SelfHosting done Easy with UmbrelOS - Nov 2025

TL;DR

Getting started with a HomeLab/Selfhosting can be easy, actually.

Intro

It should not be strange for us to see how we can run OS inside a container.

• https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
• https://github.com/awesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin

This is the case of umbrelOS - We will see how to use it for quick selfhosted adventures

And also https://github.com/heyPuter/puter/

agpl 3 | 🌐 The Internet Computer! Free, Open-Source, and Self-Hostable.

A privacy-first personal cloud to keep all your files, apps, and games in one secure place, accessible from anywhere at any time.

Any of these can be a good companion for a tablet when you are travelling somewhere.

Selfhosted Adventures

I tried recently umbrelOS (the latest1.4), but inside a container:

And one of the many apps that you can use out of the box is Wanderer: A great addition for anyone who likes adventures and GPX files

You can go to 192.168.1.2:86 and enjoy very quick webapp hosting

Which is great, because it syncs with Strava and Komoot:

Just in case you are concerned about them locking your account at some point and loosing your tracks!

Talking about locking things, you can also use umbrelOS to do some cool BigData Analytics with on-chain data.

ssh jalcocert@192.168.1.2
#docker stats docker bitcoin_app_1 
docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getblockchaininfo
{
  "chain": "main",
  "blocks": 923582,
  "headers": 923582,
  "bestblockhash": "000000000000000000019a6a3674c093c343acca276f8ddba14cd87476b32a29",
  "bits": "1701d936",
  "target": "00000000000000000001d9360000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  "difficulty": 152271405447597.4,
  "time": 1763122451,
  "mediantime": 1763118885,
  "verificationprogress": 1,
  "initialblockdownload": false,
  "chainwork": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000f4f0f29bd8b0eccefc9479e9",
  "size_on_disk": 796890091926, #you can also sync this and measure your average internet speed for ~800gb
  "pruned": false,
  "warnings": [
  ]
}

More on this, later.

Yes, this is an D&A Adventure that I could not avoid mentioning :)

SelfHosted WebAnalytics

Every time I read the selfh.st newsletter I find a new web analytics tool trying to replace Umami:

• https://github.com/seuros/kaunta

Privacy-focused analytics engine written in Go

• https://github.com/electerious/Ackee

But imo, Umami should be one of those HomeLab essentials tools to consider.

Better web Analytics from 0525

Post views distribution

Litlyx Repo

How Litlyx web analytics looks

Litlyx Post Views Distribution

How could this not relate with Pareto?

Powerful Analytics Solution. Setup in 30 seconds. Display all your data on a Simple, AI-powered dashboard. Fully self-hostable and GDPR compliant. Alternative to Google Analytics, MixPanel, Plausible, Umami & Matomo.

See also:

1. https://github.com/abegehr/chickadee

Simple, privacy-focused web analytics you can self-host on Cloudflare.

2. https://github.com/benvinegar/counterscale

Scalable web analytics you run yourself on Cloudflare

3. Dashflare - https://github.com/jorgelbg/dashflare

🕵🏼‍♀️ Open Source and privacy-focused analytics solution. 📊 Advanced monitoring for your website behind Cloudflare

Link Analytics

Some selfhosted url shorteners will bring you analytics and QR as well.

See https://github.com/738/awesome-url-shortener?tab=readme-ov-file#self-hosting-opensource

Link analytics solutions, like Kutt: https://kutt.it/

Many more will be coming, like https://github.com/alexcastrodev/shortener

For the QR part, you know that we have few solutions…

1. https://github.com/JAlcocerT/Streamlit_PoC/blob/main/Utils/QR_Gen.py

2. 

