Homelab Setup

This guide is very much a constant work in progress, more for my own sake so I don't forget how I set all of this up. I'm trying to document the various pitfalls I experienced, but I have no doubt that there are quite a few that slipped through. I started out running Pihole on a Raspberry Pi, but then I wanted to use Home Assistant to start automating things around my house, and then I needed to use Traefik to access it when I wasn't home and then suddenly the little Pi couldn't keep up. Currently everything is running on an old laptop with 16gb of RAM running Xubuntu 18.04.

These are all the containers I have running at home. Everything is run behind a Traefik reverse proxy, with SSL certificates.

Currently, I'm running:

• Bazarr - automatically fetch subtitles for your Movies and TV shows
• Beets - to keep your music tagged properly
• Bookstack - a self-hosted wiki. I use it to keep track of all my notes from school and work
• Chronograf - essentially the UI to InfluxDB
• Docker Registry - rather than publishing my apps to Docker Hub, I run a private registry
• Duplicati - easiest backup solution I've found
• Fail2Ban - blocks IP addresses after a certain amount of failed login attempts
• Firefly iii - budgeting software
• GitLab - similar to GitHub
• Gitlab Runner - used for building projects I keep stored in GitLab
• Grafana - Grafana allows you to create data-visualization dashboards from InfluxDB data
• Home Assistant - an amazing home automation program, integrates with nearly everything
• InfluxDB - Influx is the database I use to keep track of Home Assistant data, all the data from my sensors gets recorded here
• Jackett - a helpful wrapper for Radarr and Sonarr
• LazyLibrarian - ebook metadata manager
• Lidarr - the cousin of radarr/sonarr, lidarr is for finding and downloading music
• MariaDB - a drop-in replacement for MySQL, used as the DB for Nextcloud and a few other things
• MariaDB Backup - an automated backup for MariaDB
• MaryTTS - text-to-speech, works with Rhasspy and Home Assistant automations
• MongoDB - a database I no longer use and will probably remove
• Monica - personal CRM
• Mosquitto - an MQTT server
• NetData - network monitoring, server status dashboard, pretty convenient
• Nextcloud - kind of like Google Drive, but better
• Node-RED - simplifies automation flows, a graphical way to build automations
• Ombi - allows Plex users to request content, centralizes media searching
• Organizr - a dashboard for primarily media containers
• Paperless - a document management system - I scan all my paperwork in, and it uses some OCR magic to tag and organize them
• PgAdmin - GUI for manaing PostgreSQL
• PHPMyAdmin - a frontend for MariaDB
• PiHole - network-wide ad-blocking. I have close to a million domains on my blocklist, which works out to be about 55% of queries
• Plex - a media server, with apps for Roku, Android, iPhone, and more
• Portainer - an easy GUI to manage docker containers
• PostgreSQL - GitLab's preferred database
• Radarr - an automated way to find and download movies via torrent or newsgroup
• Redis - caching for NextCloud and PostgreSQL
• Rhasspy - a self-hosted alterative to Alexa, integrates well with Home Assistant, and all of your data stays local
• Sonarr - like Radarr, but for TV shows - add a show to your wanted list and episodes will show up in Plex as they get downloaded
• Traefik - a reverse proxy with https thanks to Let's Encrypt
• Transmission/OpenVPN - a torrent client, we'll be using a VPN with it
• Ubooquity - ebook manager
• Watchtower - automatically updates docker containers
• Unbound - stop using Google DNS or Cloudflare and be your own DNS resolver not working well with PiHole, work in progress
• MQTTBridge - to make Samsung SmartThings post to MQTT topics possibly not needed any more thanks to a Home Assistant update, still working on this

as containers, and my server has a Samba share set up to allow access to media stored elsewhere on my network. I've configured my persistent container data to be shared, allowing me to edit config files from the comfort of my desktop without needing to SSH in, and having Samba set up is useful for Duplicati backups.

As far as devices, I'm using:

• Hue bulbs
• Amazon Echo/Echo Dot
• TP-Link Wifi Smart Plugs
• Samsung SmartThings
  • Hub
  • Contact Sensors
  • Outlets
  • Motion Detectors
• Sylvania ZigBee Outlets
• Yi Home Cams - I use a non-stock firmware, Yi-Hack v4
• Assorted Raspberry Pi models 2 and 3 - some with temperature and light sensors, one as a wall-mounted touchscreen to act as a control panel for Home Assistant
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S - also a wall-mounted control panel, also has a few sensors I use
• Roku
• Chromecast
• Router running DD-WRT upgraded to a Unifi setup
• Nest Thermostat
• MediaSonic NAS box - I don't use the raid features, instead I use mergerfs running on my server to manage my storage situation
• Roomba vacuum

The SmartThings hub only seems to work when the phase of the moon is just right, and if I had to do it over, I would go with a different platform.

I'm in the process of adding a Pi running OctoPrint (for controlling my 3D printer), a few ESP8266's that will post sensor data to an MQTT topic, some repurposed Amazon dash buttons, and a ton of NFC tags I'm trying to find uses for.

Docker Setup

If you don't have Docker installed, follow the instructions here.

Having a specific Docker group is useful so you don't have to sudo everything, so after installation run

sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Then log out and back in. If you can docker run hello-world without needing sudo, you're good to go. If you still get permissions errors try

sudo chown "$USER":"$USER" /home/"$USER"/.docker -R
sudo chmod g+rwx "$HOME/.docker" -R

Next, configure Docker to run on start up:

sudo systemctl enable docker

Now install docker-compose:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.23.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

modifying the version number to whatever is most recent. Next, create a docker network:

docker network create traefik_proxy

Then create a file, .env, which will store all the things you'd like to keep secret.

