Here we are, an update. I’m not sure what to discuss this time; however, I thought I would at least give it a shot. I’m currently focusing on things that really make me happy at the moment, such as playing video games and music. I’ve set up that Jellyfin server and have it hosted on Vultr for the time being. It’s been a great experience setting that up and a good learning experience with Docker. I just don’t understand where to go next.

The next step on my self-hosting journey is complete! I’ve successfully replicated my Jellyfin media server infrastructure in Vultr and have it running through a zero-trust Cloudflare tunnel for external internet access. This is a huge win for me. I had to force myself to really complete this. I’ve been so tired and worn out mentally lately that I’ve been slacking on my posts. I apologize for that, but this is a marathon, not a sprint, and I will accomplish something, even if it’s only this one task.

The work continues on my many ideas and projects, and more roadblocks occur constantly, but that wouldn’t be fun, now would it? Regardless, I’m trying to tackle a few infrastructure-type issues before moving on to new projects. The current issue I’m wanting to iron out is utilizing a VPS to host a server for me so I don’t have to keep my personal desktop online at all times to use my Jellyfin server. The good thing about that is I can just use Ubuntu and set up Docker Compose to pull my config down to the new server. I’m currently using Vultr; I’ve found they’re the best price-to-server performance for the money. At around $5 a month, I can utilize a 1 vCPU, 1 GB of RAM, and a 25 GB virtual server through their service and have some flexibility in the other services they provide without breaking the bank.

It lives! My Jellyfin media server and CloudFlare Tunnel lives again! Finally, after a week of banging my head against the wall I was able to get a second set of eyes on the problem. The issue was due to the docker containers being on separate bridged networks when deployed through the docker compose file. I had no idea this was a problem, and I suspect the only reason it worked previously was because of how I had the host network configured originally and just sheer dumb luck. Regardless, it’s working again and I couldn’t be happier! Thanks to my buddy PurpleK who assisted with the troubleshooting and helped me narrow down the problem with idea to try. I’m having a problem with cached credentials not working, but honestly I don’t really care, I’m just glad it’s working and I can troubleshoot that later, it’s probably the mount points for the cache and config that need tweaked.

Well here I am again, making another update for you all, hoping to provide a little bit of good news, unfortunately that’s not the case…Here’s the deal, I’m a big linux distro hopper, and at some point I wanted to play an old and outdated but still supported MMO on my Windows install, so I resized the partition with my containers, and also installed an Arch distro called CachyOS on my daily driver SSD. These actions have caused the GRUB bootloader on my EndeavorOS install that houses my containers for Cloudflare and Jellyfin, to wipe itself out and I have no idea why that would’ve happened other than Windows essentially destroying the boot loader when I created a gaming partition on that drive to install games on Windows, long story short I won’t be doing that again and have since moved towards setting up a stable daily driver and a stable server install for my PC and will not be touching it in the future.

Hello again! So what’s been going on with me lately? I’m hoping to give you a good idea and description of what I’ve been working on. Here it goes:

The Updates

• Localized LLM

  • Well this one has been a frustrating experience of patience and buggy software. I’ve tried over and over again to get open-webui in a functional state, and it just doesn’t work, even with the dedicated docker container, I just can’t get it to function in a reasonable way, even after making the suggested tweaks by the open-webui GitHub page. This has been a massive hit to my self-esteem and put me off on the project for a few days. I’m hoping to take a step back and reflect on what is going on and possibly switch to another frontend instead of open-webui, maybe that will work better? Who knows.

• NextCloud instance

The purpose

Many of you may be wondering, why bother creating a website? Just use social media! Well, a website will always be mine, the domain will always be mine as long as I pay the registrar, it can’t be taken away from me as long as I manage the website. This is my personal online journal, my life story and my progress as well as accountability for projects. If I don’t have anyone to hold me accountable for projects, if I don’t have even the sense of accountability, I just won’t complete them, and this one was completed due to the visibility of my Discord server and the visibility of the entire internet.

Here we are, the beginning of my web admin/creation journey, building a nice (albeit very basic) blog for my discord group! This is an extremely early prototype blog and essentially a proof of concept, but I’ll be working on this in the future and will hopefully have regular updates whenever I’m available to post.

The idea came from a NetworkChuck video about creating a blog/website that you own based on custom domains that you have purchased. I love this guy’s videos, and while some of them are obvious plugs for a service or product, he tries to integrate useful and somewhat meaningful ideas into his content, and that’s something I feel YouTube sorely needs.