There are several open-source self-hostable link shortener tools you can consider, each with its unique features:

1. Shlink: A PHP-based link shortener that supports generating unique short codes or custom slugs. It collects anonymized visit stats and geolocates visitors. It offers a REST API, CLI tools, and Docker support for easy deployment. It uses modern technologies like Mezzio and Symfony and is MIT licensed.[1][3]

2. Kutt: A modern, free, and open-source URL shortener with features like custom domains, custom URLs, password protection, link expiration, private statistics, and an admin dashboard. It has a RESTful API and can be easily installed using Docker Compose.[5]

3. YOURLS: A well-established PHP-based URL shortener with features such as bookmarklets, developer API, detailed stats including referrers and geo-location, and extensibility through dozens of plugins. It is free, open source, and easy to self-host.[10]

4. Shrink.io (shrtn.io): A lightweight, privacy-focused URL shortener using SQLite by default (so no database server is required) and deployable via Docker. It emphasizes ease of use, privacy, and developer-friendly features.[6]

5. Other notable mentions from a curated list include Polr, Lstu, Blink, and goshorly—all open source with various programming languages and features.[4][8]

These options provide scalable, customizable, and self-hostable link shortening solutions that you can deploy either via Docker or direct installation depending on your infrastructure and preferences.

For ease and feature richness, Shlink, Kutt, and YOURLS are highly recommended starting points for a self-hosted URL shortener.

Among the popular open-source self-hosted link shorteners mentioned, some do offer QR code capabilities either built-in or through extensions/plugins:

1. Shlink: Provides built-in QR code generation for short URLs. When you create a short URL using Shlink, it can generate a corresponding QR code that you can share or embed. This is part of its feature set, making it convenient for print or mobile scanning use cases.[1][2]

2. Kutt: While Kutt does not include native QR code generation in its core, there are third-party tools or browser extensions available that can generate QR codes for any URL, including Kutt short links. Some community forks or plugins might add this feature. Officially, out-of-the-box QR codes are not a core feature.[3]

3. YOURLS: YOURLS does not include native QR code generation by default, but there are several plugins created by the community that add QR code functionality to YOURLS short URLs. This extensibility allows you to add QR generation if needed.[4]

4. Other lesser-known tools like Blink or Polr may have QR features built-in or via plugins, but the top three mentioned mostly rely on either built-in Shlink support or plugins for YOURLS for QR capabilities.[5][6]

To summarize, Shlink stands out as the self-hosted URL shortener with built-in QR code generation.

For YOURLS, you can enable QR codes through community-developed plugins, while Kutt typically requires external QR code tools.

This makes Shlink a strong candidate if QR code functionality is a priority alongside link shortening.

Conclusions

I got to know the trade free concept: https://trom.tf/

They offer some tools, like internet speed check and ask nothing in return.

If you are having a business, getting contact forms / feedback /qna from clients is essential:

• https://github.com/OpnForm/OpnForm

Beautiful Open-Source Form Builder

A static site generator…that can be used to create documentation with Python?

Thats seems to be Zensical!

• https://github.com/zensical/zensical
  • https://zensical.org/docs/setup/search/

MIT | A modern static site generator by the creators of Material for MkDocs

uv add zensical
uv run zensical new .
#sudo docker stop portainer_app
uv run zensical serve

Their official page design is just amazing: https://zensical.org/

Zensical creates scalable Open Source systems for technical writing that always keep you in the flow

I Also discovered NetVisor:

• https://github.com/mayanayza/netvisor - Automatically discover and visually document network infrastructure

NetVisor scans your network, identifies hosts and services, and generates an interactive visualization showing how everything connects, letting you easily create and maintain network documentation.

AGPl3 | Automatically discover and visually document network infrastructure.

I also got to know TOON: which compress JSON impressively for LLMs to ingest it.

💡 Benchmark tip.

Check out @curiouslychase’s ace Format Tokenization Playground:
→ https://t.co/06vX8hWxC8

It lets you compare token counts for various formats:
- CSV
- JSON
- YAML
- and TOON

... all with your own sample data 🔥 pic.twitter.com/O5RZcPHMFD

— Charly Wargnier (@DataChaz) November 13, 2025

And hey, Gemini 3 was released, but you can still use goose and/or Ollama Desktop

Even…LLMs at …webbrowsers? https://github.com/addyosmani/chatty/

MIT | ChattyUI - your private AI chat for running LLMs in the browser

GPX is great

And if you are afraid to get lost in the forest during your adventures, you can share your location from your phone to your selfhosted server.