BACKUPPC_ADMIN_PASS=
BACKUPPC_ADMIN_USER=
BACKUP_DIR=
BOOKSTACK_DATABASE=
BOOKSTACK_DATABASE_PASSWORD=
BOOKSTACK_DATABASE_USERNAME=
CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=
CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL=
DOMAINNAME=
HTTP_PASSWORD=
HTTP_USERNAME=
LOCAL_IP=
LOCAL_NETWORK=
MEDIA_PATH=
MOSQUITTO_PASSWORD=
MOSQUITTO_USERNAME=
MYSQL_DATABASE=
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=
MYSQL_ROOT_USER=
NEXTCLOUD_DATABASE=
NEXTCLOUD_DB_PASSWORD=
NEXTCLOUD_DB_USER=
OPENVPN_PASSWORD=
OPENVPN_PROVIDER=
OPENVPN_USERNAME=
PGID=
PHPIPAM_DATABASE=
PHPIPAM_PASSWORD=
PHPIPAM_USER=
PIHOLE_PASSWORD=
PUID=
TZ=
USERDIR=

PUID and PGID can be found on your system by running id $user.
TZ is your current time zone
USERDIR is the root directory where you could like your persistent container data stored. For me it's something like /home/me/containers
DOMAINNAME is self-explanatory - my-website.com or whatever it is you own.
LOCALIP is the local network address of your server.

The rest of them can wait for now, and there will be quite a few more we'll be adding later on.

Cloudflare was by far the easiest to integrate with Traefik (and use wildcard certificates for subdomains) between the various DNS servers I tried - NameCheap, Google Domains, and Amazon - and this guide assumes that's what you're using.

Create a file, docker-compose.yml in the USERDIR you defined earlier. At the top of the file, with no indentation, add:

version: '3'
services:

I keep my networks defined at the bottom of the file like so:

networks:  
  traefik_proxy:  
    external:  
      name: traefik_proxy
  default:
    driver: bridge

In between the services and the networks we'll define how our containers will be set up. First though, get Cloudlfare set up.

Create .htpasswd

Traefik doesn't have any protection for the API or dashboard we're going to expose, so we need to take care of that first by creating a file called .htpasswd that contains a login name in plaintext, and the hash of a password. In this guide, I placed the file under my ${USERDIR}/shared/ directory. Open a terminal in that folder and type

htpasswd -c .htpasswd username

where username is whatever you want your login name to be. It'll prompt you for a password, and then create the file. When you login, you will use the password, not the hash, so don't lose it. Fill in the HTTP_USERNAME and HTTP_PASSWORD variables in your .env file with the values from .htpasswd.

Configure Cloudflare

I don't have a need for dynamic DNS, so this guide won't cover it, but it is relatively easy to set up with Cloudflare

You'll need your Global API key, so grab that and save it in your .env file.

You will eventually need to forward ports 80 and 443 to the local IP of your server, but that can wait until we have Traefik up an running.

Traefik

Add this as a service to your docker-compose.yml file.

traefik:
    hostname: traefik
    image: traefik:latest
    container_name: traefik
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      # create these toml files first
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/traefik.toml:/etc/traefik/traefik.toml:ro
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/rules.toml:/etc/traefik/rules.toml:ro
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/acme:/etc/traefik/acme
      - ${USERDIR}/shared:/shared
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/log:/var/log
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
      #- "8090:8080"
    networks:
      - default
      - traefik_proxy 
    environment:
      - CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL=${CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL}
      - CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=${CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY}
    command:
      - --web
      - --accessLog.filePath=/var/log/access.log
      - --accessLog.filters.statusCodes=400-499
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.backend=traefik"
      - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:traefik.${DOMAINNAME}" 
      - "traefik.frontend.auth.basic: ${HTTP_USERNAME}:${HTTP_PASSWORD}" 
      - "traefik.port=8080"
      - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"

At the top, we have

  traefik:
    hostname: traefik
    image: traefik:latest
    container_name: traefik
    restart: always

image: traefik:latest tells Docker to pull the image tagged with latest from hub.docker.com. Other hubs are available, as are other image versions - often, latest is a beta, or something not entirely suited for production. Feel free to leave the tag off. The container_name can be whatever you want, but for simplicity (since I am only running one of each), I usually keep it the same name as the service. The restart setting gives you a few different options: unless-stopped, no, always, and on-failure.

Next,

    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      # create these toml files first
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/traefik.toml:/etc/traefik/traefik.toml:ro
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/rules.toml:/etc/traefik/rules.toml:ro
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/acme:/etc/traefik/acme
      - ${USERDIR}/shared:/shared
      - ${USERDIR}/traefik/log:/var/log

tells Docker where the persistent data for the container will live. The best thing about Docker is that you can easily switch between versions of something by simply using a different image. If you're on version 1.1 of something, and 1.2 comes out, just pull the new image and throw away the old container. Your settings won't go anywhere. It helps to think of each container as a tiny little virtual machine, running only what it needs. We can map folders from there to the host machine, allowing us to persist configuration files and things like that. Everything that isn't mapped will disappear when the container is removed.

The line - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro gives the container access to the host machine's UNIX socket, in read-only mode. Essentially this allows the container to exchange data between other processes on the host. Not needed for every container.

The next few lines allow us to keep our config and log files. Docker, by default, will create directories that don't exist already - in fact, it creates everything as a directory, even things that are supposed to be files. You'll need to change directories to you container root, then

mkdir traefik
mkdir traefik/acme

followed by

touch traefik/traefik.toml && touch traefik/rules.toml && touch traefik/acme/acme.json

to create the files.

The next section,

    ports:
    - "80:80"
    - "443:443"
    - "8090:8080"

maps our access ports. HostPort:ContainerPort is the schema, so to access the port the container sees as 8080, I type in localhost:8090 in the host machine. It is commented out up above because I access Traefik though my domain name, not a local IP any more. For most containers, the host ports are arbitrary - except Traefik needs 80 and 443, and PiHole will need 53.

Docker keeps containers fairly isolated from each other by default, so this section

    networks:
      - default
      - traefik_proxy

tells Docker to have this container join the network we created earlier.

