cloudathome

Intro

Having all our data in the cloud is very convenient but it has privacy and security implications. Since many open source projects to self-host this data exist but are quite complicated to install and configure, the idea here is to put together a bundle with some web application to ease the deployment for self-hosting.

To be platform independent we use Docker and docker-compose. The components are (or will be, to be extended):

• Nextcloud: host files
• Gitea: lightweight git server
• Bitwarden: password manager
• Postgres: database to store the data of the previous components
• Transmission: torrent client
• Traefik: handle routing and TLS

Getting started

• install docker and docker-compose
• run cd local-build; ARCH=<amd64 or arm-6> ./build.sh
• docker-compose build
• env $(cat config/dev/global.env | xargs) docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f with-omgwtfssl.yml up traefik nc-web
• useful for monitoring: watch docker-compose ps
• wait until nextcloud installation is done (Nextcloud was successfully installed log line, can take a few minutes)
• visit localhost/nextcloud and accept invalid cert
• to delete containers, volumes and networks: docker-compose down -v

Production mode

• create folder config/prod with proper config files inside
• env $(cat config/prod/global.env | xargs) docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f with-letsencrypt.yml -f with-persistent-db.yml up -d traefik transmission nc-web

Backup

Unlike assumed at first, Nextcloud doesn't save the files in the database, they go in the /var/www/html/data/files directory. The nc-backup service can be started (usually on another device) to take care of the backup.

• env $(cat config/prod/global.env | xargs) docker-compose up -d nc-backup
• https://hub.docker.com/r/jswetzen/rsync-backup

Database replication

Current state:

• start db01 and db02
• run docker exec -ti -u postgres db02 start_as_backup
• check if it worked by logging on db01 with docker exec -ti -u postgres db01 bash
  • then psql -x -c "select * from pg_stat_replication"

Run on system start up

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/cloudathome.service <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Cloudathome
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/cloudathome
EnvironmentFile=/home/pi/cloudathome/config/prod/global.env
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f with-letsencrypt.yml -f with-persistent-db.yml up -d traefik transmission nc-web
ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/docker-compose stop
TimeoutStartSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

And enable the the service with sudo systemctl enable cloudathome

Monitoring

You can monitor your Raspberry Pi's with the help of the Cloud InfluxData free plan and the content of the monitoring folder.

• https://cloud2.influxdata.com/
• install telegraf
• complete monitoring/telegraf.sample and copy it to /etc/default/telegraf
• copy monitoring/telegraf.conf to /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf
• for the temperature, the telegraf user needs to be in the video group
  • https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34076
  • sudo usermod -G video telegraf
• sudo systemctl restart telegraf
• import the grafana dashboard (it's the default "System" dashboard with the temeperature added)