• https://github.com/dedicatedcode/reitti
  • https://www.dedicatedcode.com/projects/reitti/integrations/mobile-apps/
    • https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.mendhak.gpslogger/

Reitti is a comprehensive personal location tracking and analysis application that helps you understand your movement patterns and significant places. The name “Reitti” comes from Finnish, meaning “route” or “path”.

Reitti also allow to import our previous GPX, like Wanderer do.

Thoughts on SteamOS and OS for NAS

Earlier this year I was covering OS for NAS.

It seems that we will be able to play, daily drive and have a homeserver all withing a steam pc/console

Apparently, that OS is Linux arch based btw.

So you can harness all the power of containers, and avoid getting locked in into in theory confortable synology ecosystem.

Here is the release of SteamOS: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/

And they have launched a small console, that reminds me to the shape/form factor of my x300 (SFF).

The price tag is unknown though for now.

But what’s interesting is the Linux is been more and more user friendly.

With ZorinOS 18 we can even get microsoft one drive synced natively and avoid all the AI/ads/making valid PCs obsolete because of non sense.

Lets go eco-friendly!

You can always try before you daily drive via Virtual Machines with QEMU or GNOME Boxes.

HoneyPot

• https://github.com/thinkst/opencanary

MIT | Modular and decentralised honeypot

FAQ

Gotify x Watchtower

Thanks to DbTech’s video:

Programmatic DNS updates

• https://developers.cloudflare.com/api/resources/dns/
• https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflare-python

Big Data Analytics with On Chain Data

The fundamental difference lies in their function and the layer of the Bitcoin ecosystem they operate on:

• Bitcoin Node (Full Node): This is a program that fully validates transactions and blocks according to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. It downloads and stores a complete copy of the Bitcoin blockchain (the Layer 1 base layer).

  • Primary Role: Enforce the rules of the Bitcoin network, provide a secure and trustless way to verify your own transactions, and contribute to the network’s decentralization and security.
  • Focus: Security and ultimate settlement on the main blockchain.

• Lightning Node: This is software that implements the Lightning protocol, enabling participation in the Lightning Network, which is a “layer 2” scaling solution built on top of Bitcoin.

  • Primary Role: Facilitate fast, low-cost, off-chain payments by managing payment channels with other nodes and routing transactions through the network.
  • Requirement: A Lightning node generally requires a connection to a Bitcoin node (either locally run or a trusted remote one) for opening and closing payment channels, which are on-chain Bitcoin transactions.
  • Focus: Scalability, speed, and low transaction fees for everyday use.

Running your own Bitcoin node gives you the highest level of security and trustlessness on the base layer.

Running a Lightning node allows you to use or help operate the fast, cheap payment network, but it still relies on the base layer security provided by Bitcoin nodes.

The output from your getblockchaininfo RPC call confirms that your Umbrel node is fully synced and operational, making it ready for analysis.

Here’s a breakdown of the key information in that response and what it tells you:

📊 Bitcoin Core Status Confirmation

🔬 How to Query Your Synced Data

Since your node is fully synced and ready (i.e., initialblockdownload is false), you can start running specific analytical queries.

The general structure remains:

docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli <RPC_COMMAND>

Here are some specific queries you can run right now:

1. Analyze the Latest Block

Find out what the most recent block, Block 923,582, looks like:

1. Get the Hash of the Latest Block:

docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getblockhash 923582

(Note the hash that is returned.)

Is a transaction part of a block?

# This requires txindex=1 to be set in your bitcoin.conf
#docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getrawtransaction <blockhash> 1 <transactionid>
docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getrawtransaction 000000000000000000019a6a3674c093c343acca276f8ddba14cd87476b32a29 1 00000000000000000005a7d7g7e9f3c41938e121b6g12175b0f51307b2757534

You can see any of these msgs:

  "confirmations": 1492, //more confirmations, more secure they say
  "time": 1762204086,
  "blocktime": 1762204086
}

error code: -5 error message: Block hash not found

That is a powerful and very accurate conclusion. Yes, the combined capital investment for the power and the hardware is estimated to be over $85 billion USD.

