Home Server Docker Setups Break When Beginners Touch Them
Individuals with limited experience are encountering significant challenges in setting up and maintaining their own home servers, often involving Docker, virtualization, and various self-hosted applications. They're seeking guidance on best practices, troubleshooting issues, and simplifying access for family members. The learning curve and technical hurdles are proving overwhelming.
SOURCES (60)
“I Have a machine that runs Ubuntu, and I was looking for solutions to creating automatic back ups of my main machine, I hear good things about Urbackup, my only, teensy, little issue is that. Oh I can't use it anymore. Why? Well, it prompted…”
I just installed Kiauh and mainsail on an old pc I had sitting around cause I’m flashing klipper onto my sv06+ and my sv04. I’m able to ip into mainsail interface fom…
I don't see a way to run the beta device builder of 2026.5.0 out of HAOS, in plain docker, documented. Did I miss it? Did someone mange, already? Thanks
Here my Docker compose for HA. homeassistant: image: "ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable" hostname: homeassistant container_name: homeassistant network_mode: host re…
Hi all, I am running HA in a container and using a container version of Matter-serverjs. Due to me failing to migrate from the matter-server python container properly I will need to…
Self-Hosted Docker: Unable to use webhooks with other services on the server
“looking for some user experience feedback. Not a lot of great selfhosted CalDAV/CardDAV solutions for stand alone calendar / contact management but anyone using some version of docker-thunderbird? https://github.com/jlesage/docker-thunderbird https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-thunderbird/ is the VNC layer that laggy? Mobile support poor via browser? submitted by /u/EskelGorov [link] [comments]”
“for some reason, when i use curl -fsSL https://get.jabali-panel.com | sudo bash, i get that 403 error. i was wondering if it was some firewall issue, so i went to https://get.jabali-panel.com in the web browser. that loaded perfectly. then i noticed the address bar changed to https://codeberg.org/shukivaknin/jabali2/raw/branch/main/bootstrap.sh . i changed the install link to "curl -fsSL https://codeberg.org/shukivaknin/jabali2/raw/branch/main/bootstrap.sh | sudo bash" and it appears t”
“Right now the nas is the key component of his setup so why not. Can always move it later. Noctua fans in the Synology is cool. I also have a ds423 and may look into this. Good work OP.”
“Both work. I'm all in on Docker, si I went the sidecar route. I'm rebuilding my Proxmox server and will be moving some services to LXC, and I'll be installing it directly in there.”
“Another thumbs up for Easy WG in docker. I use it occasionally just for tinkering. My main personal setup is Tailscale. I ham fistedly tried setting up a wireguard server myself and found it confusing and failed. Easy-WG just lived up to its name, it was easy. My generic wireless router at home has both wireguard and zero tier built in but absolutely no documentation on how to configure them. Zero Tier was pretty easy after setting up a Zero Tier account and I finally stumbled around and got wir”
“Yes, I did. Good to know that stopping containers is fine, because I have a lot of containers running to dump the database from them every time. That's going to be so much work every time, so I'm trying to automate this.”
“UGREEN DXP4800 Plus on UGOS. All my Docker containers sit on volume2 (SSD). Backrest backs up the whole of volume2 to an external USB drive hanging off the NAS, and before each run it stops every container except itself, then starts them all again once it's done. I went with Backrest rather than UGREEN's own backup app because I'm not putting my data in a vendor format that only works for as long as I stay on their hardware. And yes, I know one USB drive sitting next to the NAS isn&#”
“Hi everyone! I'm trying to find the best VPS for a couple of my small projects. I want to use Debian with Docker and host a small website in a private cloud, and maybe even Vaultwarden later. I'm not familiar with any of the providers. Before I make a choice, I'd like to ask for your advice: which one is best? And what's a reasonable price? Thanks in advance for your help! submitted by /u/idonegoof707 [link] [comments]”
“Thanks, appreciate the info. My NAS is formatted in EXT4, so I would have to move all the data first”
How to handle server reboot when using docker-compose?
“Vscode, Ansible/Semaphore, Harbor, Watchtower, Dozzle, Beszel, Gotify, UptimeKuma...among others. I use separate LXC containers and VM's to run service stacks across several hosts in a Proxmox cluster. This has been very stable and maintainable for my personal use case. Automatic backups are handled by a dedicated PBS machine. Just my two cents, but I've found that limiting the number of services per Docker host has helped prevent weird edge cases, such as during DNS instability. Using s”
“I always preferred simplicity and minimalism. I use Dockge — flexible enough for me and light, and you can centralize different dockge servers in one instance. The reason I skipped Komodo/Arcane is exactly that: they do more, but that's more service to run, another DB to babysit. For health/notifications I don't make dockge do it — a small uptime tool (Beszel) + a webhook script, kept decoupled. When I need more I write some lightweight script for it.”
