Great news! I started my selfhost journey over a year ago, and I'm finding myself needing better hardware. There's so many services I want that my NAS can't handle. And I unfortunately need to add GPU transcoding to my Jellyfin setup.

What's the best OS for a machine focused on containers and (getting started with) VMs? I've heard Proxmox

What CPU specs should I be concerned about?

I'm willing to buy a pre-built as long as its hardware has sufficient longevity.

I see the GRUB menu, then it goes to an inactive black screen. If I select recovery then resume, it works fine. As this is supposed to be a remote machine, the problem defeats the purpose. I've heard this is usually a GPU drivers issue, so I followed the suggestions here: https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/how-to/graphics/install-nvidia-drivers/index.html

and here (I'm running 22.04 and can't update, separate issue though): https://askubuntu.com/questions/760934/graphics-issues-after-while-installing-ubuntu-16-04-16-10-with-nvidia-graphics

Yet I still have the problem with a black screen. While I'd like it to "just work", I'm also open to extreme measures including...

-removing the GPU (assuming that would help) -having a script run that auto-selects recovery then resume then logs in on my behalf (I'd need help figuring that out though)

I also updated the grub file after adding "nomodeset", that didn't fix it either.

For the uninitiated, this is software for music and it's notoriously complicated. I have a paid version from about a decade ago and I'm not giving them anymore of my money. Reddit used to have a vsttorrents guide for this, but it's been forcibly removed. I'm trying to get Komplete 15 Ultimate, with all the added stuff I'll probably never even look at

Edit: if anyone sees this, I'm still looking

I would love to seed (and cross-seed) my music library, but metadata tagging and renaming fucks the files up. How do I set up qBittorrent and Prowlarr to keep seeding after retagging?

Update: it was an issue with API keys due to a previous install.

Update 2: new problem, qBittorrent has an I/O issue, probably involving the final destination for the media: my Synology NAS. Any advice here is appreciated.

Update 3: I was having issues with mapping my Synology NAS as the root folders, so I restarted the *arrs and now they are unreachable. The solution was to reinstall them without uninstalling them because my computer is weird.

Once a year I try setting up Prowlarr, Sonarr, and Radarr and I felt confident so I reinstalled them. The *arrs are connected to qBittorrent (all tests succeeded) and Prowlarr (again, tests succeeded) and vice versa. I added every indexer that I could successfully connect to (which was most of them) and currently have all of the web UIs open : which work as expected. Everything seems to be communicating and functioning as intended so I tested Radarr. I found a popular movie and started monitoring it, this was about 30 minutes ago. It hasn't shown up in qBittorrent and I'm not sure what I'm missing; can someone help me troubleshoot? In other words, how do I know definitively that this movie I have selected will download and when will it download?

I've been using Jellyfin for about a year. I've experienced many sudden issues with speed or connectivity, but they usually self-resolve over the course of a few days (I'd love to hear what that's about).

Since the last major update, I've had intermittent speed issues. My network is a bit weird, but it's what I have to go with for a while so bear with me...everything is wired cat7a as direct to the router as possible and broadcast exclusively through TailScale. My server (Win10) and another PC (Win11) are the combined shared storage, so I'm assuming one of the main points of failure between these 2 machines are to blame. In other words, the Win11 PC is acting as a shared network folder (where 2/3rd of my media is stored) AND a client (very inefficient I know, but it's worked up until recently).

Today, I tried listening to a lossless song and it was taking about a minute to load 1 second of music. I've never had speeds that slow before.

The server's hardware: -Intel i7-9700k @ 3.60GHz -RAM 16GB -NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Transcode settings enabled: -Hardware acceleration: Nvidia NVENC -H246 -MPEG2 -VC1 -VP8 -Enhanced NVDEC decoder -Hardware encoding

Task Manager for the server shows 95% (~10 Mbps) network usage to be to TailScale and Jellyfin. Network usage for the client is almost 0 Mbps. Memory usage for both machines is below 30%. CPU is less than 10% on both machines. Disk usage is even lower, 0% on both machines. The media in question is stored on HDD on the client-side machine (disk rated for >100MB/s read and write).

Without buying a new drive, NAS, or extra hardware, do you have any tips for troubleshooting my network to see if it's something I can fix? Did I mess any settings up?

Don't know if it's relevant, but I have a Pi-hole and both machines have Simplewall.

I need to track cardio with terrain data, but I'd rather not trust Strava with my privacy. I know there are some alternatives, but which one is the most reliable and feature-rich? I don't have smart accessories, just and android phone. Preferably, I'd like an app that let's me track added weights for calorie purposes (like rucking).

I've tried installing it about a dozen times over the past year, but it always gives an "unable to get image" error. So I'm wondering if there's an alternative that does everything paperless does...but lets me use it

First, let me say that this is the worst phone I've ever owned. I don't have have "fuck it, I'm buying a Pixel" money right now, but I'd like to try un-ruining my phone if possible. And what are the best ways to back up my phone before the switch?

The folders are accessible on every other device and SMB is enabled on the host machine. I'm trying to access hundreds of gigabytes of game roms via Retroarch when I'm out of the country so I'd appreciate an easier method if one exists, but I've ran through every troubleshooting guide I can find online, but the share folders still don't exist according to my phone. I've also tried 5 or 6 different file manager apps, but they all say the same thing

If someone sees this in the distant future, I'm still looking for a solution so please reach out.

I need a file browser for Android that lets me access folders from my computers while connected through Tailscale. Syncing folders between the devices won't work in this case unfortunately.

Another question: is there a file browser that's considered the best or most feature-rich?

I used Signal for years and loved it, but I need SMS support to talk to, well, anyone I know. Is there a secure choice that's near-equal?