FarraigePlaisteach

I have a QNAP NAS which uses RAID 5 across 3 HDDs. There are lots of good videos online for setting up RAID (even DIY solutions using linux), but how do I know when there's a problem and what's the typical way to maintain it?

I'm guessing that these systems log an indication somewhere that a disk is about to fail, and when I see that log entry I should power down the system and replace the disk with one of the exact same size. Is that right?

Edit: I have found a good overview here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=OhzrPInWMyo

In essence, he's saying:

1. Enable a recycle bin feature so that accidentally deleted files can be recovered.
2. If the device itself (not the disks) fails, one option is to replace the device and insert the disks in the same order as before. But there's a chance that the disks were corrupted by the failing device, in which case the next point is what you need.
3. EXT4 is a common filesystem format with QNAP and specialised recovery software can help you recover information from the disks. He demonstrates Hetman RAID recovery. You will need to connect all disks simultaneously though, so if you don't have enough ports for this you'll need to get an adaptor of some kind.
4. If just a single disk has failed, then in theory you should just be able to replace it, but there can be complications, which he discusses at 6:37 in the video (the video is just 7:51 duration).
5. RAID is not a backup. Please backup your data too.

I'm considering getting back to self-hosting again, but I remember a problem I never quite figured out.

My first services were a gemini server and lighttpd server and these were easy to set up, very satisfying and continue to work well for years. I also have FreshRSS and Calibre-web running well here.

But as I try to add more, sometimes instructions would include apache settings that clashed with the apache settings for something else. The instructions assume I don't already have apache installed and can just apply any settings I want.

Another issue, the new service might take over the domain, becoming the default service for the domain. I'm assuming that this is a port issue but I don't know.

Then there were docker containers. Some used docker compose while some did not.

One that I just couldn't get working was Nextcloud, which I wanted to host surveys from. They won't answer my support questions on their community hub unless I set up SSL though (which I don't plan on doing).

Does anyone have general advice on these issues? If it's just part of the difficulty of self-hosting, then maybe it's not for me. Too much time and energy was getting spent on it.

Thanks!

Can anyone who has experience with both share a recommendation? I’m interested in the user side of things for ebooks (no comics) but also ease of installation and maintenance.

I currently use Calibre-web and while it runs well, I find it cumbersome to organize my books through it.

Edit: great responses, thank you. I do like the idea of just having the epubs in a folder and share those but at least on my setup, the desktop Calibrw app doesn’t open libraries that are mounted from remote locations. They also advise against it.

So for now I guess it’s a choice between a local folder or calibre -web