I'm really struggling to get Mastodon to work at all. I've tried both in Docker Compose, and on "bare metal" Ubuntu/Debian VMs, and an LXC. I just want a single user instance so I can have my username be my domain.

I really struggle to get the docker containers set up and talking to each other. I'm following the compose files exactly but keep getting database errors etc.

The bare metal guides either seem to be outdated for old versions of Mastodon that use old versions of Ruby, Node, etc, or they have a hugely complex NGINX config file that sets up the custom domain, SSL, etc. I don't want that, I already have cloudflare tunnels and caddy reverse proxy configured on another machine, I literally just want Mastodon running on a local IP and port I can point caddy to, but none of the guides seem to be able to set that up.

I've been selfhosting a few months now, in Docker on my Synology NAS. To be fair to it that Celeron really punches above its weight but I thought I'd upgrade since I upgraded the CPU/mainboard in my framework laptop and thus had an old 11th Gen i5 mainboard lying around!

I installed Proxmox and set up a Debian VM for all my docker containers: it was incredibly easy to copy over the Docker compose files and point them to my Synology via an NFS share, so the data is still stored on the NAS but they run on the new server.

I could then install home assistant OS as another VM, and currently I've got a third for a wireguard server. I really like how everything is compartmentalised and I can just spin up a new VM for testing without breaking anything else! I'll probably spin up another as a game server via Pterodactyl, after that I'm not sure what else I could do but I'm sure I'll find something!

I also span up a Proxmox backup server VM on my NAS so every week it takes a snapshot of the VMs and stores them on the NAS then uploads them to Backblaze.

How are you using Proxmox?

I have just set up a Wireguard VPN on my home network and VPS cloud server as my home network is behind CGNAT and thus doesn't have a public IP.

I used these configs, tweaked slightly for my usage.

The VPS is 1 core, 1GB RAM, 1000/1000Mbps internet. My home wireguard client (the equivalent of the Pi in the above configs) is a Virtual Machine with 2GB RAM. My home internet is 500/30Mbps.

I realise my slow upload speed and the fact that all traffic goes through my home internet means I can never get more than 30Mbps when connected to Wireguard, but in reality I'm seeing much lower than that. When my phone is connected over 4G, I get 1Mbps (the 4G is much faster than that).

I'm not sure what's slowing it down so much? Neither the VPS nor local VM are getting close to resource limits.

Interested to hear what everyone else's naming scheme is. I'm into 90s hip hop so my NAS is called Biggie and my proxmox server is called Willie (Will Smith)

I'm migrating my services onto a new server and decided to try Dockge instead of Portainer as I've previously been using. I wasn't really using any of the features of Portainer except starting stacks from a compose file so YMMV if you do, but I'm really pleased with the simplicity of Dockge in this respect.

I found portainer really slow at deploying, restarting, stopping etc containers/stacks and it didn't give feedback on what was happening just spinning a throbber icon.

Dockge responds instantly and brings up the terminal and container logs for easy debugging.

Makes managing services so much easier. It's also nice it stores the compose.yaml files in the file structure on the system so I can commit them to git.

I posted a few days back about upgrading my homelab from Docker on a Synology and got loads of great responses.

I've set up my old Framework i5-1167 mainboard in the standalone case, since I upgraded my laptop to Ryzen, and installed Proxmox on it.

I've currently got two VMs running. One is Home Assistant OS, with ZigBee and bluetooth dongles passed through, and it was incredibly easy to restore from a backup file and everything just works! The other is Debian 12 which I've installed docker and Dockge on for compose management and I'm so happy with it.

Portainer on my Synology was slow as molasses, Dockge is nearly instant. I've set up an NFS share on my Synology, and both are connected via 2.5Gbe networking. I'm copying the application folders from my docker folder to my NFS share, then using the mount point on my server in Dockge to point to the NFS share, then bringing up the container. My applications are now running on the new server exactly the same as on the Synology except much faster!

Really pleased with the setup. I just need to sort backups now. I think I will commit my Dockge compose.yaml folders to my Forgejo instance, secrets hidden in .env of course. Then run Proxmox backup on the NAS, and upload everything to Backblaze every other day.

thanks for all the help and suggestions!