This

    environment:
      - CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL=${CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL}
      - CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY=${CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY}

allows us to pass some default options into the container on startup, using variables defined in the .env file.

This

    command:
      - --web
      - --accessLog.filePath=/var/log/access.log
      - --accessLog.filters.statusCodes=400-499

overrides a few defaults, and tells the container to log certain status codes, which we will need when we set up Fail2Ban.

The labels section,

    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.backend=traefik"
      - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:traefik.${DOMAINNAME}"  
      - "traefik.port=8080"
      - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"

is where Traefik works its magic.

First, we enable Traefik for this container.

      - "traefik.enable=true"

Then, tell Traefik the name of the backend container

      - "traefik.backend=traefik"

Now, here is the subdomain you would like to use, so if you go to traefik.your-website.com, Traefik will look for that request and direct you to the appropriate container

      - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:traefik.${DOMAINNAME}"  

If you are not using subdomains, and instead using a path, like your-website.com/traefik, then comment out the line above and uncomment this one.

      #- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:${DOMAINNAME}; PathPrefixStrip: /traefik"

These next lines tell Traefik what internal port to use, what network the container is on, and then the rest are enough security headers to get an A+ rating from SSLLabs

      - "traefik.port=8080"
      - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
      - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"

Now we can edit the traefik.toml file you created earlier.

Traefik Configuration

#debug = true

logLevel = "ERROR" #DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, PANIC
InsecureSkipVerify = true
defaultEntryPoints = ["https", "http"]

# web interface
[api]
  entryPoint = "traefik"
  dashboard = true

# Force HTTPS
[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
    address = ":80"
    [entryPoints.http.redirect]
    entryPoint = "https"
  [entryPoints.traefik]
    address = ":8080"
    [entryPoints.traefik.auth]
      [entryPoints.traefik.auth.basic]
        usersFile = "/shared/.htpasswd"
  [entryPoints.https]
  address = ":443"
  compress = true
    [entryPoints.https.tls]
      minVersion = "VersionTLS12"
      cipherSuites = [
        "TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256",
        "TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256",
        "TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA",
      ]

[file]
  watch = true
  filename = "/etc/traefik/rules.toml"

# Let's encrypt configuration
[acme]
  email = "[email protected]" #any email id will work
  storage="/etc/traefik/acme/acme.json"
  entryPoint = "https"
  acmeLogging=true
  onDemand = false #create certificate when container is created
[acme.dnsChallenge]
  provider = "cloudflare"
  delayBeforeCheck = 0
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "your-domain.com"
[[acme.domains]]
  main = "*.your-domain.com"

# Connection to docker host system (docker.sock)
[docker]
  endpoint = "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
  domain = "your-domain.com"
  watch = true
  # This will hide all docker containers that don't have explicitly  
  # set label to "enable"
  exposedbydefault = false

A lot of this should be pretty self-explanatory. Make sure to change the domains and email address to match yours. Some of these sections are left in from before I used Cloudflare, to allow for an HTTP challenge to issue an SSL certificate. I left them in just in case, as they don't hurt anything.

Notice all of the paths are what your container will see - "/etc/traefik/acme/acme.json" instead of - ${USERDIR}/traefik/acme:/etc/traefik/acme

The acme.json file is where your private keys will live.

Spin up the Container

Go ahead and forward ports 80 and 443 on your router to the IP address of the host machine. In a console,in the same directory as the docker-compose.yml file, type docker-compose up -d. Docker will pull down the image, create the container, and start it up. You should be able to access the web interface from traefik.your-domain.com. If everything is working, docker-compose down will bring it to a stop. The -d flag is optional - it runs containers in 'detached' mode, where they run in the background. I like having a terminal window open for now, to view events as they happen, so I generally start containers without it.

As you add these services to the docker-compose file, call docker-compose up, make sure everything starts up with no errors, and then spin it down.

Fail2Ban

Now that we have a container up and running, a little more security is needed. Fail2Ban will block IP addresses associated with too many failed login attempts. The ban is 10 minutes by default. Fail2Ban checks the Traefik log file for things matching a regex pattern, and applies a ban to the corresponding IP. Fail2Ban operates on three concepts:

• Filters
• Actions
• Jails

Filters are regex patterns that define what to look for in a log file
Actions are what we want done when we find a match Jails are what ties together a log, filter, and action

Start by adding this to docker-compose.yml

fail2ban:
  image: crazymax/fail2ban:latest
  network_mode: "host"
  cap_add:
  - NET_ADMIN
  - NET_RAW
  volumes:
  - ${USERDIR}/traefik/log:/var/log:ro
  - ${USERDIR}/fail2ban/data:/data

We don't need this to be accessible from the internet, so it's a pretty simple configuration. We're giving Fail2Ban access to the Traefik logs, in read-only mode. Next, we need to create a file called traefik.conf in ${USERDIR}/fail2ban/data/jail.d. Make those directories, touch the file, and

[traefik-auth]
enabled = true
logpath = /var/log/access.log
port = http,https
filter = traefik-auth
maxretry = 5
bantime = 1200
findtime = 600

that goes in it.

logpath - what the container thinks your Traefik log path is from - ${USERDIR}/traefik/log:/var/log:ro.
maxretry- how many attempts before a ban results
bantime - how long in seconds the ban will last
findtime - the window of time retries must occur in, also in seconds. In this case 5 failed attempts within 600 seconds results in a ban for 1200 seconds.

Jails can be created in the root Fail2Ban folder all within one jail.local file, or under jail.d in individual .conf files. I use the second approach here. You can whitelist IPs from a jail by adding ignoreip = followed by a space-separated list of IP addresses. Useful if you keep locking yourself out while testing.

If you want to override default Fail2Ban options, create a file called fail2ban.local in the root Fail2Ban folder. I don't find that necessary.

