selfhosted

byeCloud: Hosting Notes with Nextcloud

Notes, besides photos, are the pieces of data I care most about. I want to review them even after years, have them available on the go and make sure I never lose them. Up until now, I stored my Notes in iCloud alongside Apples Notes app. This article is part of the byeCloud series in which I try to replace iCloud with self-hosted services. The Apple Approach To Notes Initially, I wanted to retain this app and thought of going with IMAP Notes, which is what Apple does: They basically devote one IMAP folder to a list of mails with special headers.

byeCloud: Firefox Sync Server - UPDATE

In this article I will show you how to set up a Firefox Sync Server as a Docker container. In my case this will replace iCloud Bookmark / Tab synchronization. This article is part of the byeCloud series in which I try to replace iCloud with self-hosted services. I’ve evaluated different solutions to synchronize tabs and bookmarks, but none of them seemed to satisfy my needs. Firefox Sync almost does. Originally, I wanted to use Chromium with some plugin that would allow me to self-host a bookmark sync service.

byeCloud: Replace iCloud Keychain with KeePass

iCloud Keychain has always been a love-hate relationship for me. I loved the simplicity of just being able to generate passwords right from the registration form of every page while it would also autofill passwords when I try to log in again. But I hated not being in charge of telling this thing to sync. Sometimes when I got a new device, the Keychain would just not start synching. Or passwords that I just created wouldn’t show up.

byeCloud: GitLab with Docker and Traefik

For some months now I’m running a private GitLab server. I really enjoy using it, especially with all the great features like the Docker Container Registry and GitLab Pages to host static pages, even with own domains. Normally I would prefer a more lightweight solution, such as Gitea but GitLab has so many advantages that, at least for me, this is currently the only way to go. However, it felt tedious setting it up, even with Docker.

byeCloud: News with Miniflux

In this article I will show you how to set up your own RSS feed aggregator with sync support for many third-party clients through the Fever API as a replacement for Apple News/Google News/Feedly. This article is part of the byeCloud series in which I try to replace iCloud with self-hosted services. Choosing the right software I fiddled around for a while with the News app for Nextcloud, ttr-rss and a few other alternatives, but ended up with Miniflux (now in version 2) because it is simple and lightweight and provides the most important thing for me, a Fever-compatible API without any plugins.

byeCloud: Building a mailserver with modern webmail

UPDATE Apr, 17 2018: Update imapsync to run as standalone docker container to make deployment easier. In this article I will show you how to set up a fully-featured mail server including webmail as a Docker container. This article is part of the byeCloud series in which I try to replace iCloud with self-hosted services. Let’s be honest: Setting up a mailserver really is a pain in the ass. Always. There are so many components involved, on a pretty standard setup starting from Dovecot and Postfix to Amavis, OpenDKIM, ClamAV, postgrey and much more.

byeCloud: Syncing Photos with Nextcloud

In this article I will show you how I set up my photo synchronization using Nextcloud. This article is part of the byeCloud series in which I try to replace iCloud with self-hosted services. One of the most important things in my setup is a solid and reliable way to synchronize Photos and videos I take. In one of the previous parts of this series I set up my Nextcloud instance.

byeCloud: File syncing with Nextcloud

In this article I will describe how I set up my Nextcloud instance aiming to replace iCloud Drive. This article is part of the byeCloud series in which I try to replace iCloud with self-hosted services. The goals for a file syncing infrastructure are simple I want a reliable solution that syncs files as-is, that does not corrupt them and does not cancel uploads all the time. Additionally, I want to be able to access my files on the go using a mobile app, as well as having files on my local hard disk to also be able to use it offline, just in case I have no network connection.

byeCloud: Replacing iCloud with self-hosted services

Introduction Some years ago I already played with ownCloud, trying to set up my personal cloud and get rid of third party services for keeping my stuff in sync across multiple devices. And while I already liked it at that time, there still were things I couldn’t do with it, so I eventually gave up on it. Some months ago I decided to give it another shot and installed ownCloud (which is now migrated to Nextcloud) as well as some other services aiming to replace iCloud, the cloud service by Apple that I used until then.

Build your own dynamic DNS in 5 minutes

If you encounter any problems, please check the up-to-date documentation at https://github.com/dprandzioch/docker-ddns . In some projects I need access to various hosts with a dynamic IP from time to time. Dyndns services offer a great solution by providing a DNS with records that are updated by the clients once their IP addresses change. There are various existing services out there that are either free or paid, but if you want to self-host a dyndns service, you have to set up a DNS by your own as well as some endpoint that your clients can connect to in order to update their records.

Building a FreeBSD NAS Part 3: System setup

FreeBSD is the ideal system to use when building a server. It’s reliable and rock-solid and it’s file system ZFS not only offers anything you would expect from a file system but is also easy to set up and to maintain. This is why I chose it to power my NAS. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I already described my intentions and the hardware assembly. Now it’s time to bring it to life.

FreeBSD: iTunes media server using forked-daapd

forked-daapd allows you to set up an iTunes Media server that hosts all music, podcasts and audiobooks and shows up in iTunes like a shared library. While other daapd implementations don’t work anymore with the current iTunes versions, forked-daapd does.

FreeBSD: Time Machine backup server with netatalk

While building my new NAS, I came across the question how to provide a Time Machine backup solution for my OS X clients. As I run OS X on all my machines I want to back up all data to my NAS. netatalk allows to create file shares for OS X to provide a simple solution for system backups.

Building a FreeBSD NAS Part 1: Concept & Hardware selection

After a long while I finally decided to build a new NAS / home server for my various needs. Though there are many solutions available, I chose to build one on my own as I want as much flexibility as possible. So I set out to buy all components needed for the system with upgradability and budget in mind.

FreeBSD: Send mails over an external SMTP server

FreeBSD is shipped with sendmail as the default MTA, which is configured to local delivery on a vanilla installation. Therefore many people don’t even recognize one of FreeBSDs great features for system administrators: FreeBSD sends system status emails through periodic(8)…

Simple mail forwarding using Postfix

It’s more than likely that your email provider of choice, especially the ones that offer mail services free of charge, will not support receiving email to custom domain names like, in my case, davd.net. Running your own mail server would solve this problem but running a fully featured mail stack including POP, IMAP, Sieve filters et cetera requires a fairly powerful machine. Additionally, if not configured properly, there’s big potential for abuse, e.g. spam.

As an alternative, it’s possible to just run a MTA which redirects all incoming email to an external mail server. This can be ran on almost any machine, even on a low-budget computer like the Raspberry Pi or a cheap virtual server.

Simple Podcast-Downloader for Linux & BSD

During the last few months I managed to automate many recurring tasks on my NAS. One good example for those task is updating my podcast archive. I tried to accomplish this using a lightweight shell script which, running as a cronjob, would hold my podcast archive up to date and notify me about new episodes via push notifications.