OUTPOST - A Self-Sufficient, Self-Hosted Cloud Setup

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Description

Stand-alone self-hosting infrastructure with security and a range of apps. Caddy for reverse proxy plus generally heavy use of Docker. Easy and straightforward to add more services as need.

Build yourself an outpost.

Repo URL: https://github.com/qu13t0ne/outpost

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Components Overview

Core Infrastructure & Security

• Caddy v2 Reverse Proxy
  • Including Caddy-Security for user authentication & MFA
  • Note: Be sure to read the Important Reverse Proxy Setup Information in the Caddy readme file.

Monitoring

• Portainer - Lightweight Docker management web UI (mostly I just use for status monitoring)

Databases

• Adminer - Database management web UI
• MongoDB - MongoDB non-relational database

Apps & Services

• Budibase - Low-code platform
• CyberChef - Cyber Swiss Army Knife web app
• Flame Startpage - Easy startpage and bookmarks page
• Nextcloud - Flexible open source file synchronization and sharing solution
• PhotoPrism - Photos management app

Installation and Setup

Summary

1. Prep your host system.
2. Follow startup instructions on each of the component readme pages linked in the Components Overview above.

Prep Host System

Linux is preferred for a server. I tend to run Debian-based distros, but any Linux distro should work fine. Since stuff is mostly Docker-based, Outpost can also be run on a local workstation as localhost, including MacOS (partially tested) and theoretically Windows (if you must, not tested, some mods probably necessary). All setup and commands in this repo assume a Linux (Debian) host, so YMMV.

Outline

• Filesystem Setup Notes
  • Optional NFS Considerations
• Install Docker
• Add Docker Daemon Settings
• Create Docker Networks

Filesystem Setup Notes

It's general best practice to run any apps / functions on a separate partition than the root OS.

• Option 1: Partition the hard drive to separate / (root) and everything else. At minimum, if you blow through the available storage at least you haven't also crippled the operating system.
• Option 2: Mount a separate drive for data.
• Option 3: Mount a shared drive for data, e.g. using NFS. This has the added benefit of separating the data storage function onto a separate server from the apps / services function. But introduces extra complications. It's best suited for user files that need to be shared across systems, whereas databases are better saved on the local file system (e.g., /srv), then properly backed up

I've configured this project to default to Option 2 above. The /srv directory is assumed to be on a separate drive from the OS.

• Docker is configured (see Docker Daemon Settings below) to use /srv/docker as the default location for docker-related files (containers, volumes, logs, etc.) instead of the standard /var/lib/docker.
• Containers and services will by default save persistent data to various folders in /srv, as indicated in the template-env files.

Optional NFS Considerations

For using NFS to work:

1. The NFS server must enable the all_squash setting on the export.
2. The NFS client config must include the configuration options user (allow non-root user to mount) and rw (read-write).
3. Any user account that needs read-write access to the share, including system users leveraged by containers, must be added to the nogroup group

   sudo usermod -a -G nogroup <username>
   

4. Environment variables for data storage will need to be updated based on the relevant NFS share location on the Outpost host file system.

Individual services may have additional considerations when relying on NFS storage mounted to the host. These are documented in service readme files.

Install Docker

Install Docker & Docker Compose according to the latest Docker instructions.

Add Docker Daemon Settings

Add some default settings to the Docker daemon for log rotation and container privilege restriction.

• Review contents of the daemon.json file in this repo.
• Check if a default daemon.json file has already been created by Docker.

ls /etc/docker/daemon.json

• IF a default file does not exist (meaning the above command returns something like ls: cannot access '/etc/docker/daemon.json': No such file or directory), THEN:
  • Copy the daemon.json file from this repo to the default docker location

   sudo cp ./daemon.json /etc/docker/daemon.json

• ELSE (i.e., a file already exists at /etc/docker/daemon.json):
  • Modify the existing file to add the settings from this repo's version.

Finally, restart the Docker daemon.

sudo systemctl restart docker.service

Create Docker Networks

Create two networks to use for Docker containers. One for the proxy service and one for databases. This allows some segregation of services, so only containers that need to be proxied are exposed to the proxy side of things and only containers that are shared databases or need access to them will have access to the db network.

docker network create proxy_net 
docker network create db_net

Metadata

Created By Mike Owens | GitHub ~ GitLab ~ Mastodon

License: MIT (Covers the config & setup. Apps & services have their own licenses. Hack responsibly.)

Resources and Acknowledgments

This project is built on plenty of help from other online resources and repos. I try to acknowledge them wherever possible, but I'm human so I've probably forgotten some.

• About open source licenses: ChooseALicense.com / Open Source Initiative / Developer's Guide
• https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted-apps-docker
• Caddy Security plugin: https://authp.github.io/
• https://github.com/docker/awesome-compose