Next, we need to tell Fail2Ban what to look for. Create another file, ${USERDIR}/fail2ban/data/filter.d/traefik-auth.conf and put this

[Definition]
failregex = ^<HOST> \- \S+ \[\] \"[A-Z]+ .+\" 4(01|03|07|22|23|29) .+$
ignoreregex =

in it. This will look out for a variety of statuses in the 400-429 range, and ban them if they meet the criteria. Make sure neither of those files are indented - Fail2Ban will complain.

We don't need to worry about adding any actions right now, so I won't cover them. Fail2Ban can also be configured to email you when bans happen, but I don't really find it necessary to turn that on.

Portainer

Portainer a great web GUI to monitor and manage your Docker setup. You can start and stop containers, keep track of images, networks, volumes - all sorts of stuff. I find it useful also for viewing individual logs, and occasionally opening a terminal directly into a container. Add this into the docker-compose file:

portainer:
  container_name: portainer
  restart: always  
  image: portainer/portainer:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/portainer:/data
    - ${USERDIR}/shared:/shared
    - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
  ports:
    - "9000:9000"
  environment:
    - TZ=${TZ}
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=true"
    - "traefik.port=9000"
    - "traefik.backend=portainer"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:portainer.${DOMAINNAME}"
    - "traefik.protocol=https"
    - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customFrameOptionsValue=SAMEORIGIN"

Most of this should look a little familiar - we're creating the container with the latest image, exposing the socket so it can see all the other containers, giving it a port, setting the timezone, and finally creating a route for Traefik.

Once Portainer is up, it's helpful to go through your existing containers and check the log files. Every time I add something new to my stack, there's a process of checking logs until I know the configuration is right.

Watchtower

Watchtower is great to run if you like making sure all your images are updated automatically. It will checks for updates, spin down the container, cleanup the old image, and spin up a container using the latest version. As long as your persistent data paths are set properly, you won't lose anything important when this happens, with one caveat: take care of MariaDB updates manually. You can exempt a container from Watchtower's update process by applying the label com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable="false" to it.

watchtower:
  container_name: watchtower
  hostname: watchtower
  restart: always
  image: v2tec/watchtower
  volumes:
    - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
  command: --schedule "0 0 4 * * *" --cleanup

InfluxDB

InfluxDB is a database meant for time-series data - things like readings from a sensor, or a lot of readings from a lot of sensors. Home Assistant tracks a ton of data, some of which I might actually find a use for one day. InfluxDB makes a great backend to it.

influxdb:
  container_name: influxdb
  restart: always
  image: influxdb:latest  
  volumes:
    # files cannot be created by docker-compose, it'll make it as a directory instead. Make sure to touch this file first.
    - ${USERDIR}/influxdb/influxdb.conf:/etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf
    - ${USERDIR}/influxdb/db:/var/lib/influxdb
  ports:
    - "8086:8086"
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
    - default
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=false"

Before starting this container, make sure to create the influxdb/influxdb.conf file - even if it's empty, it needs to be there. Influx can populate it when it starts up.

Grafana

Grafana is a nice companion to InfluxDB. It allows you to create charts, graphs, and other visualizations of the data stored in InfluxDB. I use it to keep track of the temperature in various places in my house, monitor the CPU, RAM, and disk usage on my server, graph my internet speed, all sorts of things. If I want to create a chart showing how often my front door has been opened and for how long over the last year, Grafana can do it.

grafana:
  container_name: grafana
  restart: always
  image: grafana/grafana:latest
  depends_on:
    - "influxdb"
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
  user: "472"
  # to enable persistent storage, you might need to modify user permissions by creating this container in
  # interactive mode and adjusting the permissions from a shell first
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/grafana:/var/lib/grafana

Two new sections here: depends_on and user we haven't seen before. The depends_on section just means that whatever container is listed in there needs to start the process of spinning up first, before this one does. It doesn't guarantee it will actually be done starting before this one starts though.

The user

Chronograf

Chronograf is an interface for InfluxDB. It does have some data visualization options, but I prefer Grafana for that. Later on we'll use Chronograf to create a user and database for Home Assistant. Setup is pretty straightforward.

chronograf:
  container_name: chronograf
  restart: always
  image: chronograf:latest
  depends_on:
    - "influxdb"
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/chronograf:/var/lib/chronograf
  ports:
    - "8888:8888"
  environment:
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - PUID=${PUID}

MariaDB

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL. I use it for NextCloud, rather than the default SQLite. We'll need to finish setting this up once we have PHPMyAdmin installed.

mariadb:
  image: mariadb:latest
  container_name: "mariadb"
  hostname: mariadb
  command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --binlog-format=ROW
  restart: always
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/mariadb/config:/config
    - ${USERDIR}/mariadb/mysql:/var/lib/mysql
  ports:
    - "3306:3306/tcp"
  environment:
    - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
    #- MYSQL_USER=${MYSQL_USER}
    - MYSQL_DATABASE=${MYSQL_DATABASE}
    #- MYSQL_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  labels:
    - traefik.enable=false
    - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable="false"

Back in the .env file, fill out the MYSQL-related variables. I named my database nextcloud, set two different password for the root and user, and gave it a username.

PHPMyAdmin

PHPMyAdmin is essentially a GUI for interacting with MySQL and MariaDB databases. Once it's up and running, you'll need to login and create a new database, named whatever you called it in the .env file.

phpmyadmin:
hostname: phpmyadmin
container_name: phpmyadmin
image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:latest
restart: always
links:
  - mariadb:db
ports:
  - 9999:80
environment:
  - PMA_HOST=mariadb
  - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
labels:
  - traefik.enable=false

MongoDB

Mongo is another database, a NoSQL document store. It's very flexible - you're not locked into a schema. I'm phasing it out of my system though, as between InfluxDB and MariaDB, all of my use cases are covered. Consider this part optional, if you want to play with it.

mongo:
  container_name: mongo
  restart: always
  image: mongo:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/mongo:/data/db
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  ports:
    - "27017:27017"

Nextcloud

Self-hosted file storage, calendar, collaboration tools, and a lot more. Think Google Drive, except the data belongs to you. There native apps for all major platforms to use for syncing. You can create users, groups, assign permissions, collaborate, extend it in multiple ways - it's a very useful piece of software.

