I had to test/fix something at work and I set up a Windows VM because it was a bug specific to Windows users. Once I was done, I thought, “Maybe I should keep this VM for something.” but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t a game (which probably wouldn’t work well in a VM anyway) or some super specific enterprise...
I started fairly recently (probably somewhere between nine and seven years ago; time isn’t my strong suit, cut me some slack) on Debian. Now I’m on Arch Linux.
Okay, let me start by saying that I really do love Home Assistant. I believe that it is a fantastic piece of software, with very dedicated developers that are far more talented than I. Although, that being said, I strongly disagree with a number of their design choices....
Still no subpaths, changing default authentication providers, and there can still be workarounds that feel hackish (I’ve used HA is a container before) the difference is that you’ll do less in Home Assistant, so you avoid them as much as possible.
I’m running HAOS and Docker in two different VMs on Proxmox, and it’s working fine for me so far.
So, I think I’ve mentioned this in another reply, but, I have a very minimal setup. It’s a RPi4 as the main device, Starlink as the ISP (CGNAT; no port-forwarding), and now Tailscale as the only way to access outside of my LAN. I agree that HAOS meets it’s primary job of running Home Assistant. Although, I don’t have the option to run Proxmox (at least I’ve never seen anyone run Proxmox on an RPi) and also have a massive music library (and soon a large movie and TV show collection, once I rip all of those DVDs) so I really only need to run a few things:
A dashboard to make accessing the services easier for the family.
A reverse proxy to handle subpaths (this used to be Cloudflare Tunnels with subdomains and NPM with subpaths, now it’s just Nginx).
Tailscale (to expose services and run a VPN to get past the CGNAT).
Jellyfin (for TV shows and movies).
A forked version of Goinc (I have a fork with LDAP support, there’s an open pull request for it, but it needs a little extra work; this wasn’t ran on HA).
Something to run LDAP authentication.
Some Home Automation software (was Home Assistant, I migth switch to something else).
Edit: I also run Vaultwarden.
I’ve really scaled things back since previous self-hosting journeys, and when I first started with HAOS there was even less going on, and really I need things to just work. I’m learning now that my mistake was assuming that HAOS add-ons are supposed to behave just like a Docker container, they’re not. I’ve learned the hard way, but, I still don’t love HA’s attitude towards something that are deemed “complex,” such as sub-paths and alternative authentication providers.
You make some good points, I’ve said a few times now that I mistook Home Assistant add-ons as traditional Docker containers (which I’ve learned the hard way is flat out wrong, you know what they say about assumptions).
First subdomain. I think HA is completely right that proxy with a subpath is basically an anti-pattern that just makes things worse for you and is always a bad idea (with very few exceptions).
I don’t agree with the comment replying about how developers are lazy. That being said, I also wouldn’t call a subpath an anti-pattern, it’s not uncommon and I wouldn’t say that it is always a bad idea (they have some pros and cons on subdomains and it’s what my setup calls for).
As for your tunnel I don’t know how you’ve set it up and I haven’t used tailscale but them only allowing one domain sounds like a very arbitrary limit, is it something that costs money to add? I use NetBird which I selfhost on my VPS and from there tunnel into my much beefier home setup.
There’s an open feature request for subdomains, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere. I’m assuming that it must be how they handle SSL certificates.
As for authentication there are 10k plus contributors to Home Assistant yearly but very few bother to make authentication more streamlined. I would’ve loved OpenID/OAuth2 support natively but there are ways to do so with custom components and in the end I quite strongly feel that if the end-users of your smarthome setup (i.e. the wife and kids) need to login to Home Assistant then you’ve probably got more work to do. Remote controls which interact with HA handle the vast majority of manual interaction and I’ve dabbled with self-hosted voice interfaces for the more complex operations.
Yeah, I’ve seen the idea that Home Assistant shouldn’t be the part you interact with several times, but I don’t really know of any better things to handle this. None of us really love voice controls and I’ve toyed around with Google Home (but I think it’s absolute garbage and self-host to get away from companies like Google).
I just suspect you’re making things harder for yourself and maybe have a strange idea around how to selfhost in general?
Not my ideas that are strange, I’d love to have a traditional setup. I’ve mentioned it a few times in other replies, I just don’t want to be the “just look at my other replies” person, so here’s whats going on: Starlink is my ISP (CGNAT; I can’t port-forward), Tailscale is now my only way of accessing things off of my LAN (I didn’t mind Cloudflare Tunnels, but Cloudflare scares me and Jellyfin is a pretty important thing and supposedly if you want to stream video you’re not allowed/supposed to use Tunnels), my only device is an RPi4 (I’ve tried other devices, but I really love the simplicity of the Pi – and also don’t have many other devices that would work that good for self-hosting).
