I’m currently running homebridge and pihole from an older Lenovo (i5, 256 SSD, 8GB ram) laptop (tweaked power settings to allow idle when closed) hardwired into a switch. I am currently running Ubuntu Server LTS, and have uptime ~2 weeks. I’m a little worried about reliability, I was originally using Ubuntu Desktop LTS, and I had an issue with the OS crashing after a 4 days of basically idle…

So my question is, is this a feasible solution? Should I pursue something like a SBC or migrate the machine to an old desktop instead? I don’t mind working on the machine occasionally, performing maintenance etc but I don’t want to have to troubleshoot the machine on a weekly basis.

I also would like to get into more self hosting, I find it to be super interesting and fun, does anyone have any projects they wouldn’t mind recommending or sharing?

Thanks guys!

  • poVoqEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    If you have stability issues, check the RAM. Sometimes they are slightly faulty but you never notice when rebooting regularly.

    But yes hosting stuff on an old laptop is perfectly feasible and IMHO recommended for beginners.

    The main problem is usually that you outgrow the limited number of SATA and/or NVMe ports for adding additional storage and USB3 to SATA adapters can be a bit too flaky for building a raid or similar.