nextcloud:
  container_name: nextcloud
  restart: always
  image: linuxserver/nextcloud:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/nextcloud/config:/config
    # path to where nextcloud will store files
    - ${USERDIR}/nextcloud/data:/data
    - ${USERDIR}/shared:/shared
  # ports:
  #   - "9443:443"
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - MYSQL_DATABASE=${MYSQL_DATABASE}
    - MYSQL_USER=${MYSQL_USER}
    - MYSQL_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
  links:
    - mariadb
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=true"
    - "traefik.backend=nextcloud"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:nextcloud.${DOMAINNAME}"
    - "traefik.port=443"
    - "traefik.protocol=https"
    - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"
    - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable="false"

Mosquitto

Mosquitto is an MQTT broker. MQTT is a protocal that allows devices to subscribe to topics, and publish or read messages on them. Think of the broker as a simple API. A device subscribes to it by logging in, and then it is allowed to read or write to any path you set up.

For example, various sensors I have around the house use it to communicate with Home Assistant. I have a Raspberry Pi with a temperature/humidity sensor set up in my bedroom. Once a minute, it will send a message to mqtt:1883/pi-one/temperature and then another one to mqtt:1883/pi-one/humidity - and the messages can be anything. The battery sensor for a tablet I have posts {"value":100,"unit":"%","charging":true,"acPlugged":true,"usbPlugged":false} to the tablet/battery topic. Home Assistant can take that data, parse it, and write it to InfluxDB. Depending on what data you're collecting, this can be useful for triggering automations, i.e., "if the value of X is true, do Y, else do Z."

MQTT.fx is very useful tool to use when diagnosing MQTT issues - you can subscribe to any topic, even # for all (or `topic-name/#' for all subtopics of topic-name) of them and see what is published where.

mosquitto:
  container_name: mosquitto
  restart: always
  image: eclipse-mosquitto:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/mosquitto/config/:/mosquitto/config/
    - ${USERDIR}/mosquitto/log:/mosquitto/log
    - ${USERDIR}/mosquitto/data:/mosquitto/data
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  environment:
    - MOSQUITTO_USERNAME=${MOSQUITTO_USERNAME}
    - MOSQUITTO_PASSWORD=${MOSQUITTO_PASSWORD}
  ports:
    - 1883
    - 9001
  #   - 8883:8883
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
    #- default      
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=true"
    - "traefik.port=9001"
    - "traefik.backend=mosquitto"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:mosquitto.${DOMAINNAME}"
    - "traefik.protocol=https"
    - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customFrameOptionsValue=SAMEORIGIN"

I have not yet configured this to be accesible via Traefik, I'm still tweaking that setup. I use OwnTracks to base some automations on where I am, and it posts messages to CloudMQTT, which communicates with Mosquitto. Before I had the reverse proxy setup, none of my home services were available outside my home network, so I needed a middleman for certain things like that. Now that Traefik is running, I don't see a reason to keep using CloudMQTT. I'll update this once I get it setup properly.

Home Assistant

Home Assistant is a pretty incredible project that allows you to automate your home. It has integrations for every platform I can think of in the home automation space. I am still very much a beginner with it, but in the hass-config folder of this repository, I'll be posting my configuration files and some simple walkthroughs to get you up and running with it.

homeassistant:
  container_name: home-assistant
  restart: always
  image: homeassistant/home-assistant:latest
  depends_on:
    - "influxdb"
    - "traefik"
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/hass-config:/config
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    - ${USERDIR}/hass_media:/media
  #network_mode: host
  privileged: true
  # ports:
  #   - 8123:8123
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
    - default
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=true"
    - "traefik.backend=homeassistant"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:ha.${DOMAINNAME}"
    - "traefik.port=8123"
    # - "traefik.protocol=https"
    - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customFrameOptionsValue=SAMEORIGIN"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentSecurityPolicy=upgrade-insecure-requests"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customResponseHeaders=X-Robots-Tag:noindex,nofollow,nosnippet,noarchive,notranslate,noimageindex"

Node-RED

Node-RED allows you to setup complicated configurations of devices. It integrates nicely with MQTT. People have done some pretty amazing stuff with it, and it can get pretty complex. It's another thing I'm still playing around with, so consider this optional, nothing in my current setup depends on it.

nodered:
  container_name: node-red
  restart: always
  image: nodered/node-red-docker:latest
  depends_on:
    - "homeassistant"
  user: root
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/node-red-1/user:/data
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  ports:
    - "1880:1880"

PiHole

PiHole is a network-wide ad-blocker. I've got close to a million domains on my blocklist. I've almost forgotten what the internet is like with ads. My phone is configured with Tasker to automatically connect to a VPN when I leave my home WiFi network, so the ad-blocking persists on my phone even when I'm away.

PiHole requires a little extra configuration - it doesn't always play nice with Docker, and you'll need to adjust some settings on your router. You need to set your DNS server IP to the IP address of the machine hosting PiHole. PiHole can also function as a DHCP server for you local network, but my router is handling that for now.

pihole:
  image: pihole/pihole:latest
  container_name: pihole
  ports:
    - "${LOCAL_IP}:53:53/tcp"
    - "${LOCAL_IP}:53:53/udp"
    # - "${LOCAL_IP}:80:80/tcp"
    - "${LOCAL_IP}:7443:443/tcp"
    - "${LOCAL_IP}:7080:80/tcp"
  cap_add:
    - NET_ADMIN
  depends_on:
    - traefik
  environment:
    ServerIP: ${LOCAL_IP}
    WEBPASSWORD: ${PIHOLE_PASSWORD}
    VIRTUAL_PORT: 80
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/pihole:/etc/pihole
    # make sure to manually create this log file before first run
    - ${USERDIR}/pihole/log/pihole.log:/var/log/pihole.log
    - /etc/dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d
  # - ${USERDIR}/pihole/misc/dnsmasq.leases:/var/lib/misc/dnsmasq.leases
  restart: always
  dns:
    - 127.0.0.1
    - 1.1.1.1

Some devices (I'm looking at you, Chromecast) will not respect your DNS resolver choice and will use a built-in one (8.8.8.8, Google's upstream resolver) instead. You will need to use a firewall to direct all traffic through the PiHole first, and then check it with Resolve-DnsName -name aaxads.com -Server 8.8.8.8 in Powershell or dig @8.8.8.8 aaxads.com in Linux.