Again, I’d love to have a “normal” ISP (we live in the middle of no where) that lets me port-forward and is nice and something other than a Pi to host on, but this is what I’m stuck with.
Sorry if this came across as writing you on the nose, that’s not my intention.
It’s all good I get where you’re coming from, and I’m sure you understand what’s going on for me.
I largely agree with this, but (and this might be me being a little paranoid) I don’t really trust anyone to handle my data like that. I self-host as much as possible to get away from things beyond my control, I understand that this is an extremist view of things, but the only reason why I use Tailscale Funnel is because the family would either not know how to, or not want, to deal with a VPN like that.
Seems like you have some limitation (I really don’t know tailscail funnel) in your setup, and now you expect them to work around it.
Sub-paths are actually a fairly requested feature for Home Assistant. Although, they have a limitation of hard-coded paths, which they now expect us to work around. I’m actually fairly okay with that, they’re programmers who (a number of) work for free, with the exception of the few apart of Nabu Casa, and they’ve already exceeded my personal expectations it’s not like I deserve any features, but they also don’t deserve me to love 100% of their design decisions.
Yes, HAOS is great when you have one dedicated machine for it, for example a RPi. That’s the whole purpose of HAOS, as far as I understand.
I’ve admitted this already, but I seem to have totally miscalculated the ability of HAOS add-ons, and treated them like traditional Docker containers. This was my bad, and I learned the hard way, but at least now I know.
If you already have a zoo full of docker containers, then you want your Home Assistant (without HAOS) in just one more of your own containers.
I’m far from a zoo keeper. Once I setup everything on RPi OS again I’ll have just a few things for media (Jellyfin and a fork of Gonic, at least until my PR gets merged), Vaultwarden, and a home automation service (which may or may not be Home Assistant – if I can figure out a decent way of exposing it) I less services being hosted when I was on HAOS.
After discovering Tomb, and a few personal issues with it, I decided to write a very similar program that doesn’t require root access and compiles to a single binary: Graveyard....
What (free and open-source) applications do you use on a daily basis?
Try to avoid duplicates, keep it interesting.
How do y'all say GIF? (lemmy.ml)
Are there any Windows-exclusive programs you use?
I had to test/fix something at work and I set up a Windows VM because it was a bug specific to Windows users. Once I was done, I thought, “Maybe I should keep this VM for something.” but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t a game (which probably wouldn’t work well in a VM anyway) or some super specific enterprise...
What are the coolest (privacy respecting) apps you have?
Title says it all. I’ll go first:...
Where, and when, did you start using Linux? Where are you now?
I started fairly recently (probably somewhere between nine and seven years ago; time isn’t my strong suit, cut me some slack) on Debian. Now I’m on Arch Linux.
If you could go back in time and do, or bring, one thing to mess up the timeline what would it be?
I love Home Assistant, but...
Okay, let me start by saying that I really do love Home Assistant. I believe that it is a fantastic piece of software, with very dedicated developers that are far more talented than I. Although, that being said, I strongly disagree with a number of their design choices....
Where and when did you start your fediverse journey?
I started with @beta on 2022-04-25, what about all y’all?
It's just faster.... (lemmy.ml)
Music alignment (lemmy.ml)
Remember to stock your fridge like this in case there's ever an apocalypse (lemmy.world)
How "open-source" is your phone in %?
What I mean is how much do you use open-source software on these privacy disrespecting phones (Xiaomi, Samsung, etc)....
Oh! The irony.... (lemmy.ml)
Saw a number of free books on Apple Books and was wondering if I could get them on my Kindle. Every single one I tried was DRM-free other than 1984.
[OC] Graveyard — Dead simple encryption (lemmy.ml)
After discovering Tomb, and a few personal issues with it, I decided to write a very similar program that doesn’t require root access and compiles to a single binary: Graveyard....
[Hyprland] Rosé Pine Galore (lemmy.ml)
Dots: GitHub
Let’s kickstart this community: what are your favorite config options and plugins?
The amount of data required to delete my account (lemmy.ml)
It’s onetrust who does this stupid little forms by the way.
Trash and paper in the same bin (i.imgur.com)