Andreas Happe: Homeserver: Services Pt. 1

April 9, 2025 in Linux Tech

I am running a home server for a while now. I have been using it to host some services that I use regularly. In this post, I will share my experience with some of the services I have set up on my home server.

This initial post will go over local git hosting using gitea, audiobook streaming using audiobookshelf and a self-hosted RSS reader using tt-rss.

Preliminaries

Just some notes before we start with the different service configurtions:

  • based upon my basic homeserver setup.
    • the nginx configuration file is /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
    • all services will be placed behind a reverse proxy (nginx) and will be accessed through https://meltingpot.social/<servicename>
    • docker compose is used to run the services. We will make sure that docker services are only exposed through the nginx reverse-proxy and not directly to the network
  • I use /media/data/container/<container-name> for container-data.
  • Within my homedirectory (/home/andy/), I create a simple directory per service, copy the docker-compose.yaml file into it and then start it through docker compose up in a tmux session
    • I start everything with tmux and detaching from tmux (ctrl-b d) after I manually mount the encrypted data harddrive.
  • Typically, you will have do to some sort of configuration when you first access the container’s website. If I remember something “special” was needed during setup, I will note this here.

And now for the services..

Audiobook-Server for my Humble Audio-Bundles

I got a couple of audiobooks from humblebundle over time. Initially I just copied them on my android phone and used vlc for playing them. There were some problems: I wanted some sort of sleep-timer, in addition I ran in to problems with audiobooks that were split up into multiple parts.

The solution was to user audiobookshelf. It is a self-hosted audiobook server that allows you to stream your audiobooks to your devices. It has a nice web interface and works well with the android app. This allows for a sleeping timer, resuming playback, and even offline use within the android app.

I only store audiobooks on the data drive, as I don’t use podcasts (yet).

I am using the following docker-compose.yaml file:

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services:
  audiobookshelf:
    image: ghcr.io/advplyr/audiobookshelf:latest
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:13378:80
    volumes:
      - /media/data/media/audiobooks:/audiobooks
      - /media/data/containers/audiobookshelf/podcasts:/podcasts
      - /media/data/containers/audiobookshelf/config:/config
      - /media/data/containers/audiobookshelf/metadata:/metadata
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Vienna

To put audiobookshelf behind the nginx reverse proxy, I add the following to the nginx configuration (in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default):

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server {

	# other stuff..

	location /audiobookshelf {
		proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:13378/audiobookshelf;

		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto  $scheme;
      		proxy_set_header Host               $http_host;
      		proxy_set_header Upgrade            $http_upgrade;
      		proxy_set_header Connection         "upgrade";
      		proxy_http_version                  1.1;
		proxy_redirect	http:// https://;
		#proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
	}
	
	# other stuff ..
}

Git-Server for Obsidian Sync (gitea)

I am using obisidan for my notes. To sync notes between devices I am using the git plugin. Before having the home-server, I was using a private github repository as git backend, but now that I have a local server it made sense to move the repository to my home server. I am using gitea for this as it is a lightweight and easy-to-use solution for hosting your own git repositories.

This is the docker-compose.yaml file I am using:

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version: "3"

services:
  server:
    image: gitea/gitea:latest
    container_name: gitea
    restart: always
    environment:
      - USER_UID=1000
      - USER_GID=1000
    volumes:
      - /media/data/containers/gitea/data:/data
      - /media/data/containers/gitea/custom:/app/gitea/custom
      - /media/data/containers/gitea/log:/app/gitea/log
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:3000:3000"
      - "2222:22"

After the intial start, a new configuration file is created at /media/data/containers/gitea/data/gitea/conf/app.ini. You can edit this file to change the configuration of gitea. The most important settings changes are:

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[server]
...
ROOT_URL = https://meltingpot.social/gitea
...
SSH_PORT = 2222
DOMAIN = meltingpot.social
SSH_DOMAIN = meltingpot.social
...

This changes make sure that the git clone URLs displayed within gitea are actually working.

Finally, we also have to add the following to the nginx configuration (in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default):

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server {
    # other configuraiton..

    location ~ ^/(gitea|v2)($|/) {
        client_max_body_size 512M;

        # make nginx use unescaped URI, keep "%2F" as-is, remove the "/gitea" sub-path prefix, pass "/v2" as-is.
        rewrite ^ $request_uri;
        rewrite ^/(gitea($|/))?(.*) /$3 break;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000$uri;

        # other common HTTP headers, see the "Nginx" config section above
        proxy_set_header Connection $http_connection;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }

    # other configuration..
}

TT-RSS for news aggregation and processing

The final part for this blog post will be tt-rss. It is a self-hosted RSS reader that allows you to read and manage your RSS feeds. It has a nice web interface and works well with the android app. I am using it to filter and read my RSS feeds from various sources.