“Basically the title, I was thinking of maybe making a running chart and have the community help me keep it updated. I have tried Portainer CE, Portainer LTS, Arcane, Komodo, Sencho, Dockhand and probably some others I missed as well as more classic non-UI management and it could be handy for a newer user to have clean data to look at? Just was checking on everyones thoughts. Thanks! submitted by /u/Squanchy2112 [link] [comments]”
“Unless your running a old version of windows you can just install docker next to your other programs and slowly move over. You can run/install a dedicated os like TrueNAS Community which comes pre installed with docker. And a gui for said docker. But then you have to deal with migrating files folder and stuff.”
“ive been running it in docker for like 6 months now and honestly its not too bad to set up. the sync server is easy but the accounts server is where things get messy real quick”
“Thought of it. Haven’t tried since before I knew how to use a container, plus, it would be really nice to have Firefox Accounts Server working too.”
“Another reason for VS code is because I am a "hobiest" and live in GUIs most of the time (I'm don't work in IT). Getting comfortable with VS allows you to SSH into a VSP and have the same experience. I like being able to see the full file path of a computer for running Authentik with Pangolin in Docker Compose on a remote computer that I can't see the desktop with. The slight learning curve on my home machine made interacting with the SSH login a lot more user friendly”
“yeah, you can. there's a Host/IP field in the RDP settings so you can point it at a separate Windows machine instead of the local managed guest. only catch is that box needs RemoteApp and the guest agent set up on the Windows side for the per-app windows to work properly. the unattended provisioning is for the managed guest, so with a physical PC you'd do that server-side setup once yourself.”
“Does it work only in a VM? Ideally I won't have to use a VM but a separate windows PC.”
“eh, "clone" is a stretch. winapps, winboat, all of these share the same base (KVM + FreeRDP + RemoteApp), so by that logic they're all clones of each other too. the actual difference is multisession. those tools run a single session so you don't really get proper per-app windows with their own taskbar entries. winpodx runs isolated sessions in parallel, so each app is a real native window. base language and stack are different too, it's not forked off anyone. anyway give it”
“Not OP, but I can give na example. E.g. Virtual Box's Seamless Mode , I remember using it 15-20 years ago already.”
“I stared my network like that. I had a monitor-network, media-network, etc and they have 10+ containers in it. It is a good way to not be overwhelmed at the beginning and also make it easy to deploy 10 services a day (I know everyone do this because we want to host everything). When I started with more personal stuff (immich, nextcloud), the network privacy was necessary and I started isolating everything. It is also good to use TLS between the container and the dependencies that allow it (datab”
Yep, switching over from portainer to dockhand now and I'm loving it
“The way I made peace with it is: each service gets its service-private-network (for database, cache, backends) and service-public-network that has the public facing container and traefik connected to it. Each time Traefik starts, it runs a sidecar container with a shell script that connects it to all *-public-network, so I don't need to put each network on Traefik compose or any other config. Every network has the internal flag, except when the service really needs egress connection. To orga”
“I spent ages avoiding Docker and now it's the only bit that makes sense, but Windows was the real headache.”
“I really like Dockhand but the requirement to have the compose.yml file local to the Dockhand server isn't nice.”
“With the Containers extension and Docker language support, I really don't know what more I would even want from a separate GUI app.”
