What is a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB ram capable of? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- your_daddy_godfather · 2023-10-12 16:59 Is it capable of hosting XMPP, IRC, Email and a simple website altogether? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-10-12 17:09 *How long is a piece of string?* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OkOk-Go · 2023-10-12 17:12 Yes, it’s enough assuming all of that is for small-scale personal use. Email is going to be an unreliable pain. If you like people receiving your emails, don’t self host email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lumpyEggCharger · 2023-10-12 17:17 MySQL, pihole, nextcloud and secure pastebin. Bunch of dotnet and python apps. Also running a notification service. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- msanangelo · 2023-10-12 17:42 You can fit lots of stuff in 4gb of ram. Just pile on services till it starts running low. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jamesckelsall · 2023-10-12 17:57 If you have to ask whether a Pi 4 4GB is capable of hosting email, *definitely* don't self host email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m_vc · 2023-10-12 18:00 Almost anything. Mine has 1GB of ram and it can do vpn, nginx proxy and other stuff just fine. Use dietpi. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- puppetjazz · 2023-10-12 18:03 YOU CAN WATCH YOUTUBE AND XVIDEOS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- your_daddy_godfather · 2023-10-12 18:17 why for the email? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jamesckelsall · 2023-10-12 18:26 There's a very good reason why a lot of ISPs block port 25 in particular. Email is a security nightmare. The others you've asked about are available to be run more securely using ready-made stacks, but email really isn't possible to run securely without a lot of knowledge and a lot of work. Anyone with the knowledge to run an email server would know whether or not a Pi 4 is powerful enough for their needs (and how much RAM they're likely to need). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 64mb · 2023-10-12 18:39 *Slaps board of Pi* this bad boy can fit so much fucking dust in it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HerbSmokington420 · 2023-10-12 18:56 Anything she puts her mind to! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Marvin_the_Minsky · 2023-10-12 18:59 I serve several TB of Video movies, TV and music around the house. Jellyfin rocks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- topdollar3 · 2023-10-12 19:59 How many HDDs ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- topdollar3 · 2023-10-12 19:59 I love this distro ---------------------------------------------------------------------- anotherucfstudent · 2023-10-12 20:02 That he can do, indeed ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shybluechicken · 2023-10-12 20:17 Since I tried zimaboard I would never go back to RPI, personal preference I know but I love it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CrappyTan69 · 2023-10-12 20:26 And then, get another 😂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CloysterBrains · 2023-10-12 20:30 There are a lot of factors that go into whether a big server like Google will accept your email, it's so much work that it isn't worth it unless you really have to. Just "self host" on proton mail or something ---------------------------------------------------------------------- confused_manishi · 2023-10-12 20:33 I tried plex on RPi. It struggled when it had to transcode. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iQuickGaming · 2023-10-12 20:41 i run homeassistant, pihole, 2 projects of mine using NodeJS, nextcloud, a very simple static website and Nginx for some DNS customization like pointing nc.home to a specific port. My pi is a 4GB one and for now the used RAM is not even 1 GB. I run debian with no graphical interface ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iQuickGaming · 2023-10-12 20:42 x86 is so sweet yea ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TeeckleMeElmo · 2023-10-12 20:43 To be fair I my 8vcpu vm struggles with transcoding, so I wouldn't hold that against the pi. I got a little beelink box for jellyfin and it transcodes no issue with quicksync ---------------------------------------------------------------------- superminaren · 2023-10-12 20:44 As much as I think the potential for the Pi in Jellyfin exists, the hardware transcoding implementation on the software side doesn't support H265 fully yet which I would call part of the bare minimum to get up and running. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- idreamofjeanshorts · 2023-10-12 20:49 Pi 5 is out very soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Akujinnoninjin · 2023-10-12 20:53 Email is simply an utter nightmare to get working reliably unless you're a major player. 99% of email servers are spam generators, so it's very hard to become "trusted" by other servers and they'll silently ignore you. It's also trivially easy to *lose* that trust even if you do get it. You won't know that half your emails are being dropped until someone mentions they didn't receive something six months later. It's just not worth it for most people. This thread goes into it deeper: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/c omments/t8gqir/why_you_really_dont_want_to_selfhost_your_own/ And you'll see in the comments, even the people who *do* roll their own email warn that it's not for the faint of heart, and that they just put up with the issues. If you *really* want to self host some email, set up an account with a big provider/your ISP/protonmail/whatever and use it as a relay to a local server. The problems also really only extend to emailing externally - so you can set up something entirely local for catching notifications from your services, if that's all you need it for. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mshriver2 · 2023-10-12 21:04 And even if they can get around the port 25 block Gmail and other large email providers often block any emails coming in from a residential IP. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MRP_yt · 2023-10-12 21:04 I had Docker Container mini server running on RPi4 + HDD enclosure with 4x2TB drives for almost 2 years. If i remember correctly - i had 18 or 20 containers. Usual stuff like PiHole, Plex, Transmission, FileBrowser and other stuff. Not once i had any problems with this setup. One of the reasons i switched from RPi4 to Intel NUC + Proxmox - some of the stuff i self- host for work only available for x86 platforms. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- liveyourdreamsmax · 2023-10-12 21:05 Is capable of seven ---------------------------------------------------------------------- martinkrafft · 2023-10-12 21:07 or from any server without reputation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sowhatidoit · 2023-10-12 21:09 Ok here it goes... Many on this sub will start an echo chamber. They will tell you how you should never host e-mail. Never! And how this plan, and that host, is so much cheaper. It's not worth the headache. Oh the headaches. Bla bla bla. They think because they don't want to do it, no one else should. If you want to learn how to host your own e-mail. Do it! Just don't plan on using that e-mail for anything mission critical. At least not in the beginning. Oh and your Pi4 is more than enough to do what you are trying to. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sowhatidoit · 2023-10-12 21:10 Lol. So true. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sowhatidoit · 2023-10-12 21:11 Which version did you get? I love my Pis but I've been eyeing that Zimaboard ever since I doom scrolled and landed on TechnoTim's YT short about the Zimaboard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thalassinum · 2023-10-12 21:34 I'm using for hosting lots of stuff in docker, as well as Plex direct streams. As long as it doesn't have to transcode much its fine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thalassinum · 2023-10-12 21:36 Don't need to transcode though. Most devices can directstream completely fine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaulEngineer-89 · 2023-10-12 21:41 NEVER transcode. Do it as a background task offline. Even GPUs and desktop servers are best offline. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2023-10-12 21:43 That’s a great thread. That’s why you don’t want to host your own email. Well, if you’re planning to use it as a daily driver for an extended period of time. There’s guys who are out there with basically just managing that process as their full time job. (Not really, but almost — when does a hobbyist have that kind of free time?). You know there’s things like shinobi and private Servers that would likely see your server responding to port 25 in a few hours and it’s going to be game on for how good your security practices have been. I don’t want to expose my internal network to that as I’ll likely have file servers not too far off with security practices that are intended to be behind a firewall. But hey, if the guy wants to do it, he can. Also of note which may be mentioned elsewhere-without business class service at your location, most ISP’s block mail, http and other ports at their side, so you’re dead in the water anyway. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bagel42 · 2023-10-12 22:00 If you want email, just setup Zoho free ---------------------------------------------------------------------- S0litaire · 2023-10-12 22:24 If you \*\*really\*\* want to host your own email then grab a cheap/free domain name from somewhere and use that instead of your main domain/address for your testing ans setup Do all your learning on that email account and domain name that you can throw away. Once your comfortable then you can think about forgetting about moving your main address as it's not worth the hassle! :-D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- temotodochi · 2023-10-12 22:34 It's a great games console with [archive.org](https://archive.org) collection and retroPie installation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 0xParty · 2023-10-12 22:35 Mine runs OMV w/ Docker, Plex, Qbittorrent, Xteve as a virtual DVR for Plex feeding my IPTV into Plex, octobot, YouTube-dl web ui, various OSINT tools, MINIO.. no issues what so ever, but I’m the only user. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JrdnRgrs · 2023-10-12 22:59 Pretty much any containerized web app (pick any of the 100s posted here a week) that isn't doing any crazy amount of work in the background x20. Thats what I've got and still tons of cpu and ram overhead ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesha24 · 2023-10-12 23:11 Oh, it can run even more! Under one little condition - nobody uses them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RedQuirk · 2023-10-12 23:12 You can't download more ram ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sebampueromori · 2023-10-12 23:54 Yeah , wouldn't recommend running nextcloud on the pi if you host lots of images/video ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Marvin_the_Minsky · 2023-10-13 00:18 2 NVME 1 x 4TB for video installed in an Argon One case 1 x 2 TB serving music. It does struggle to transcode and serve video as a local host but seems to work fine serving video to Web clients in Mint on an i5 cpu, and to WiFi based fire sticks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fargenable · 2023-10-13 00:41 What this guy says, if you wanna do it, do not listen to any of the naysayers, just do it. An RPi can run sendmail, postfix, or qmail, I haven’t run SpamAssassin in a while, but it could run on 4GB system 10 years ago. Good luck! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- brianly · 2023-10-13 01:14 Does that change with Pi5? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mega_corvega · 2023-10-13 03:56 I have mine hooked up to my PS2 with a dead disc drive to serve ISOs over the Ethernet port. It hosts a samba share so I can just dump ISOs from any device on LAN. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lumpyEggCharger · 2023-10-13 04:01 I use it to back up my mobile phone media. I did suffer a crash once but I regularly export my data so that wasn't too bad. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- repocin · 2023-10-13 04:16 Unfortunately not. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hedonihilistic · 2023-10-13 04:53 I don't know how true this is. Yes it is very difficult to start your own email server, but if you can endure a little time where some of your emails may be bounced while you're building reputation, you can have your own email server. I've been running mine on a cloud provider for many years now. There are still some outlook servers that may bounce my email, but this happens extremely rarely. Otherwise my mail gets delivered everywhere. As long as you can set up dkim, reverse DNS, and all the other good stuff. Not very difficult to do and there are tutorials for all of this online. But yes, it is difficult. And you also have to care about your server, domain, etc. Is it worth it? An emphatic yes. I can do cool stuff with my email, and I have complete control (except of course I do have to trust my cloud provider). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gomme600 · 2023-10-13 05:06 And install zram ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr_Brightstar · 2023-10-13 05:15 why's that? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- northern_lights2 · 2023-10-13 06:50 That's why I run jellyfin with transcoding disabled. I'd rather have stutter than a low quality output in bad network conditions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ro55mo · 2023-10-13 06:50 I do self host my email and you can do it with 1 CPU core and 512MB of RAM although 1GB is more comfortable. I am in the fortunate position that I have a 'bespoke' ISP who provide static public IPs and allow customers to run services on domestic connections. I just rebuilt my email server on Debian 12 and it is running without issue. I have to get around to finishing the documentation and posting it.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sakhik2014 · 2023-10-13 07:05 Sorry if I am dumb. I haven't touched the gaming part yet in rpi. Can I run games like super mario like a http app and play it remotely from my laptop browser? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Javanaut018 · 2023-10-13 07:30 Nextcloud, Syncthing, Kodi, Chia full_node, gitolite (git server), asterisk (telephony server), OpenHAB (home automation), MQTT, a file server. It could run most or all of these simultaneously. A mail server (e.g. postfix/dovecot/rspamd) would be the service with least resource consumption of all these but it would require a static IP address and some amount of skill and service effort. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- temotodochi · 2023-10-13 07:30 I have no idea if that would work, maybe if there's a streaming component you could install in a linux (retropie). How the retropie works is that you have a wireless controller (ps3 or similar) and HDMI out to the screen you want to use. Then you just play whatever you have in the pie library. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rymn · 2023-10-13 08:00 Keeping time ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mikey079-kun · 2023-10-13 08:13 A quick sub question, what could one do if he has around 11 of these? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- confused_manishi · 2023-10-13 08:47 How do I do that? Using a separate program? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Charming-Molasses-22 · 2023-10-13 08:56 People forget that old servers used to run just fine on way less capable hardware. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FantasticLifeguard62 · 2023-10-13 09:08 zram compresses data in ram and basically allows you to fit more data in the same chip space at the expense of a little cpu due to compression/decompression. It worked out well for me on a pi 3 when 1gb of ram was not enough ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shybluechicken · 2023-10-13 09:09 832 with 8GB of ram. If you are in the fence maybe good to wait until black Friday and see if there is a good deal 🙏 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FantasticLifeguard62 · 2023-10-13 09:12 Makes sense if that's the only reason you would require transcode is due poor network speeds and not that of incompatible codecs on the client that would prevent any display/audio at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- northern_lights2 · 2023-10-13 09:39 Actually there has been a codec issue on my android once, but it got fixed after I set MX Player / VLC as the external video player in the android app. I mostly watch content on my laptop. I have been buying cheap snapdragon flagships - Poco F1 with 845 and then Mi 11x with SD 870 for around USD 250. 888, 8gen1 seem bad w.r.t battery. 8gen2 is too pricey. My laptop has RTX 2060 and 4800H, can decode everything - probably even on pure CPU. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RedQuirk · 2023-10-13 10:02 That’s interesting, I’ll look into it, but ram physical cannot be downloaded however more ram space can be made. It’s interesting concept but will never be as fast as upgrading the ram memory card ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FantasticLifeguard62 · 2023-10-13 10:07 Indeed it's not an upgrade replacement but it's good enough to get that little bit extra to prevent a crash if you need just a little extra for the one off spikes if you have extra cpu cycles to spare. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Grand_Ad_2544 · 2023-10-13 10:45 I run my sendmail, spamassassin, dovecot, OpenVPN, apache/ wordpress website and a couple of other services on a t2.micro instance 1GB RAM on AWS and have been doing so with no issues regarding load for 12 years. I had self hosted those services on a server at my house prior but I had wanted to change home internet to an ISP that would not issue static IPs and chose to move the services to AWS. 1 year later a hurricane took power down to my house for a week and my services just kept running reliably on AWS in the cloud The comments on DKIM, SPF, spamassassin, reverse DNS are all apropos. Consider how much traffic you want to support and set appropriate connection and thread limits on each service configuration. If you’re running this for an extended time with multiple users you should setup some cron/ batch scripts to auto delete mail older than a few weeks from user spam and trash folders. Don’t forget to run backup jobs on the filesystems holding your maildir I have over 20 years of email on my AWS server - and fully automated daily backups. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- plaquette · 2023-10-13 11:44 uh thats super cool! care to elaborate? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mega_corvega · 2023-10-13 11:49 Sure thing, [here’s the github](https://github.com/toolboc/psx-pi- smbshare) which has everything you need! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrmorningstar1769 · 2023-10-13 11:55 It is very capable. I'm running like 25 containers, nextcloud aio, tp link omada controller, all the arr containers, paperless, jellyfin, homeassistant, adg home with 20% ram free. But don't host your own email, not on pi not on anything, just don't. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sebampueromori · 2023-10-13 11:56 Backups are fine. I use nextcloud as a Google photos replacement and installed memories and face recognition plug-in , a pi can't handle that if you have 5k+ photos. I put nextcloud on a laptop that runs as a server afterwards ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kenman345 · 2023-10-13 11:57 Yea, as much as I love self hosting when I can, the internet has some unsavory characters, which has ruined self hosted email services from being received by others well, as well as becoming a security nightmare. Self host basically everything else if you want to though, but email servers are not for the faint of heart ---------------------------------------------------------------------- speaksoftly_bigstick · 2023-10-13 12:17 I have hosted my own email exchange server from home. It is not an easy task. Even for non-MS email servers, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome when "self hosting." It's just not worth the trouble with setup, upkeep, monitoring, security, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lumpyEggCharger · 2023-10-13 12:40 5k+ photos in the same folder, or across the sd-card? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lewisczech · 2023-10-13 13:09 how so? I heard it does support HEVC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adoteq · 2023-10-13 14:31 I have 5 of them. I would like to know aswell ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mcc0unt · 2023-10-13 14:40 Build an crazy docker swarm or Kubernetes-cluster ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mmslist · 2023-10-13 14:40 Yes, it's feasible with knowledge and a bit of time spent on it. However, I do agree that on a residential internet connection, it's more difficult to get there. You usually have dynamic IP and can't properly set rdns records, as examples of a couple of things that would impact deliverability. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- your_daddy_godfather · 2023-10-13 14:43 ayoo whatchu doin with 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hedonihilistic · 2023-10-13 14:56 Yes I would definitely not recommend this on a residential Internet connection. At a minimum, a VPS is needed. Local hosting increases complexity a lot and in most cases is not worth it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sebampueromori · 2023-10-13 17:49 No, I wouldn't never store such content in the SD card. Use hdd/sdd external storage ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _Morlack · 2023-10-13 18:45 Some of my colleagues selfhost email servers. One of them has a complete solution (send and receive emails) from his own server (and has even a multiple "region", his own home and his parent home). Another one has a hybrid solution: he receives the email on his own server but send emails with aws ses, the free tier is enough for his needs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- plaquette · 2023-10-14 06:21 thank you for the info! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sakhik2014 · 2023-10-14 07:34 Oh ok. Understood. Thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- abehidek · 2023-10-15 03:03 Allows to do some experimentation with cluster computing, there's a youtube video of someone doing that actually for their home lab, it's interesting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r4nchy · 2023-10-15 07:38 Well you can run many services, as most of them take resources only when they are being used, but in general most of them just run with little RAM memory as possible. But just remember to auto-start them (services/scripts) at specific interval between them after the pi starts/reboots. It doesn't really matter but, if you don't then the pi heats up a lot. SO basically I have 5-15sec interval between each service depending on their usage history. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- r4nchy · 2023-10-15 07:47 hdd is best, ssd will fail without any indication and its non recoverable