In addition, I am installing the ironfeed plugin. This plugin can be used to grab full news items (instead of only having the summary typically included in the RSS feed), remove ads, and combine multi-page posts into a single news item.

Configuration is a bit more involved than the other two services. Create the service directory, e.g. /home/andy/tt-rss and copy the following .env file as well as the docker-compose.yaml file into it:

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# Put any local modifications here.

# Run FPM under this UID/GID.
# OWNER_UID=1000
# OWNER_GID=1000

# FPM settings.
#PHP_WORKER_MAX_CHILDREN=5
#PHP_WORKER_MEMORY_LIMIT=256M

# ADMIN_USER_* settings are applied on every startup.

# Set admin user password to this value. If not set, random password
# will be generated on startup, look for it in the 'app' container logs.
#ADMIN_USER_PASS=

# Sets admin user access level to this value. Valid values:
# -2 - forbidden to login
# -1 - readonly
#  0 - default user
# 10 - admin
#ADMIN_USER_ACCESS_LEVEL=

# Auto create another user (in addition to built-in admin) unless it already exists.
#AUTO_CREATE_USER=
#AUTO_CREATE_USER_PASS=
#AUTO_CREATE_USER_ACCESS_LEVEL=0

# Default database credentials.
TTRSS_DB_USER=postgres
TTRSS_DB_NAME=postgres
TTRSS_DB_PASS=password

# You can customize other config.php defines by setting overrides here.
# See tt-rss/.docker/app/Dockerfile for a complete list.

# You probably shouldn't disable auth_internal unless you know what you're doing.
TTRSS_PLUGINS=auth_internal,auth_remote
# TTRSS_SINGLE_USER_MODE=true
# TTRSS_SESSION_COOKIE_LIFETIME=2592000
# TTRSS_FORCE_ARTICLE_PURGE=30
# ...

# Bind exposed port to 127.0.0.1 to run behind reverse proxy on the same host.
# If you plan to expose the container, remove "127.0.0.1:".
HTTP_PORT=8280
#HTTP_PORT=8280

In the docker-compose.yaml file, we are using the environmental configuration from the .env file. We also make sure that tt-rss is not exposed to the network, but only to the nginx reverse proxy and enable periodic backups:

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version: '3'

services:

  # see FAQ entry below if upgrading from a different PostgreSQL major version (e.g. 12 to 15):
  # https://tt-rss.org/wiki/InstallationNotes/#i-got-the-updated-compose-file-above-and-now-my-database-keeps-restarting
  db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=${TTRSS_DB_USER}
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${TTRSS_DB_PASS}
      - POSTGRES_DB=${TTRSS_DB_NAME}
    volumes:
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  app:
    image: cthulhoo/ttrss-fpm-pgsql-static:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    volumes:
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/app:/var/www/html
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/config.d:/opt/tt-rss/config.d:ro
    depends_on:
      - db

#  optional, makes weekly backups of your install
  backups:
    image: cthulhoo/ttrss-fpm-pgsql-static:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    volumes:
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/backups:/backups
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/app:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - db
    command: /opt/tt-rss/dcron.sh -f

  updater:
    image: cthulhoo/ttrss-fpm-pgsql-static:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    volumes:
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/app:/var/www/html
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/config.d:/opt/tt-rss/config.d:ro
    depends_on:
      - app
    command: /opt/tt-rss/updater.sh

  web-nginx:
    image: cthulhoo/ttrss-web-nginx:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:${HTTP_PORT}:80
    volumes:
      - /media/data/containers/tt-rss/app:/var/www/html:ro
    depends_on:
      - app

Stanza for nginx:

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        location /tt-rss {
                proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8280/tt-rss;
                proxy_set_header Host $host;
                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto  $scheme;
        }

Start this using docker compose up and then go to https://meltingpot.social/tt-rss to finish the setup. Check the output of docker compose for the randomly generated password for the admin user.

For setup of feediron we need to install the plugin. This is done by cloning the repository into the plugins.local directory of tt-rss:

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$ /media/data/containers/tt-rss/app/tt-rss
$ git clone https://github.com/feediron/ttrss_plugin-feediron.git plugins.local/feediron

and enable it in the admin -> configuration -> plugins section

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