In DD-WRT, I have

iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -i br0 -p udp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to <IP of PiHole host machine>:53
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -i br0 -p udp -s <IP of PiHole host machine> --dport 53 -j ACCEPT

When you get it up and running, this is a good place to start looking for information on blocklists.

You may also need to edit your /etc/resolv.conf file on your host machine and make sure the IP address in there points to the right place. Also, once PiHole is set up properly, you don't have access to DNS name resolution if it goes down. If you need spin down PiHole and then attempt to access a website by name (or do a docker-compose up), it probably won't work. Editing the resolv.conf file and adding an entry pointing to Google or Cloudflare's resolvers will give you DNS resolution again. Once PiHole is back up, put the IP address back to what it should be.

Duplicati

Duplicati is a very easy to use file backup system. Since I've got a few Samba shares scattered throughout my home network, I keep backups of my essential stuff on all of them.

duplicati:
image: duplicati/duplicati
container_name: duplicati
restart: always
network_mode: "bridge"
ports:
    - '8200:8200'
environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/duplicati/config:/config
    - ${USERDIR}/duplicati/data:/data/Duplicati
    - ${BACKUP_DIR}/duplicatiBackups:/backups
    - ${USERDIR}:/source
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro

The BACKUP_DIR folder is not on my server, but on my desktop. I'll cover that in the Samba section below.

Organizr

Organizr is a dashboard for media containers.

organizr:
  container_name: organizr
  restart: always
  image: lsiocommunity/organizr:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/organizr:/config
    - ${USERDIR}/shared:/shared
  #ports:
  #  - "XXXX:80"
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=true"
    - "traefik.backend=organizr"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:organizr.${DOMAINNAME}"  
    #- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:${DOMAINNAME}; PathPrefixStrip: /organizr"
    - "traefik.port=80"
    - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
    #- "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customFrameOptionsValue=SAMEORIGIN"

Bookstack

After installion, the default login is [email protected] and the password is password.

bookstack:
  container_name: bookstack
  image: solidnerd/bookstack
  depends_on:
  - mariadb
  environment:
  - DB_HOST=mariadb:${MARIA_DB_PORT}
  - DB_DATABASE=${BOOKSTACK_DATABASE}
  - DB_USERNAME=${BOOKSTACK_DATABASE_USERNAME}
  - DB_PASSWORD=${BOOKSTACK_DATABASE_PASSWORD}
  volumes:
  - ${USERDIR}/bookstack/uploads:/var/www/bookstack/public/uploads
  - ${USERDIR}/bookstack/storage:/var/www/bookstack/public/storage
  ports:
  - "8581:80"

Samba

Samba is a network file-sharing system. It has its own section because it requires a few steps to get running properly. This is one thing that doesn't live in a Docker container.

MQTT Bridge

mqttbridge:
  image: stjohnjohnson/smartthings-mqtt-bridge:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/mqtt-bridge:/config
  ports:
    - 8080:8080
  links:
    - mqtt
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
    - default
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=false"

Unbound

When you type an address into a web browser or click a link on a page (unless you've changed your settings to use Quad9, Google, Cloudflare, etc), you're telling your ISP where you're trying to go. You're also giving them the opportunity to inject ads and track your behavior online. Switching to a different DNS proivder means you're now placing your trust in them instead of your ISP. Why not cut out the middle-server and be your own DNS resolver? Unbound allows you to do that.

Let's start of with creating a separate docker network:

docker network create --driver=bridge --subnet=192.168.1.0/24 pihole_unbound

And append

`pihole_unbound:
external: true`

To your Networks section of the compose file.

MariaDB Backup

Now that you've got Bookstack and Nextcloud up and running, you should make sure to backup that data. This container automates that process.

mariadb-backup:
  container_name: mariadb-backup
  image: tiredofit/mariadb-backup
  links:
    - mariadb
  volumes:
    - ${BACKUP_DIR}/mariadbBackups:/backups
  environment:
    - DB_SERVER=mariadb
    - DB_NAME=${MYSQL_DATABASE}
    - DB_USER=${MYSQL_ROOT_USER}
    - DB_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
    - DB_DUMP_FREQ=1440
    - DB_DUMP_BEGIN=+0002
    - DB_CLEANUP_TIME=8640
    - MD5=TRUE
    - COMPRESSION=XZ
    - SPLIT_DB=FALSE
  restart: always

Netdata

netdata:
  image: titpetric/netdata
  container_name: netdata
  restart: always
  networks:
      - traefik_proxy
  ports:
      - 19999:19999
  volumes:
      - ${USERDIR}/netdata/proc:/host/proc:ro
      - ${USERDIR}/netdata/sys:/host/sys:ro
      - ${USERDIR}/netdata/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro

