I have an automation that is triggered by a door open/close sensor that I have attached to the flushing arm in my toilet with a custom made 3d printed mount for the sensor, which triggers a script on the server which connects to the chromecast speaker in the bathroom and plays the final fantasy 7 battle victory theme whenever someone flushes the toilet. It is perhaps my favorite part of my home.

I use restic on Linux, but duplicati seems like the new hotness and it’s cross platform

snap install docker

“I heard you liek containers, so I put your containers in a container”

Your whole life becomes much simpler when you use docker.

Elevator pitch: Docker containers are preconfigured services which run isolated from the rest of your system and only expose individual directories you map into the container. These directories are the persistence part of the application and survive a restart of the container or the host system. Just backup your scripts and the data directories and you have backed up your entire server.

I have a few scripts as examples. ‘cd “$(dirname “$0”)”’ changes to the directory the script is stored in, and therefore will create and map data directories from that parent directory.

Letsencrypt proxy companion will set up a single listener for web and ssl traffic, setup virtual hosts automatically, and setup SSL, all with automations.

First, you need letsencrypt nginx proxy companion:

#!/bin/bash

cd “$(dirname “$0”)”

docker run --detach
–restart always
–name nginx-proxy
–publish 80:80
–publish 443:443
–volume $(pwd)/certs:/etc/nginx/certs
–volume $(pwd)/vhost:/etc/nginx/vhost.d
–volume $(pwd)/conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d
–volume $(pwd)/html:/usr/share/nginx/html
–volume /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
–volume $(pwd)/my_proxy.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/my_proxy.conf:ro
–volume $(pwd)/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro
–volume $(pwd)/acme:/etc/acme.sh
jwilder/nginx-proxy

docker run --detach
–restart always
–name nginx-proxy-letsencrypt
–volumes-from nginx-proxy
–volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
–env “DEFAULT_EMAIL=YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_GOES_HERE@MYDOMAIN.COM”
jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion

Then for each service, you can start with a docker command as well with a few extra environment variables. Here is one for nextcloud:

docker run -d \

–name nextcloud
–hostname cloud.MYDOMAIN.COM
-v $(pwd)/data:/var/www/html
-v $(pwd)/php.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/zzz-custom.ini
–env “VIRTUAL_HOST=cloud.MYDOMAIN.COM”
–env “LETSENCRYPT_HOST=cloud.MYDOMAIN.COM”
–env “VIRTUAL_PROTO=http”
–env “VIRTUAL_PORT=80”
–env “OVERWRITEHOST=cloud.MYDOMAIN.COM”
–env “OVERWRITEPORT=443”
–env “OVERWRITEPROTOCOL=https”
–restart unless-stopped
nextcloud:25.0.0

And Plex (/dev/dri is quicksync for hardware transcode):

docker run \
--device /dev/dri:/dev/dri \
--restart always \
-d \
--name plex \
--network host \
-e TZ="America/Chicago" \
-e PLEX_CLAIM="claim-somerandomcharactershere" \
-v $(pwd)/config:/config \
-v /my/media/directory/on/host/system:/media \
plexinc/pms-docker

Obsidian:

docker run --rm -d \

–name obsidian
-v $(pwd)/vaults:/vaults
-v $(pwd)/config:/config
–env "VIRTUAL_HOST=obsidian.MYDOMAIN.COM "
–env "LETSENCRYPT_HOST=obsidian.MYDOMAIN.COM "
–env “VIRTUAL_PROTO=http”
–env “VIRTUAL_PORT=8080”
ghcr.io/sytone/obsidian-remote:latest

I’m in the exact same situation, and I’ve been eyeing the device on amazon named: “Mediasonic PROBOX 4 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure – USB 3.0 eSATA Support (HF2-SU3S3)” - I think this is what you are looking for. If I understand correctly, a single eSata cable will be able to drive all 4 drives in this box, so basically as much expandability as you want.

Tasker can help you create tasks which basically run curl commands, and can be set up as buttons on the phone launcher.

So I assume you have a web server somewhere which is configured to host virtual hosts in some regard. You need to set up a virtual host which is configured to respond to requests for mydomain.com and reply with a redirect to aa.mydomain.com. The DNS for the domain root must be an A record, so you will have to set the IP address for your web server on the A record for mydomain.com. How exactly this looks and what sticky points you have in setting this up depends on what your web server setup is like - maybe you have this all working, but if not, if this is just an apache or nginx install, then we need to work through setting up the virtual host, or if this is a docker style nginx letsencrypt manager, then thats another set of configuration issues.

Let me know how far you’ve gotten, or if nowhere at all and you need a recommendation for how to do this, let me know. Let me know a little more about your web server environment that responds to mydomain.com if you have one set up (linux? windows? router with pfsense?)

The way I do this is my router forwards all http and https traffic to my web server running ubuntu, and docker-letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion handles all the virtual hosts. Then if I wanted to create a redirect for a single domain, I would make a docker container that served an nginx server and have it configured with a redirect. But I must acknowledge I’ve been a sysadmin for 10 years and there may be more user friendly turnkey ways to do this, I’m just doing what works for me.

If you have a central server which is performing backups, and the client computer trusts the server, use syncthing to mirror the files on the client to the server. Syncthing also has an android client.

If the client computer doesn’t trust the server, for example you are offering a backup destination for friends or extended family, then use duplicati for incremental encrypted backups.

Both options work on both linux and windows.