Digitalcarnage - A self hosted server
digitalcarnage.co.uk a self-hosted, homelab server based in the United Kingdom.
- Start Here
- Server Applications
- Domains Hosted
- Backups and howto
- Nextcloud Office
- Multipule instances installed
Start Here
The server software used is the freely available Yunohost server software, which uses Debian Linux. Several applications, some public and some private, are hosted on this server. See this page for the full list of applications currently installed.
The hardware is a Dell small form factor (SFF) 7020 desktop PC with an i7 4770 processor, 16 GB of RAM and a 2TB hard drive. (An old-fashioned spinner!). There is a nightly mail and data backup, as well as a full backup on weekends. The backup is a simple cron job that performs a backup to an external 1 GB solid-state drive. A 1 GB drive is used as a second backup using Restic.
There are several domains hosted on the server that are registered through iWantmyname. See the full list of domains here in this chapter.
For details about installing Yunohost and creating your self-hosted server, you can just jump straight in here to get started.
Digitalcarnage Base System
| OS |
Kernel |
Linux Name |
Yunohost Version |
| Debian 12.14 |
6.1.0-51-amd64 | Bookworm |
12.1.40.1 (stable) |
Digitalcarnage's current server status can be found here. You can see the server's health here at Cronitor.
Server status uses the Uptime Kuma monitoring tool hosted by PikaPod. It’s always best to have your monitoring service not on your own server!
The full setup includes a Raspberry Pi 4, which is used for "local" external access by admins, and selected users only use WireGuard as a VPN to allow “local” access to the Yunohost server. Real VNC Server is also installed on the Pi.
Server Applications
There are several applications for use on this server; the public can use some of them, but for the most part, they are for private use. However, an account can be created on those apps by asking the admin to create one for you. SELF-REGISTRATION IS DISABLED on most apps for obvious reasons!
| Application Name |
Type of Application |
Link to Author |
Link on this server |
Notes |
| Backrest | Restic frontend | Backrest | Backrest | Admins only |
| Bludit |
Flat File CMS |
Bludit |
Bludit |
Del Jones website |
| Bookstack |
Document Wiki |
Bookstack | Bookstack | This server's wiki |
| Collabora Server | Office suite server | Collabora | Collabora | Nextcloud Office |
| InvoiceNinja |
Invoicing | InvoiceNinja |
InvoiceNinja |
PRIVATE |
| Jellyfin |
Media server |
Jellyfin |
Jellyfin |
You must have an account |
| LinkStack |
Contact sharing |
LinkStack |
LinkStack |
Del Jones' contact details |
| Lychee | Photo Gallery App | Lychee | Lychee | DJLD Capture gallery |
| My WebApp |
Non YNH app installer |
My WebApp |
My WebApp |
Used for DJ bio |
| Navidrome | Music and Radio Server | Navidrome | Navidrome | You must have an account |
| Nextcloud |
Collaboration platform | Nextcloud |
Nextcloud |
You must have an account |
| Piwigo |
Photo management | Piwigo |
Piwigo |
You must have an account |
| PhpMyAdmin | MySQL Admin | phpMyAdmin | PhpAdmin | Admin access only |
| Pure Blog | Derek Jones Blog | Pure Blog | Pure Blog | Blogging app |
| Pure Comments | Comments app | Pure Comments | Pure Comments | Admins only |
| Roundcube |
Web-based email |
Roundcube |
Roundcube |
You must have an account |
| Shaarli |
Bookmark manager |
Shaarli |
Shaarli |
You must have an account |
| Vaultwarden |
Password Manager |
Vaultwarden | Vaultwarden |
You must have an account |
| WordPress | Blog/Website publishing |
WordPress | WordPress | Multiple instances installed |
Domains Hosted
There are several domains hosted on this server, all of which are registered through iwantmyname. There is one domain that is registered with DynDNS courtesy of Yunohost. When you install a Yunohost server, you receive one free domain. Click here for more details about installing your free domain once you have installed a Yunohost server.
DOMAINS (and sub-domains) HOSTED ON THIS SERVER
Domains & sub-domains
Yunohost/dynDNS domain
Backups and howto
This Yunohost server is backed up onto two separate USB drives, both of which are on-premises. Several attempts have been made to perform an off-premises backup using both Borg and Restic, but I have found them to be more difficult than they’re worth, so I am doing backups on-site using the built-in Yunohost backup and recovery service and Restic, both to their own USB drives.
Drive 1 (Drive label: YNHRECOVERY)
This backup uses the built-in Yunohost backup and recovery service. A simple cron job is used, detailing the time and what is to be backed up.
FULL BACKUP
- Time: Midnight every Wednesday and Sunday
- What: EVERYTHING. (accept multimedia items like videos, photos and music) This is a full backup. Everything is checked off in the Yunohost backup service. There is a .nobackup file in the folder /home/yunohost.multimedia. This blank file prevents this folder from being backed up.
OTHER ITEMS BACKED UP
- Time: 4 AM EVERY day.
- What: User home folders and emails.
Drive 2 (Drive label: DATARECOVERY)
Restic is a backup service that can be installed from the CLI or through the Yunohost application catalogue. On this server, it has been installed using the CLI.
The backup used to be a cron job, but recently the excellent Restic GUI, Backrest, has been installed and is now in use. Using this app, you can create Restic repos, view and download the contents of a repo, set the times of the backup and set retention.
ALL items in the folder - /home/yunohost.multimedia are backed up to drive 2 DATARECOVERY
- Time: 3 AM every Saturday
- What: /home/yunohost.multimedia
Below I have kept some useful Restic commands, just in case...! Well, you never know...
Where is the Restic app located? Type: which restic will show you where the app is located on your drive.
Where is my Restic repository located? The Restic repository is located at media/datarecovery/restic. This is a symbolic link from the Restic directory on the main drive. The physical drive is a USB spinner labelled “datarecovery”.
What is the latest installed Restic version?
Type: restic version. This will tell you the current version, which right now is 0.19.1 (Note: The Restic version is not the same version that appears in Backrest as shown on the top left corner of the app, which at the time of writing is v1.14.1)
Can I update Restic? Type: restic self-update. If there is an update available, it will be downloaded and installed.
Has the backup happened? Type: restic check -r /media/datarecovery/restic
How do I change the backup schedule? Type: crontab -u root -e Nano will open, and you can edit the time and contents of your backup. This cron job now runs the yunohost backup to drive 1 'YNHRECOVERY' only.
Can I see the snapshots? Type: restic -r /media/datarecovery/restic snapshots
Can I see the contents of the snapshots? Type: restic ls (snapshotID here) --repo /media/datarecovery/restic
Can I mount the snapshot? Type: restic -r /media/datarecovery/restic mount /mnt/restic
NOTE: For most of the above commands, you will require the restic password that you set up when you created your repository, etc.
Nextcloud Office
The Nextcloud instance hosted here, and their users have access to the online Collobara office suite. The Collobara Server is located in the digitalcarnage.co.uk domain as office.digitalcarnage.co.uk.
Multipule instances installed
This server has multiple instances of WordPress installed.
Worpress - Multipule instances
This server contains three instances of the popular but sometimes frustrating app, WordPress.
- Derek Jones Lighting Design - The website for Derek Jones Lighting Design.
- The Vantours travel blog - The Vantours travel blog is a travel website.
- A previous version of the Vantours travel blog. This WordPress site was previously hosted on a QNAP NAS that went horribly wrong, but was recovered and now forms part of the vantours.co.uk website