Plex

plex:
  container_name: plex
  image: linuxserver/plex:latest
  restart: unless-stopped
  #network_mode: host
  ports:
    - "32400:32400/tcp"
    - "3005:3005/tcp"
    - "8324:8324/tcp"
    - "32469:32469/tcp"
    - "1900:1900/udp"
    - "32410:32410/udp"
    - "32412:32412/udp"
    - "32413:32413/udp"
    - "32414:32414/udp"
  environment:
    - TZ=${TZ}
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - VERSION=docker
    - PLEX_CLAIM={PLEX_CLAIM}
    - ADVERTISE_IP=http://{LOCAL_IP}:32400/,https://plex.${DOMAINNAME}:443
    - HOSTNAME="plex"
    - ALLOWED_NETWORKS={LOCAL_NETWORK}/255.255.255.0
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/plex:/config
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/temp:/transcode
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Movies:/data/movies
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/TV:/data/tvshows
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Music:/data/music
  networks:
    - traefik_proxy
    - default
  labels:
    - "traefik.enable=true"
    - "traefik.backend=plex"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:plex.${DOMAINNAME}"
    #- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:${DOMAINNAME}; PathPrefixStrip: /plex"
    - "traefik.port=32400"
    - "traefik.protocol=https"
    - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_proxy"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLRedirect=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSSeconds=315360000"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.browserXSSFilter=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentTypeNosniff=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.forceSTSHeader=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.SSLHost=${DOMAINNAME}.com"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSIncludeSubdomains=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.STSPreload=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.frameDeny=true"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customFrameOptionsValue=SAMEORIGIN"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.contentSecurityPolicy=upgrade-insecure-requests"
    - "traefik.frontend.headers.customResponseHeaders=X-Robots-Tag:noindex,nofollow,nosnippet,noarchive,notranslate,noimageindex"

Transmission

transmission-openvpn:
  image: haugene/transmission-openvpn:latest
  container_name: transmission-openvpn
  cap_add:
    - NET_ADMIN
  devices:
    - /dev/net/tun
  restart: always
  depends_on:
    - "pihole"
  ports:
    - "9091:9091/tcp"
    - "9090:9090/tcp"
    - "9091:9091/udp"
    - "9090:9090/udp"
  volumes:
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    - ${USERDIR}/transmission:/data
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/data/completed
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/data/incomplete
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/torrent-files:/data/watch
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - OPENVPN_PROVIDER=${OPENVPN_PROVIDER}
    - OPENVPN_USERNAME=${OPENVPN_USERNAME}
    - OPENVPN_PASSWORD=${OPENVPN_PASSWORD}
    - OPENVPN_OPTS=--inactive 3600 --ping 10 --ping-exit 60
    - LOCAL_NETWORK=${LOCAL_NETWORK}/24
    - TRANSMISSION_RATIO_LIMIT=0.01
    - TRANSMISSION_RATIO_LIMIT_ENABLED=true
    - TRANSMISSION_SPEED_LIMIT_UP=1
    - TRANSMISSION_SPEED_LIMIT_UP_ENABLED=false
    - TRANSMISSION_PEER_PORT=${TRANSMISSION_PEER_PORT}
  sysctls:
    - net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=0

Jackett

jackett:
  image: linuxserver/jackett:latest
  container_name: jackett
  depends_on:
    - "transmission-openvpn" 
  ports:
    - "9117:9117"
  volumes:
      - /${USERDIR}/jackett/config:/config
      - ${EMBY_MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/downloads
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  # labels:
  #     - traefik.backend=jackett
  #     - traefik.frontend.rule=Host:jackett.${DOMAIN}
  #     - traefik.docker.network=traefik
  #     - traefik.port=9117
  networks:
      - traefik_proxy
  # expose:
  #     - 9117
  restart: always

Radarr

radarr:
  image: linuxserver/radarr:latest
  container_name: radarr
  depends_on:
    - "transmission-openvpn" 
  ports:
    - "7878:7878"
  volumes:
      - ${USERDIR}/radarr/config:/config
      - ${EMBY_MEDIA_PATH}/Movies:/movies
      - ${EMBY_MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/downloads
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  # labels:
  #     - traefik.backend=radarr
  #     - traefik.frontend.rule=Host:radarr.${DOMAIN}
  #     - traefik.docker.network=traefik
  #     - traefik.port=7878
  networks:
      - traefik_proxy
  # expose:
  #     - 7878
  restart: always

Sonarr

sonarr:
  image: linuxserver/sonarr
  container_name: sonarr
  restart: always
  networks:
      - traefik_proxy
  ports:
      - 8989:8989
  depends_on:
    - "transmission-openvpn"
  volumes:
      - ${USERDIR}/sonarr/config:/config
      - ${EMBY_MEDIA_PATH/Downloads:/downloads
      - ${EMBY_MEDIA_PATH}/TV:/tv
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}

Lidarr

lidarr:
  image: linuxserver/lidarr:latest
  container_name: lidarr
  depends_on:
    - "transmission-openvpn"
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/lidarr/config:/config
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Music:/music
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/downloads
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  ports:
    - "8686:8686"
  restart: always

Bazarr

bazarr:
  image: linuxserver/bazarr:latest
  container_name: bazarr
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}bazarr/config:/config
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Movies:/movies
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/TV:/tv
  ports:
    - "6767:6767"
  restart: unless-stopped

Beets

beets:
  image: linuxserver/beets:latest
  container_name: beets
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/beets/config:/config
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Music:/music
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/downloads
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  ports:
    - "8337:8337"
  restart: always

Ubooquity

ubooquity:
  image: linuxserver/ubooquity:latest
  container_name: ubooquity
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/ubooquity/config:/config
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Books:/books
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Comics:/comics
    # - ${MEDIA_PATH}/books:/files
  ports:
    - "2202:2202"
    - "2203:2203"
  restart: unless-stopped

LazyLibrarian

lazylibrarian:
  image: linuxserver/lazylibrarian:latest
  container_name: lazylibrarian
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/lazyLibrarian:/config
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/Downloads:/downloads
    - ${MEDIA_PATH}/books:/books
  ports:
    - "5299:5299"
  restart: unless-stopped

Ombi

ombi:
  container_name: ombi
  restart: always
  image: linuxserver/ombi:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/ombi:/config
  ports:
    - "3579:3579"
  environment:
    - PUID=${PUID}
    - PGID=${PGID}
    - TZ=${TZ}

Rhasspy

Rhasspy allows us to set up something akin to an Amazon Echo or Google Home, except the data never leaves your home network and it integrates with Home Assistant easily. It has wakeword detection (instead of saying "OK, Google" or "Alexa"), with quite a few different wakeword engines available. Some work better than others. I use Snowboy - it allows custom wakewords and it works pretty well. After wakeword detection, we have speech-to-text - this is where the command you issue ("turn off the office lights") gets processed into text, then text-to-speech - so I can ask what the time is, or the temperature, or the forecast, etc., and have it spoken to me. Rhasspy has a few different text-to-speech options, and I chose to use MaryTTS running in a different container. It's a little less robotic sounding.