The total cost to purchase the hardware and build the necessary infrastructure to launch a sustained 51% attack on Bitcoin represents an unprecedented economic barrier that effectively secures the network.

💰 The Total Capital Expenditure (CAPEX)

Your final conclusion of $75 Billion for power and $12.5 Billion on ASICs is a highly realistic, mid-range estimate for the cost of acquiring the necessary physical assets.

The Uncalculatable Costs

This massive total of ~85B$ only covers the initial construction and purchase of the machines. The full financial disincentive is even higher when you consider:

1. Operational Cost (OpEx): The electricity bill to run the $5.54 \text{ GW}$ of power would be in the millions of dollars per day.
2. Market Shock: The act of buying $12.5 billion worth of ASICs would completely dominate and inflate the global mining hardware supply chain, likely driving the actual purchase price far above the estimated $$4,500$ per unit.
3. Economic Suicide: A successful attack would instantly destroy confidence in Bitcoin, tanking the asset’s price and making the entire $80+ billion investment worthless.

ANyways, lets continue…

2. Retrieve Detailed JSON Data for the Block: (Replace <BEST_BLOCK_HASH> with the hash from the step above.)

#docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getblock <BEST_BLOCK_HASH> 2
docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getblock 000000000000000000019a6a3674c093c343acca276f8ddba14cd87476b32a29 2

This will output a large JSON object containing every transaction, including inputs, outputs, fee details, and witness data, allowing you to analyze things like transaction count, total fees paid, and SegWit/Taproot adoption within that single block.

2. Inspect the Mempool (Unconfirmed Transactions)

The mempool is the queue of transactions waiting for confirmation. Analyzing it gives you a real-time view of network congestion and fee pressure.

docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getrawmempool

This returns a list of all current Transaction IDs (TXIDs) in the mempool.

For more statistics (total size, transaction count, minimum fee rate):

#docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo
{
  "loaded": true,
  "size": 51030, // Number of transactions in the mempool
  "bytes": 23608547, // Total size of the mempool in bytes
  "usage": 138309184, // Memory usage of the mempool in bytes
  "total_fee": 0.09840955, // Total fee of the mempool in BTC
  "maxmempool": 300000000, // Maximum size of the mempool in bytes
  "mempoolminfee": 0.00000100,
  "minrelaytxfee": 0.00000100,
  "incrementalrelayfee": 0.00000100,
  "unbroadcastcount": 0,
  "fullrbf": true,
  "permitbaremultisig": true,
  "maxdatacarriersize": 100000
}

That is a common misconception about how the blockchain and mempool work!

No, confirming those 51,030 transactions, which currently total 23.6 MB (bytes), will NOT result in 23.6 MB of data being added to the blockchain all at once.

Here is why, based on how Bitcoin blocks are constructed:

🧱 The Block Size Constraint

The core reason is the Bitcoin block size limit.

1. Block Weight/Size Limit: Bitcoin blocks have a limit related to their size/weight, which effectively caps the data they can contain. Before SegWit, the limit was strictly 1 MB. With SegWit and Taproot, the effective limit is up to 4 Megabytes (MB) of “Block Weight” (which is roughly equivalent to 1.5 MB to 2.5 MB of raw data, depending on the transactions inside).
2. Miners Select Transactions: When a miner successfully mines a block (which happens, on average, every 10 minutes), they look at the mempool (where your 23.6 MB of transactions are waiting) and select only the most profitable transactions until the block’s size/weight limit is reached.
3. The Result: The 23.6 MB of waiting transactions will be confirmed over multiple blocks (likely 12 to 15 blocks, since $23.6\text{ MB} / 1.5\text{ MB} \approx 15.7$). Each of those blocks will add its respective size (around 1.5-2.5 MB) to your node’s disk, not the entire 23.6 MB at once.

What Happens to the Data on Your Node

Your node is running as a Full Node (since pruned is false), so every single block that is mined will be permanently stored on your hard drive, increasing the ~800 GB (~923k blocks ~1.27M transactions) total by ~1.5-2.5 MB every ten minutes, on average.

