If you know iptables, just stick with that. In my testing, docker containers seem to ignore ufw rules. Supposedly, iptable rules are respected but I haven’t learned iptables yet so I can’t verify.

I’ll DM you in a bit but real quick I just wanted to say I thought you improved in this episode. Great work

has some basic monitoring on them.

What monitoring software are you using?

I feel like the other measures you talked about (backups, condom of network traffic, etc) I’m doing ok on. Its really just the monitoring where I’m stuck. There’s so many options

I’ll look into it, thank you

I’ve seen a bunch of people recommend Authelia. Do you mind if I ask why you went with it over other software? I only went with authentik because I found a tutorial on it first

1. check

2. check

3. check

4. I saw someone else recommend crowdsec. I’ll look into it, thanks

if you use one of those 5$/month VPSes, with a VPN tunnel to your backend services, that adds one layer of “if it’s compromised, they’re not in your house”.

I’ve heard this mentioned before but I don’t really understand how this works in practice. If the VPS was compromised, couldn’t they use the VPN to then connect to my home?

Caddy only allows private IP ranges

Do you mind telling me more about this? How does that work; a VPN?

will do, thanks

If it were only me using the apps, I’d be using a VPN. Over the years, I’ve used OpenVPN, Wireguard, and now Tailscale. In my experience, they work like 99% of the time. That last 1% though is weird connection issues; usually when switching between WiFi and cellular (or vice versa) but sometimes it’s my server or ISP and I have to turn the VPN off and back on to troubleshoot. During those rare times, my partner will either turn off the VPN and forget to turn it back on or they will forget about the VPN completely and not be able to use their phone. Ideally, I’d like to set something up that doesn’t require any potential troubleshooting on their part so I can avoid hearing “why can’t we just use Google photos?” or “what’s wrong with Google home?” 😓

that’s awesome. thanks!

oh, my mistake. tbh, I don’t know enough about it but I’m interested. Why set up a TLS cert for AI at home? How is that benefiting you and your setup?

I’ve seen some people set up SSL certs for self hosted services and not make them publicly available but I didn’t get around to seeing why they were doing it

Have also set it up so they get banned on Cloudflare’s side, so before another malicious request ever reaches me.

How did you end up setting that up?

Most definitely does not need a public URL for Assist in HA. Not sure where you read that.

You’re probably right. At one point, I had a subscription to homeassistant cloud a few years back to use a google nest speaker at the time. I was just going off that I guess. I’ll do some testing and will probably put it back behind tailscale. thanks for the heads up

It sounds like you need a VPN to your internal services if you’re concerned about security.

I’m more so concerned that I set something up incorrectly and would like to be made aware of it in the event someone else noticed

I feel weird about having those apps on the internet and basically being blind to threats. I mean yeah, I’m not a target on anyone’s list and most IPs visiting the site are bots but I would still like to know what’s going on.

I don’t work in tech for a living, this is just a hobby for me so I have limited time to work on this stuff and do research. It’s very possible I fucked something up and don’t know it. I figured if I at least got an alert that said “hey, your immich server db was dumped and sent to <insert IP>”, I could at least turn it off

If you have access to all devices, why not just use your own self signed certificates to encrypt everything and require the certificate for all connections?

Sounds like you are describing a VPN. I was using that setup before but small stuff like immich album sharing via a link won’t work properly. Also, having to ensure a vpn is on and connected is a little to much to ask of my partner; they would turn it off and forget about it and then ask why their app wasn’t working :/

I’ve been playing around with the voice assistant stuff in homeassistant and it seemingly needs a public url to get all the features. I could be wrong about that though?

I put authentik in front of immich to handle authentication so that I would need need a 2FA code

SerpentOS is it’s own thing. It’s from the same guy who made Solus which was also it’s own thing.

Look up Ikey Doherty if you want to know more.

From my experience with Solus, I don’t have high hopes for SerpentOS but I’d love to be wrong about that

What monitoring solution do you use? I need to set something up for my own projects but haven’t gotten around to it. Any experience with Nagios?

I got an Odroid H4+ and have been extremely happy with it. I’m sure Beelink or GMKtec mini PCs on Amazon would also be fine but I wanted SATA ports for harddrives.

If you end up going with the Odroid, let me know and I’ll send you the links to the few things you’ll need to get going

tldr: keep your smart home seperate from your services and avoid RPI unless you need it specifically for a project

If I were in your shoes, starting from scratch, with the knowledge I have now, I would avoid a raspberry pi and get 2 computers with an Intel N100 (or N97 or N300). Sips electricity and more powerful than a rasberry pi.

A raspberry pi is fine for lights, switches, sensors, a few cameras etc. But if you are at all interested in one day using the voice assistant stuff, the Raspberry pi just isn’t powerful enough.

I suggest 2 computers because once you have home assistant set up, you’ll want to treat it like an appliance. You don’t want to take down your entire smart home because you broke Pixelfed or another service you get into and have to troubleshoot. Speaking from experience, your family won’t appreciate the smart home not working 😓.