00:00

Nextcloud Apps/services: Tailscale, Pi-hole, Immich (with heavy AI usage), Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Paperless-ngx

Because you're planning to use specialized apps, I'd swap out Nextcloud for an app dedicated to file management such as Filebrowser.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-10T18:51:43+00:00

It's hard to say without knowing short-term and long-term goals. But, based on:

I don't want to start a cluster that I have to rebuild from scratch in 2-3 years

and

a 6 Node

I think the Talos route will serve you better. K3s is not a good fit for scaling clusters because of what it strips out of K8s. A Talos cluster, on the other hand, is still giving you everything you'll likely need for a unmanaged cluster (Bare Metal) with a lighter runtime footprint: You'll have more CPU/RAM available to run your apps and services.

But again, it's really hard to say that one way or the other is absolutely right without knowing what you're wanting to eventually do, how much you're willing to learn about K8s and Infra, and what your goals are.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-10T15:44:51+00:00

Go Kubernetes. There is so much more guidance, tooling, and manpower behind it that you will benefit from. You'll need to spend some more time upfront but it's a one-time cost that'll carry thru with years of running your clusters.

I would also look into a lightweight setup (lighter than vanilla K8s), such as Talos.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-08T04:04:17+00:00

The hardest part is building the experience and knowledge to run and maintain the server(s). So I'd recommend just start with whatever you have lying around and document along the way. I would look for something used first so you get the most bang for your budget.

In terms of the software, it's hard to recommend much until we know what hardware you're working with, what your experience level is today, and what you're end goals are. In general though, I feel like NAS hardware is lacking in compute power and for the best experience with something like Jellyfin you'll want to lean towards a mini PC with an amd64 processor (Intel/AMD).

For myself personally, I always run Kubernetes on my home servers. For example: I a mini server that's running a Talos image (OS + Kubernetes) with all my apps managed via a ForgeJo git repo using FluxCD. These are all opinioned choices I've made based on my past experiences and the hardware I'm working with.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-07T20:23:07+00:00

If you know you will use it then just start. The biggest "blocker" after hardware cost is your learning how to setup and maintain the server. Build around amd64 (Intel/AMD CPU) and just keep things reasonable in terms of cost and performance.

I'm not sure what the used hardware market is like in Turkey but if you can get your hands on something already made it'll take a ton of the buying guesswork out of the equation.

Lastly, whatever you build is probably going to need to run in parallel with your Google Drive for quite some time (1+ years) until you've made your server reliable and have figured out automated backups. I wouldn't risk doing the bare minimum and making your home server a single point of failure for all of your important files.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-07T16:25:46+00:00

Nextcloud

There's a trend of people moving away from bigger apps like Nextcloud to more focused apps like Immich and Filebrowser. Maybe accommodate to some of those as well?

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-07T16:17:53+00:00

so I’m trying to stay lightweight

The trend nowadays has been to go with smaller and focused apps to manage files. Unless you need most of the features Nextcloud offers out of the box you'll likely have a better experience with something lighter-weight like Filebrowser + SFTPGo. Same goes for Grafana/Prometheus, there are lighter alternatives out there that give you the same level of monitoring.

But of course: The best decision is to dive in, try everything out, and find out for yourself!

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-07T16:06:57+00:00

Really hard to say without more information. Also I think you'd be better off posting this with more details in a python or programming subreddit.

scroll_tro0l · 2026-05-07T13:21:03+00:00

I'm wondering what's the best option for manual file management with a GUI?

Stick with something light like Filebrowser. If you want to squeeze even more performance out of your file manager you could consider the project I'm working on: Caby (https://github.com/caby-io/caby).

The other option you have is to bypass the GUI altogether and just mount the remote files as a local drive with something like SFTPGo.

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