Rhasspy can be used in a client/server situation - I have a Raspberry Pi with a Respeaker microphone array hat running Rhasspy, and that communicates back to my server which handles processing the commands. Right now I think you can have a maximum of one client I believe, but that should be changing soon. The documentation available here can walk you through the set up for most of it, but there are a few gotchas I encountered.

Pull the container:

rhasspy:
  container_name: rhasspy
  image: synesthesiam/rhasspy-server:latest
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/rhasspy/profiles:/profiles
  devices:
    - /dev/snd:/dev/snd
  ports:
    - "12101:12101"
  command: --profile en --user-profiles /profiles

Once it's up (and you've followed the official docs for setting up the client/server situation), to get Home Assistant to recognize commands, here's an example of part of my set up:

Rhasspy server slots:

{
  "lights": [
      "kitchen sink light",
      "dining room lights",
      "office lights",
      "living room lights",
      "bedroom lights",
      "kitchen lights"
  ]
}

Rhasspy server sentences:

[GetTime]
what time is it
tell me the time

[GetTemperature]
whats the temperature
how (hot | cold) is it

[ChangeLightState]
state = (on | off) {light_state}
light_name = (office lights):switch.office_lights
turn [the] ($lights) {light_name} <state>

Home Assistant configuration.yaml:

tts:
  - platform: marytts
    host: !secret mary_tts_url
    port: 59125
    codec: 'wav'
    voice: 'cmu-slt-hsmm'
    language: 'en-US'

rest_command:
  marytts:
    url: !secret rhasppy_client_url
    method: POST
    headers:
      content_type: text/plain
    payload: '{{ message }}'

Home Assistant scripts.yaml:

rhasspy_light_state:
  alias: change_light_state
  fields:
    light_name:
      description: "Light Entity"
      example: light.bulb_1
    light_state:
      description: "State to change the light to"
      example: on
  sequence:
    - service_template: >
        {% set this_state = light_state | string %}
        {% if this_state == 'on' %}
          homeassistant.turn_on
        {%else %}
          homeassistant.turn_off
        {% endif %}
      data_template:
        entity_id: '{{ light_name | replace(" ", "_") }}'

Home Assistant automations.yaml:

- alias: Toggle lights by voice
  trigger:
    - event_data: {}
      event_type: rhasspy_ChangeLightState
      platform: event
  condition: []
  action:
    - alias: ''
      data_template:
        light_name: "group.{{ trigger.event.data.light_name }}"
        light_state: "{{ trigger.event.data.light_state }}"
      service: script.rhasspy_light_state   

- alias: Say the time
  trigger:
    platform: event
    event_type: rhasspy_GetTime
  action:
    service: rest_command.marytts
    data_template:
      message: "It is {{ now().strftime('%I') | int }} {{ now().strftime('%M %p') }}."

- alias: Say the temperature
  trigger:
    platform: event
    event_type: rhasspy_GetTemperature
  action:
    service: rest_command.marytts
    data_template:
      message: "It is {{ states('sensor.dark_sky_temperature') }} degrees."

MaryTTS

MaryTTS is a text-to-speech engine, so we can have Home Assistant speak responses back to us.

marytts:
  container_name: marytts
  image: synesthesiam/marytts:5.2
  restart: unless-stopped
  ports:
    - "59125:59125"

Monica

monicahq:
  container_name: monica
  image: monicahq/monicahq
  depends_on:
    - mariadb
  ports:
    - "9521:80"
  volumes:
    - ${USERDIR}/monica:/var/www/monica/storage
  restart: always
  environment:
    - DB_CONNECTION=mysql
    - DB_HOST=mariadb
    - DB_PORT=${MARIA_DB_PORT}
    - DB_DATABASE=${MONICA_DATABASE}
    - DB_USERNAME=${MONICA_DATABASE_USER}
    - DB_PASSWORD=${MONICA_DB_PASSWORD}
    - APP_KEY=${MONICA_APP_KEY}
    - APP_LOG_LEVEL=debug
    - APP_ENV=local

Firefly iii

firefly_iii: 
  container_name: firefly_iii
  image: jc5x/firefly-iii:latest
  depends_on:
    - mariadb
  links:
    - mariadb
  networks: 
    - default
  ports: 
    - "8675:80"
  volumes: 
    - ${USERDIR}/fireflyiii/storage/export:/var/www/firefly-iii/storage/export
    - ${USERDIR}/fireflyiii/storage/upload:/var/www/firefly-iii/storage/upload
    - ${USERDIR}/fireflyiii/storage:/var/www/firefly-iii/storage/
  environment:
    - TZ=${TZ}
    - DB_CONNECTION=mysql
    - DB_HOST=mariadb
    - DB_PORT=${MARIA_DB_PORT}
    - DB_DATABASE=${FIREFLY_DATABASE}
    - DB_USERNAME=${FIREFLY_USER}
    - DB_PASSWORD=${FIREFLY_DB_PASSWORD}
    - APP_KEY=${FIREFLY_APP_KEY}
    - APP_LOG_LEVEL=debug
    - APP_ENV=local

Next Steps

I'm always playing around, adjusting things, adding new containers I think I might use, tweaking the ones I have. Some things on my list:

• Set up a few more machines to act as hosts, and convert all of this to a Docker Swarm or Kubernetes cluster
• Cloud backup in Duplicati to Azure or AWS
• Setup a CI/CD pipeline for my personal website from a self-hosted GitLab instance to AWS or Azure
• Migrate OpenVPN to a container
• Container health checks