Great project. Looks like a lot of time went into it. I may give it a spin later on this evening. You included screenshots. Thank you for that.

it can not do full system backups

Sure, I get that. Not kicking you in the cods, I just understood OP’s request was related to photos. No worries, all good.

Synctrain

With Synctrain you can securely synchronize files with other devices that have Syncthing installed. You can choose to synchronize full folders, or choose specific files. With Synctrain you can also stream audio and video files from other devices. When you synchronize files, all changes, including deleting files, also happen on your other devices.

Am I missing something here? If so, spool me up.

If I understand correctly, iOS apps don’t run continuously in the background which doesn’t match OP’s ‘automatic’ requirement. But, I mean…tap the app, sit the phone down for a few minutes, and viola! Now if you are one to take hundreds of pictures daily, and you haven’t backed up in a while, you might want to disable ‘auto-lock’ temporarily so the screen doesn’t time out, or you can keep up with regular backups. iOS doesn’t expose the photo library as a regular file system, so the app uses the system photo picker API to access new pictures, and you have to point Mobius to the DCIM folder iirc.

So, ok not fully automatic, might involve one or two steps depending on the time span between backups, but it would work. I just backed up 131 photos in less than the time it took me to type this comment.

Searching the App store for synchthing didn’t turn up synchthing but it did turn up a bunch of sync type apps like

• Synctrain
• Resilio sync
• Goodsync

…etc. Might be worthwhile to try out a few.

I thought it was some hairstyle from the 50s coming back.

i built a PC in late 2024, and it’s easily worth twice what i paid for it.

I wrote the vendor and asked him if the decimal was in the right place or was this the model that was beta testing alien technology. Got to be a misprint.

Firefox 149.0.2 (64-bit), Linux Mint, using VPN. I must have settings that are blocking the processing of the domain for whatever reason. I’ve tried multiple domains including well known domains. No joy. Sorry about that.

I still live with my parents and they have no understanding of how vile corporations can be

As a septuagenarian, it’s really not their fault as much as the era they were most likely grew up in. We were taught to trust cops, governments, corporations, etc because these organizations had our best interest at heart. wink - wink

Good call. The only thing I need/want from my ISP is the cable coming into the house. Everything else is off limits.

So, I’ve come to the realization that I should probably set up a VPS, since that should solve basically all of my issues. All I want is something that can forward/proxy gigabit traffic to my server, probably over something like wireguard.

Forgive my addled brain. Are you wanting a VPS to set up a VPN like Wireguard? If so, the VPS won’t have to be anything huge I would imagine. For something like that, I would go shopping at lowendbox.com. The important bits would be the speed rather than size of the VPS. Also, since you mentioned you already have Docker running, Wireguard Easy, would be the easiest to deploy.

For one, he spec’d a Protectli VP2420. You are going to pay for the Protectli brand name. They are great boxes no doubt, but you could most likely find the same spec as the Protectli VP2420, in something cheaper. Two, I think on eBay, things are priced by how much the vendor thinks he can get. If it’s a bid scenario, they probably have a minimum purchase price set. Most often, I just select the ‘Buy It Now’ option and save myself the hassle of getting into an endless bidding war which is usually manipulated by the vendor using multiple eBay accounts or ‘friends’. That is, unless I think I can save several hundred dollars on something.

Perusing eBay, wow, yes prices have gone up. It’s been quite a while since I’ve bought any new devices. However, I think you could get away with a suitable firewall device for around the $300 +/- if you did some shopping.

In that guide, he has a firewall mini PC that costs about $540.

That’s pretty high for what you really need, imho. I purchased my stand alone firewall box from eBay. It’s been quite a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, it ran about $275+/- USD. Specs:

• Mini Fanless (tho I did add a fan)
• Intel® Celeron® CPU J3160 @ 1.60GHz
• Current: 1600 MHz, Max: 1601 MHz
• 4 CPUs : 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)
• AES-NI CPU Crypto: Yes
• QAT Crypto: No
• Upgraded to 32 GB RAM (overkill) and 4 TB SSD (overkill)

I installed pFsense on it, but OpnSense would work too, I’m just not really familiar with OpnSense. I run Suricata (IDS/IPS), ntopNG (traffic analysis), pfBlockerNG (filters), TailScale (as an overlay), and a couple other ancillary packages that just make things easier. I have noticed no bottlenecks, or slow down, even for the box’s age. pFsense, imho, makes VLANS pretty straight forward. I have segregated my network into multiple VLANS so that I can isolate iOT devices, mobile devices, cams, servers, etc. The firewall appliance doesn’t really need to be some big honkin’, spec’d out box to do it’s job.

do both switches need to be managed switches for the VLAN tags to stay intact?

Managed switches are the way to go.

That’s interesting. I didn’t know Podman had a Windows environment desktop app.

Exactly this. Especially if you have to slog through un-skippable ads just to find out the tut is trash.

No worries mate. I’m sure there are YT channels that cover selfhosting, but for me, I get more out of reading most often. Others may be able to help in that regard.

Tho not quite as popular here, there is also https://noted.lol/ and to a lesser extent https://mariushosting.com/docker/

https://dnschecker.org/

I update after I feel all the early adopters have worked out all the bugs for me.

s’ok bro. I’m not on all cylinders today.

LOL