3. Explore Specific Protocol Adoption

You can check the difficulty and block time targets, which are essential for understanding mining profitability and network stability.

docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli getmininginfo

4. Getting Help

If you want to know what other commands are available, you can ask bitcoin-cli for its list of methods:

docker exec bitcoin_app_1 bitcoin-cli help

This will give you a list of every available RPC command, which you can then research to see how they can be used for deep data analysis.

UTXO, Wallet vs Addresses and other unexpected concepts

Here are brief explanations of the concepts you asked about, specifically relating them to your Bitcoin node running on Umbrel.

💾 UTXO and Wallet vs. Addresses

🌐 Clearnet, Tor, and I2P Relation to Your Node

These terms define the networking channels your node uses to communicate with the rest of the Bitcoin network and with you.

In short, Umbrel runs your Bitcoin node across Tor and I2P to ensure maximum privacy by hiding your node’s real IP address from almost all peers, making your operation highly secure and censorship-resistant.

That’s an excellent and crucial question about security!

No, your 12 words (often called a seed phrase or recovery phrase) are not your private key, but they are the master key that can generate all of your individual private keys.

🔑 Seed Phrase vs. Private Key

The relationship is hierarchical:

1. The 12-Word Seed Phrase (Master Key)

• What it is: A sequence of 12 (or 24) simple English words generated using a standard like BIP-39.
• Its Power: It is the source material used to generate everything else. It is passed through a cryptographic function to create a master private key.
• Analogy: Think of the seed phrase as the master login password for your entire safe. Losing it means losing access to all your funds, and anyone who finds it gains full control.

2. The Private Key (Individual Key)

• What it is: A long, secret, unique alphanumeric string (typically 256 bits of data).
• Its Power: It controls the funds for a single Bitcoin address. You need the private key associated with a specific address to sign and spend the UTXOs locked to that address.
• Analogy: This is the individual key to one specific lockbox inside the safe.

3. Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) Wallets

Your Umbrel node uses an HD wallet structure. This means the 12-word seed phrase is used to generate a tree structure:

$$ \text{Seed Phrase} \rightarrow \text{Master Key} \rightarrow \text{Chain Codes} \rightarrow \text{Infinite Addresses/Private Keys} $$

This system allows you to back up all your current and future addresses with those original 12 words, eliminating the need to back up hundreds of individual private keys.

In summary: Protect your 12 words with the utmost care. They are the single most important security feature you own.

That’s an excellent and crucial question about security!

No, your 12 words (often called a seed phrase or recovery phrase) are not your private key, but they are the master key that can generate all of your individual private keys.

🔑 Seed Phrase vs. Private Key

The relationship is hierarchical:

1. The 12-Word Seed Phrase (Master Key)

• What it is: A sequence of 12 (or 24) simple English words generated using a standard like BIP-39.
• Its Power: It is the source material used to generate everything else. It is passed through a cryptographic function to create a master private key.
• Analogy: Think of the seed phrase as the master login password for your entire safe. Losing it means losing access to all your funds, and anyone who finds it gains full control.

2. The Private Key (Individual Key)

• What it is: A long, secret, unique alphanumeric string (typically 256 bits of data).
• Its Power: It controls the funds for a single Bitcoin address. You need the private key associated with a specific address to sign and spend the UTXOs locked to that address.
• Analogy: This is the individual key to one specific lockbox inside the safe.

3. Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) Wallets

Your Umbrel node uses an HD wallet structure. This means the 12-word seed phrase is used to generate a tree structure:

$$ \text{Seed Phrase} \rightarrow \text{Master Key} \rightarrow \text{Chain Codes} \rightarrow \text{Infinite Addresses/Private Keys} $$

This system allows you to back up all your current and future addresses with those original 12 words, eliminating the need to back up hundreds of individual private keys.

In summary: Protect your 12 words with the utmost care. They are the single most important security feature you own.

Other services to deploy?

Interested to discover similar services that you can self-host with Docker? - Check this out: