I got Jellyfin up and running, it’s 10/10. I love this thing, and it reinvigorated my love for watching movies. So I decided to tackle all the other services I wanted, starting with Paperless-ngx…

What a nightmare. It doesn’t have a Windows install so I made an Ubuntu VM. Don’t get me started on Ubuntu. I just spent about 12hrs trying to get Portainer to cooperate and had to give up. I tried just installing Paperless the “normal way” and had to give up on that too.

My point: if you’re getting started selfhosting you have to embrace and accept the self-inflicted punishment. Good luck everybody, I don’t know if I can keep choosing to get disappointed.

Edit: good news! Almost everything I wanted to do is covered by Jellyfin which can be done in Windows.

  • Eager EagleEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    I recently ditched Portainer entirely - it looks good, but when debugging anything it is really not helpful, often getting in the way. And if it runs on the first try I don’t need a web interface.

    My tips:

    • Run self hosted things on Linux and open their webpages on Windows if you really want or need to keep using Win.
    • Prefer docker compose “stacks” over docker directly or native installs. Personally, I just use 4 sub-commands for pretty much everything I do: up, down, pull and logs. You (probably) don’t need Portainer.
    • If after 1. making sure the docker-compose.yaml is right, 2. setting up the .env file if present, and 3. following the instructions in their README; a container stack doesn’t run after 2 or 3 attempts: copy the error message and search their GitHub issues - chances are someone else also faced that problem. If you can’t find anything similar, open a new issue.
    • @MelcoEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • Solar BearEnglish
        4•1 year ago

        I use Portainer a lot and have no issues with it. There’s very little you can’t do without Portainer though, it’s just a convenient web frontend to access Docker tools. It’s helpful if you manage a lot of stuff or multiple hosts. I also use it at work to expose basic management to members of my team who aren’t Linux or Docker savvy.

      • @talbotEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        It’s essentially a GUI for Docker. It has its own quirks that, in my opinion, don’t match Docker’s UX and can make it more complicated to customize deployment. But Portainer can make multiple environments or dozens of containers easier to manage. e.g. I do most of the actual work using compose yamls but use Portainer as a reference to organize subnets, ports, and volumes. Or if I’m unsure what the problem is and just want to see all the details of each container faster.