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This Week in Self-Hosted (29 March 2024) 9 min read
This Week in Self-Hosted
This Week in Self-Hosted

This Week in Self-Hosted (29 March 2024)

Self-hosted news, software updates, launches, and a spotlight on Fitbit Health Dashboard - a script for fetching and visualizing Fitbit data

By Ethan Sholly
This Week in Self-Hosted (29 March 2024) Post image
This Week in Self-Hosted is sponsored by Tailscale, which takes the headache out of configuring WireGuard tunnels between every device and service on your network. Simple, secure, and free for personal use.

This Week in Self-Hosted

Developers across the community were busy this week as I was able to round up a whopping 13 new projects spanning several categories and niches. And while all of them are worth checking out, my personal favorite is the new bookmarking app Hoarder – despite its current lack of love for Android devices.

In other news, VMware managed to escape the community's ire for just a bit as Vultr took the spotlight (Reddit was in a real mood this week), but a well-timed release from Proxmox brought the ESXi drama right back into the conversation. Unraid's new pricing model also took effect on Wednesday, and while consumers have been vocal about subscription fatigue, Lime Technology seems to be taking a reasonable approach to generating sustainable ongoing revenue.

Thanks to all who participated in last week's Raspberry Pi 5 subscriber giveaway – I'll be drawing and reaching out to the winner later today. Stay tuned for another site-related announcement-slash-release next week as I attempt to address the most common request I receive from subscribers.

Thanks, and happy selfh.st/ing!

In the News

Proxmox Has a New Tool To Save Users From VMware
Unhappy as a VMware customer? This makes it easy for you to switch to an open-source virtualization solution.
It's FOSS NewsAnkush Das
Portainer and Docker 26
On 20 March version 26.0.0 of Docker was released. There are a number of changes in this release to be aware of with one causing issues with Portainer.
Portainer.ioJames Carppe
Tailscale SSH is now Generally Available
We’re thrilled to announce that Tailscale SSH is now Generally Available. Tailscale SSH allows Tailscale to manage the authentication and authorization of SSH connections on your tailnet. From the user’s perspective, you use SSH as normal—authenticating with Tailscale according to configurable rules—and we handle SSO, MFA, and key rotation, and allow you to enforce precise permissions in ACLs. Combined with other enterprise features like user and group provisioning with SCIM, you can use Tailscale SSH to craft a fully zero-trust remote access sol
Vultr deletes user data ownership ToS clause after outcry
We know the average customer doesn’t have a law degree, CEO tells us
The RegisterTobias Mann

Software Updates

New Software

Help keep the newsletter (and me) running ☕

This Week in Self-Hosted is an independent publication supported by the community. Consider buying me a coffee, signing up for a monthly donation on the site, or sponsoring the newsletter to help offset the costs associated with running the publication.

Community Content

The race to replace Redis
On March 21, Redis Ltd. announced that the Redis “in-memory data store” project would now be released under non-free, source-available licenses, starting with Redis 7.4. The news is unwelcome, but not entirely unexpected. What is unusual with this situation is the number of Redis alternatives to choose from; there are at least four options to choose as a replacement for those who wish to stay with free software, including a pre-existing fork called KeyDB and the Linux Foundation’s newly-announced Valkey project. The question now is which one(s) Linux distributions, users, and providers will choose to take its place.
LWN.netJoe BrockmeierMarch 28, 2024
Nginx — The reverse proxy in my Homelab
Nginx is a powerful reverse proxy that I use in my homelab to expose services to the internet. In this post, I’ll show you how I use it and how you can use it too.
Akash RajpurohitAkash Rajpurohit
Populating my single user Mastodon instance
Making your single user Mastodon instance feel more alive with extra relevant content
Real Men Wear Dress.esAdam Cooper
Goal Templates with a twist for weekly targets | Actual Budget Documentation
An example using Goal Templates for weekly targets
Actual Open Source

Content Spotlight: Fitbit Health Dashboard

Meet Fitbit Health Dashboard, a project and script built to fetch and write data from the Fitbit API into an InfluxDB for visualization in Grafana. Retrieved metric categories include heart rate, steps, sleep, SpO2, temperature, activity, distance, calories, and battery stats.

Users can incorporate the script into existing InfluxDB and Grafana installations, or use the provided docker compose file to build the full stack from scratch. The script does require a Fitbit developer account for data retrieval via API.

Dashboard screenshot from the project's repository

Links: GitHub

What We're Watching

What We're Listening To

Hackaday Podcast Episode 263: Better DMCA, AI Spreadsheet Play, And Home Assistants Your Way
No need to wonder what stories Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams were reading this week. They’ll tell you about them in this week’s podcast. The guys revisit the McDonald…
HackadayAl Williams

Smart Home and Automation

How To Build a Stable and Robust Zigbee Network
This article is the complete guide to building a stable, reliable and robust Zigbee mesh network and fixing issues with your current network and devices.
SmartHomeScene.comSHS
Set a static IP address in Home Assistant OS
Full credit goes to this forum post. I found myself in need of dropping to the CLI for a fresh Home Assistant OS install on top of Proxmox after using the tteck helper scripts to set a static IP. To do this without access to the Home Assistant UI we
ktz.Alex Kretzschmar

Privacy

False security: Dashy’s client-side authentication
Update 3/27: I’ve found a GitHub issue indicating devs may be working on the issues I raise here. See details below About a month ago, I went looking for a dashboard for my homelab—something to help visualize the services I run. I found Dashy, a popular (14.6k GitHub stars) dashboard designed for self-hosters. I deployed it and started configuring it, but noticed that something about its authentication felt off. I started digging and quickly found its security to be borderline useless, permitting unauthenticated reads and writes of its configuration.
subract's blog

Upcoming Events

Nextcloud Enterprise Day 2024 - April 24 in Munich
The Nextcloud Enterprise Day provides IT professionals like project managers and decision makers the opportunity to define their own strategy to get the most out of their Content Collaboration Platform.
Nextcloud

Command Line Corner: column

Use the column command to view the contents of a file in an organized table or column format with options for specifying delimiters, width, names, alignment, and more.

In the example below, column is being used to display the example.txt file using a comma as the delimiter for the table. 

/$ cat example.txt
  Task,Completed (Y/N)
  Research,Y
  Setup,Y
  Deploy,N
  Analyze,N
/$ column example.txt -t -s ","
  Task       Completed (Y/N)
  Research   Y
  Setup      Y
  Deploy     N
  Analyze    N

Click here to view an archive of commands shared in previous newsletters.

Related News and Content

Telegram’s new peer-to-peer SMS relay is an absolute privacy nightmare
Telegram aims to save some coin by sending login messages via some users’ phones
Android PoliceManuel Vonau
Apple is Incredibly Salty About the Digital Markets Act
Apple’s press release yesterday reads with the professionally and poise of a teenager throwing a tantrum, it’s amazing really. Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European UnionApple announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store impacting developers’ apps in the EU to comply
Jonah AragonJonah Aragon
From .com to .beauty: The evolving threat landscape of unwanted email
In this 2023-early 2024 email analysis, we examine how certain generic Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are primarily used for spam and phishing, and their evolution over a year. There are many trends in email threats to examine.
The Cloudflare BlogJoão Tomé

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By
Ethan Sholly
This Week in Self-Hosted

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