Out of my depth

[Abominablespongecake]

Hi Guys, not a regular poster, but a regular YT channel viewer.

 

I have built quite a few windows PC's in my day tinkered a lot and do quite a bit of programming at work (so I am not tech illiterate, but never done network stuff).

For about 2 years i have had an intel NUC with 2x 2TB external HDD plugged into it. I have this at my home office. I manually plug the a 100GB pen drive into my PC, manually back up onto one of the 2TB hdd and then copy it across to the other one for redundancy on the NUC. If i need to access these files remotely i use google Chrome remote desktop. It is JANK at best.

 

Today I have finally got an old quad core PC (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4430 CPU @ 3.00GHz) and i have installed True Nas core. I have got 2x seagate 6tb drives and have set them up in raid 1. Everthing works on my local network.

I can now not for the life on me get anything like plex, open VPN, Next cloud to work for remote access.

I have literally followed step by step guides:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObqUQzroSo8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agq8LcnAWPo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUF7TYV44s4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCouS6Zw5vA

 

There is always some version issue, or somethign that i am doing that doesnt quite match up with what the guide is doing.

Am I just out of my depth? I have spent far too much time on this and am now thinking about resorting to just having a network share and then again using chrome remote desktop to remote in to the NUC and access the files on the go.

Ideally i want to replace google drive from my life and have plex for my linux ISOs.

Is there a simpler alternative? Are there any other suggestions? Guides i should be following?

 

I am willing to spend another day to get it up and running but I feel I am well out of my depth and should just accept that i am too busy to tinker with this.

 

Thank you in advance.

 

 

[Needfuldoer]

19 minutes ago, Abominablespongecake said:

i have installed True Nas core

You don't want Core, you want to use Scale. It's based on Debian Linux, has modern Docker support, and is getting the most development attention.

 

How exactly did you set up remote access? If everything works on your local LAN, then you have the server itself set up right.

 

For Plex remote access, you can let Plex itself handle that if you set up an account.

[Abominablespongecake]

Thank you for the advice. I am relying too much on Chat GPT for advice I think, but I am not surrounded by many tech people so its the best i got.

I will take a look at scale.  With regards to remote access, I just followed the linked YT guides. 

[Abominablespongecake]

1 hour ago, Needfuldoer said:

You don't want Core, you want to use Scale. It's based on Debian Linux, has modern Docker support, and is getting the most development attention.

 

How exactly did you set up remote access? If everything works on your local LAN, then you have the server itself set up right.

 

For Plex remote access, you can let Plex itself handle that if you set up an account.

I have trueNas Scale installed. If anyone has recommended guides for remote plex and remote cloud id be all ears

[Bersella AI]

32 minutes ago, Abominablespongecake said:

If anyone has recommended guides for remote plex and remote cloud id be all ears

It seems you wish to set up a VPN-like service. A few solutions are already available: Wireguard, Zerotier, Tailscale, Netbird and so on. The Lawrence Systems, for example, made a video about Netbird and how to set it up.

 

2 hours ago, Abominablespongecake said:

Ideally i want to replace google drive from my life and have plex for my linux ISOs.

Nextcloud would be a decent alternative to Google Drive. The setup is straightforward on TrueNAS Scale by importing a Docker Compose config script in Apps, and since its working directory remains unencrypted, one can easily replicate files in it to another pool for lower risks.

Plex is NOT intended for management of Linux installation images, nor for backup.

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, Abominablespongecake said:

I am relying too much on Chat GPT for advice I think

ChatGPT is not an all-knowing oracle. Read the documentation yourself, don't rely on the docs as interpreted by a hallucinating Markov chain.

[Aleph256]

2 hours ago, Bersella AI said:

Plex is NOT intended for management of Linux installation images, nor for backup.

I think he meant the other kind of Linux ISOs, the ones you get from the Arr stack.

[Abominablespongecake]

22 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

ChatGPT is not an all-knowing oracle. Read the documentation yourself, don't rely on the docs as interpreted by a hallucinating Markov chain.

I get what you are saying, but i just dont want to learn it. I'm not lazy I just have too much other stuff on my plate, and if its something i cant set up in 2+ days of tinkering and following step by step guides, it probably isnt for me. I dont want to become a network admin, what i have is Jank but has worked for 2 plus years and it took me 30 minutes to set up. I understand why Linus invested in HexOS.

[Needfuldoer]

4 minutes ago, Abominablespongecake said:

I get what you are saying, but i just dont want to learn it.

Fair enough, but ChatGPT will give you incorrect information. If you don't recognize it when you see it, you'll only get frustrated as it leads to astray. (Like blindly following GPS down a bike path in a car.)

 

You might want to try Unraid (paid) or OpenMediaVault (FOSS) instead. They're easier to set up than TrueNAS. Even plain old desktop Windows is fine for a home NAS with a couple drives in it.

[Abominablespongecake]

13 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Fair enough, but ChatGPT will give you incorrect information. If you don't recognize it when you see it, you'll only get frustrated as it leads to astray. (Like blindly following GPS down a bike path in a car.)

 

You might want to try Unraid (paid) or OpenMediaVault (FOSS) instead. They're easier to set up than TrueNAS. Even plain old desktop Windows is fine for a home NAS with a couple drives in it.

Just to clarify, I understand what you are saying about chatGPT, I am not solely using chatGPT, i tried following literal step by step tutorials like the ones I have linked, that are less than a year old, but changes and errors pop up. I have then tried searching for those errors and implemented fixes following online tutorials, sometimes i have tried to use chat gpt to also query errors and work my way through issues. I am not just relying on it blindly. Since it is trained on things like stack exchange, i have usually found it quite useful in working my way through coding issues. What seems to have happened here, is that there have been considerable changes from the ~6 month old tutorials to how certain processes are currently set up and chat GPT is not up to date on the current methods and a lot of the internet guides are out of date.

Again thank you for your suggestions and discussion

[Needfuldoer]

2 minutes ago, Abominablespongecake said:

What seems to have happened here, is that there have been considerable changes from the ~6 month old tutorials to how certain processes are currently set up and chat GPT is not up to date on the current methods and a lot of the internet guides are out of date.

Yeah, the newest version of TrueNAS Scale moved away from Kubernetes and to Docker Compose as its plug-in architecture. Guides for the older versions aren't necessarily applicable.

[Abominablespongecake]

Just to update people in case they care (this has been an epic roller coaster of a journey for me, mainly because of the stress of neglecting other stuff while i got this up and running for 5 days).

This is what currently works:

• Local Network access with different logins for me and other members of my family.
• Tailscale access to the NAS (my dad tested this while working away in Belgium :)).
• Jellyfin now up and running either on network or remotely via TS.
• NUC has now been repurposed to be Linux ISO gathering PC which I can remote into from anywhere and it downloads directly to the NAS.
• Last but not least, my home TV cannot work over TS, but does have JF app so I followed some port opening guide and some DDNS stuff to get a URL that i can use to access JF on smart TV. Would like to improve on the JF https set up but am scared of breaking right now.

If it doesnt need constant tinkering (yet to be seen) it was well worth the effort.

Just need to figure out where to submit my rig for one of them "rate your setup videos" I would love for my mess to be roasted by Linus.

[Ha-Satan]

8 hours ago, Abominablespongecake said:

• Jellyfin now up and running either on network or remotely via TS.

 

Did you find a tutorial that worked well for the most recent version of TrueNas Scale? I'm going to try to get Jellyfin up and running on TrueNas Scale today/tomorrow.

[Abominablespongecake]

On 11/12/2024 at 7:43 PM, Satan_Prometheus said:

 

Did you find a tutorial that worked well for the most recent version of TrueNas Scale? I'm going to try to get Jellyfin up and running on TrueNas Scale today/tomorrow.

there wasnt one to be honest. they are all out of date seemingly and have slightly different options. I had to cobble together like 20 different things, i have gone through my youtube history and i believe the following where the most useful:

Cant for the life of me find the other one, if i keep looking i will post it here

[Abominablespongecake]

On 11/12/2024 at 7:43 PM, Satan_Prometheus said:

 

Did you find a tutorial that worked well for the most recent version of TrueNas Scale? I'm going to try to get Jellyfin up and running on TrueNas Scale today/tomorrow.

Also posted some settings that may be helpful here: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1589219-truenas-241-jellyfin-media-not-showing/

[Ha-Satan]

6 hours ago, Abominablespongecake said:

Also posted some settings that may be helpful here: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1589219-truenas-241-jellyfin-media-not-showing/

Thanks! I did manage to get it figured out. The main source of trouble that I noticed during setup was that I needed to have the user and group configuration match the user and group IDs for the user I created for myself. Otherwise Jellyfin didn't seem to have permission to access the SMB share. I also discovered that changing this after Jellyfin was installed did not fix the problem, so I had to delete my first Jellyfin install and start from scratch, but the second time around, after proper user and group configuration, it all worked as expected. I was mostly able to follow this guide, which seems to be up-to-date:

 

https://www.truenas.com/docs/truenasapps/communityapps/jellyfin/