“Hello y'all! I'm trying to determine if I just need to take the L and learn Docker and how to even start. At the moment I'm currently running a Minecraft server and Jellyfin server off of an old Windows desktop that I didn't really use anymore (both through tunnels, MC being through playit and Jellyfin through cloudflared). I tried figuring out Docker initially when setting up the Jellyfin server, but eventually decided to just run it off of the machine directly. As of recently f”
“I started with Portainer (2 weeks ago) and quickly switched to docker compose in VS Code. Little scary at first, but you will actually learn how to use docker. It took me like 2 days two adjust. After switching I'm not even sure how a GUI even makes sense with Docker”
“First off, I'm new to docker and this community -- I appreciate all the opinions shared here; I'm learning a lot! I opted for portainer to manage my stack. But I am finding it is not as feature rich as I would like. Things like monitoring the health of stacks, notifications, updates (or auto update for some stacks) require other tools. For updates, I could add WatchTower, but it is not maintained. There is a fork, or whats up docker (WUD) or DIUN. But that led me to Dockhand and down a r”
[Help Needed] How to mount a directory as a non-root user in a container
“I installed Navidrome some time ago and while I very much like the software, it has a shortcoming (for me); it is based on a database which needs correct tagging. I have a large number of audio files (mp3 and flac mostly) but most of these don't have the correct tags. The files are located in directories named: artist - album. Is there a player available that will serve based on folders? Preferably based on docker compose. Edit: just to clarify.. I know I can use mp3tag to do this "prop”
“Hey guys, I just finished building my own server and installing/configuring Immich, Crafty Controller, and Pi-hole. Do you have any suggestions on what else I can run or do with it? If it helps, here are the specs: CPU: i7-3770 RAM: 12GB DDR3 GPU: None (integrated graphics only) OS: ZimaOS Thanks! submitted by /u/2Hard4Him [link] [comments]”
“I wanted to see what the wisdom is for having both BMC of my home lab servers being on the same management network as the ProxMox host itself. This is for a planned / updated homelab I'm working on. I was thinking of having a management network for both and putting both on the same one for having less vlans. However, I see a potential issue. If I put both on the same network, it would expose the the BMC's directly to the internet, unless I sign them static IP's and block them at the”
“So i did some maintenance today. Checked which images have updates available, adapted the docker compose files and run docker compose up to pull the images and restart the containers. Everything went fine until i wanted to update PiHole. Did the same procedure, but the pull took ages. So i decided to browse some reddit only to realize, that it's down. It took me a moment to realize, that without PiHole up and running i can't resolve addresses and therefore access the internet (including”
“I never really understood in the olden days how you can have like a mod 1.6.4 but it doesn’t work on 1.7.10 like what is the fundamental difference in the code that doesn’t allow that compatibility? Furthermore, what makes it so difficult for developers and users to just make those mods compatible with new versions like couldn’t Claude just do it in like five minutes surely.”
“For those of you who self host gitea on proxmox, and use its runners, im curious how do you set them up, im looking for inspiration, do you host them in their own VM/LXC, how do you handle deployments? submitted by /u/Immediate-Jicama7244 [link] [comments]”
“That's a good question, never tried. But backend is just fastAPI python, vite for frontend. Should work with docker on pi 3/4/5”
“Howdy! See my subject. I've got 3 Optiplex 7040Ms, all with 32GB RAM, 256 GB OS disk, 1 TB data disk, behind an OpenWRT device. 2 are running Proxmox on Debian 13. The last one is what I'd like to use for backup. I've also got a desktop running Debian 13 for which I'd want to back up its config and user files (docs, pictures, etc). I've looked at restic, borg, garage, rcloned and a few others but not found any that match my use case easily. My criteria are: - No LLM involveme”
“https://preview.redd.it/zt5g5o7iqubh1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ba9b37d1b4815b8029887257be3bc4c5a4b3db7 Everything is defined in Git, using a script that automatically discovers my Docker Compose stacks and systemd services, parsing them to generate this architecture diagram on every push. Huge inspiration goes to Morten Nordbye's homelab repo and his Reddit post showing how he stopped hand-drawing his homelab diagrams. The script scans my compose files and systemd u”
“What's the best backup for a proxmox server with multiple VMs. VMs just have docker containers. One of the VMs is TrueNAS with actual data and stuff. Is borg or restic good? Feel free to recommend something else as long as it's FOSS The goal is: have a small backup size since backups will be going over the internet via a WG tunnel Resiliant backups, dont want to have to babysit the backup setup after it's in place or worry a job ran successfully everyday Easy to restore if well.....”
“This! I started with CasaOS but quickly switched to Deb+Compose as it is really not that hard. And for someone who not just want “to use stuff” there is no need for another layer that cuts out the control & flexibility you get from a “direct” setup.”
“The CVE number is a bad way to pick one, they all look clean on a fresh pull. I'd look at rebuild speed after an upstream fix and whether you can pin a digest.”
“Hi! o/ In the last couple of weeks I have been installing, testing and formatting what is going to be my homelab/self hosted stuff. At the beginning I used Ubuntu server + Docker + Portainer to make the test, then Ubuntu became Debian and Portainer, Dockhand. In this time I documented everything that I investigated and everything that I do (I have very bad memory, so bad that it bullies other memories), so I ended up watching some videos of people recommending so bad ZimaOS. So today I tried and”
“I am still learning , so if I am wrong anywhere or if there is something important that I should know, please let me know. In a real application, we usually have multiple containers like a frontend, backend, database, Redis, etc. Managing all these containers manually is very difficult. Also, Docker images are immutable, so whenever we change our code, we don't want to rebuild the image and recreate the container every single time during development. This is where docker-compose.yml It lets”