Freedom Box: Host your own home privacy server with easy self install packages?

“nextcloud OS” to start selfshosting https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/

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Yes I use nextcloudpi highly recommended.

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As a Noobie to home server hosting ive decided to take the plunge and order a Freedombox, ive only just placed the order tonight! & should hopefully arrive in 3 days! I am not sure what the nextcloud thing does or if i need it and fear it maybe too technical for me. I looked at younohost site also; but found pages were a bit vague and lacking in information (personally). The freedombox one seems to be the easiest one (i hope), then i can play around at setup my own Riot matrix server, which i hope will eventually get myself.friends & family off whatsapp. I`m excited for it to arrive, dare i say every household in the modern age could benefit from this and similar devices !!

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I installed Debian on an old net top and installed Freedombox from the Debian repositories. All very straightforward. I then installed ejabberd and a had problem with server to server connections between my server and conversations.im. I spent ages messing with the ejabberd config file to no avail. Eventually I got chatting on the ejabberd public channel and one of the participants helped me to deduce that my pi-hole wasn’t resolving the dns requests correctly. The freedombox is no longer using the pi-hole until I get a chance to investigate and ejabberd is working beautifully. I’ll be trying other apps soon and may post here of any problems.

Do they offer a version with all the software preinstalled? I see Internet cube does, but those websites are all in French…

A Freedombox instance has a web front end through which apps are installed. It really is point and click, with usable default configurations set up by the Freedombox software. If you need or want to then you can play around with the configuration files for installed apps directly but this should only be necessary if the standard configuration is unsuitable for you. In my case the problem I encountered was nothing to do with either Freedombox or ejabberd but rather, my non-standard LAN DNS setup. If you have an old machine lying around and a bit of time to play with it then I’d say give it a try.

Yes, the Physical Freedombox in the main post picture comes with a SD Card which acts as its primary bootup drive with the software pre-installed for you (according to their website).

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I only just discovered their forum, it isnt obvious on how to navigate to the link, i was looking for a forum link once beforee but it is kind of hidden, instead of “forum”, you have to click “get support” which then takes you to the forum. This may be a good place to look or post about your non-standard LAN DNS setup

I would have liked to have updated the main post with info about the pre installed SD card and their forum link but the edit function on the main post has vanished?! anyone know where it went? it would be useful if i could tidy up and add to the main post when new things are revealed.

Thanks for the tip but my dns problem is due to use of a pi-hole over tor. There’s nothing to be gained by having the freedombox use the pi-hole as its dns server so I’ll not bother trying to fix it.

Hi! I’ve always wondered how long would a sd card last in a home server. Because in other devices you read/write a few times but in a home server you will read/write a thousand times in a short time. So who can assure that you won’t loose all your data? Does Freedom Box has a backup feature for the sdcard itself using, for example, an external drive?
Thanks

The Pioneer freedombox has a native sata port, so i imagine u can set the intensive programs to use that for use with a sata drive or SSD, also has 2 usb slots.

My Pioneer Freedombox arrived today which was surprising (within 2 days), it is smaller than i thought it is about the width of a smart phone length is about half the length of a smartphone tho is quite beefy in depth maybe 3 or 4 smarphones deep lol. Sadly i cant run it yet, Im a bit annoyed it is supposed to come with a Micro SD card which has the bootup image, they Forgot to put inside the packaging box!! Ive sent them an e-mail, but it is frustrating Olimex couldnt get it right the 1st time. I doubt they will send a micro SD card by DHL this time so i`ll have to wait for snail mail so who knowns could be waiting a week or more… :slightly_frowning_face:

Bad luck :slightly_frowning_face:
A sata port for a ssd disk is nice.

Ive had a bit of a back and forth with Olimex heres what happened…

I informed them by e-mail that there was no MicroSD card included with the contents i received.

They replied “Please check contents again, it is in a small plastic bag taped the the front of the freedombox; and that they check their stuff before they send it and have so for 10 years”

They included a picture of how the contents should come arrived when opened, and sure enough on their picture is the microSD card in a plastic packet taped to the front of the box.

I replied that there was no packet with MicroSD card taped to the front of the box or that there was any tape or signs of tape on the pioneer freedombox, I even openened the cardboard box flat to check if it slipped into the folds etc i then told them im not here to argue, im not trying to scam you for a £12 card when ive just spent £88 and that is how it DID in fact arrive, with no card! ill buy my own, just to let me know where to get the latest image and instructions on how to burn the image to the SD card using win7.

Yes seems a bit random that in 10 years mine is the only issue…lol

Anyway the lesson here is get the smarphone out and record video of opening stuff so you have proof.

Now i`m off to look on ebay and pickup a 32gb MicroSD card…

Was looking on ebay when they e-mailed me this:

OK, I will send you one card by post.

This would be the first case FreedomBox is sent without card. I asked
our people to check our stock and all boards are WITH cards, so this
really is very odd.

So thats the story… i kind of wished i bought my own as i dont know how long it will take to reach me, but then i better off waiting as i would not have any use for a 32gb microSd card otherwise. (just hope it not a prank )

You can flash the OS you want with Etcher. The FreedomBox’s board is a Lime2, you’ll find (un)official images on this link. The SD card you’ll receive has an OS installed on it.

If it’s your first server, you can also try yunohost, it’s easy to start with.

And finally, it’s better for you to have two SD cards, because like hermano says, a sd card could not last a lot in a home server, depending on how intensively you use it.

Thanks for the advice, Olimex didnt answer the question about how to burn it ontop SD, i use one called Rufus for my windows needs but was not sure on how to prepare an image for debian, Ill check out Etcher. Yes a valid point SD cards can fail think i will invest in a 2nd SD card after all. The only other MicroSd card i own is for my phone which is 64gb.
The Pioneer Freedom box is Opensource hardware an Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 board tho i think it has a specially made image for it as Olimex provided this image directory
I had looked at younohost as a possibility but decided to go with Freedombox as i dont have a low energy spare old computer for it and would have had to buy a Pi or limeboard anyways. As the freedombox is a Lime2 board it may even be able to run yunohost, tho ill probably stick with the freedombox software (for now). I have yet to turn it on and try it, just waiting for the boot disk to arive by airmail. Im certainly suspicous after the missing card incident, hope this box works as advertised and there are no other surprises.

Congratulations on your new device! I think that Olimex is really cool, I like the whole idea, getting the parts and you can assemble it. They seem to have other cool boards too. I wish that development will continue and the hardware will be better in the future.

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They seem to have also a Server with Codi, Debian or Ubunto image. And planning to have with Nextcloud.
If I weren’t so afraid of not being capable of configuring dns/port/etc I would buy one.

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