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What is a service you host you never knew you needed?
(k.fe.derate.me)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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Paperless - Pay slips, Bank statements, MOT records, Insurance policies, User manuals, restaurant menus. All filed and searchable. Letters I get are photographed, uploaded and immediately disposed of, zero stress.
Something a lot of people miss with paperless is its automatic import options.
There is a folder called 'consume' that you can place files in and paperless will import them just like you'd uploaded them manually. Combined with tools like FolderSync or SyncThing you can have files on all sorts of devices automatically upload to paperless.
Sitting down to use the flatbed scanner is a hassle, so I use GoogleLens to take multiple photos of a document, save them as a single pdf, then FolderSync moves that to my server automatically where paperless imports it.
Along side this; Paperless has an smtp mail importer. You can add your email accounts and paperless will automatically import new emails based on whatever criteria you specify. Imported mail will then be flagged, moved, or outright deleted from the mail server.
You're right, I don't take advantage of any of these features. I should.
Partly because of lack of know how on my part. So I don't trust myself to successfully have it log into my email, get what it needs and leave everything else untouched. My main uploads, payslips and bank statements, are behind their own apps too.
Partly because paperless is isolated in it's own little container (in my setup at least) so access to the consume folder is behind another step, I could syncthing it... I just haven't.
And partly because I use the android app as my main interaction with Paperless. The app uses my phone as a good-enough scanner.
We taught each other something new: I didn't know there was a mobile app. Imma go check that out :)
For this, Bind-mounts are your friend:
Files get dropped in /srv/paperless-ngx/consume on the host and import to the container.
As far as setting up mail goes: it's pretty straightforward. Add an account, then create a rule for each type of mail you want it to manage. Specify filters like who it's from, what's in the subject/body, how old is it, etc.
And until you are comfortable, just leave the action set to mark as read. Worst case, if you didn't set your filters right; it'll unnecessarily mark mail as read. No big deal.
I just have mine move processed mail to a folder on the mail server called 'Paperless-Imported', which I manually clean out now and again.
Thank you. Setting it up seems less daunting now. I'm going to try for setting up emails.
The android app is fairly functionally complete, and I only interact with my phone or tablet. In fact, for desktop tasks I have a Linux Mint VM I just console into from my tablet, a sort of sudo laptop.
In anycase, for manual uploading files my phone is probably easier. But, your advice is good for everybody that's not me, sensible people.
Your comment about bindmounts might have solved my biggest problem with Paperless, in that it doesn't write to my 3-2-1 back up folder directly so I end up 3-2-1ing the whole machine. Which is fine, but I keep multiple snap shots of my LXCs so it's multiples of multiples.
/zpool/important/paperless:/use/src/paperless/originalSpecific file paths aside, would [path to zpool]:[path to originals] have paperless saving the originals to my zpool so I would only have 3 copies instead of 3*#of snapshots?
Indeed it would. That's exactly how I have mine setup; with borg backing up the originals folder from the host.
If you are making this change to an existing installation; remember to copy the contents of the current originals folder out of the container and into the host folder you intended to bind mount, before you change the mount.
So, copy the contents of container:'/use/src/paperless/original' place them in host:'/use/src/paperless/original', THEN add your bind mount to the container config.
Otherwise you may lose the contents of the folder within the container and have to retrieve it from a backup.
Is the document exporter the only backup system? I'd want to connect it to a cloud backup somehow if I'm going to trust it with all my important stuff.
Couldn't tell you, sorry. I have Paperless in it's own LXC (helper-script) which I 3-2-1 as a machine. Many duplicates, but they're only PDFs.
I can tell you I spent a small amount of time trying (and failing) to get paperless to save the files onto my NAS. I can also tell you, if I stretched up really tall I can just about scrape rock bottom when it comes to skills in this stuff.
Could you elaborate a little on the LXC, please?
I was thinking about looking into Paperless after seeing it gleefully mentioned so much in this post, but lack of easy/accessible backups seems strange for something you wanna use to eventually destroy your only other copy of it (the physical letter).
Sure,
I used TTecks helper script to install paperless as an LXC. I then use proxmox's inbuilt back up schedule to grab snapshots of that LXC, and others, I usually keep 1 "nightly"and 1 "monthly" right now.
Syncthing, another LXC thank you tteck, has access to the back up folder. It is synced with a RPi 4 pulling double duty as my redundant DNS all installed using Docker. The pi 4 install is synced with my proxmox host and an off-site box, through tailscale at my parent's house.
There are better systems, like Borg and what not, but this one is mine.
I have an "important" share on a my NAS that is also synced 3-2-1. It would be better if Paperless saved to my NAS directly, then I'd only have 3 copies. Right now I have 6: 1 nightly and 1 monthly spread across 3 machines, not counting RAID because the "b" in "RAID" stands for back up.
My oh shit plan: grab a back up file. Rebuild the lxc from that snapshot. Access my pdfs.
I keep once in a lifetime stuff: birth certificate, paper counter part to my driver's license, etc. They're still backed up. But, for day-day communications that I'm supposed to keep: 5 years financials, tennant agreements etc. My old filing system was "throw them in a box, if I remembered and find them never. Or, try not delete the email they're attached to". Now I have a glimmer of a hope