Ubuntu home server: week one

After one week of running my home server, the results are in. Things have been going really well so far. The server is Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS on a repurposed Lenovo IdeaPad 5 14ITL05 (2021) with Core i5, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage.

Electricity usage is very low; here’s a picture of a pretty graph from my Tapo smart plug:

For the week, the total amount of electricity used is 0.44kWh which is awesome, as it has only cost £0.11 to run. At this rate, the total cost for a year would be the extortionate amount of £5.72. 🙂️ Where would I find a VPS with the same specs for that price?

Power monitoring shows that I’m averaging around 2 watts. Yes, there are some spikes from when I charged the battery last weekend, but as can be seen, this is humming along on a trickle charge.

I still only have Jellyfin and a few of my own Python automation scripts on here, having finally completed migrating everything from my VPS.

Aside from the standard Ubuntu install, I have installed mail utils to enable the sending of e-mails. To ensure that all is well, I have a heartbeat e-mail sent to me every morning at 07:00 GMT and so far, there have been no failures.

Ubuntu 24 is great but my, how Ubuntu has changed. The immediate put-off came when I first connected via SSH and was greeted by the MOTD junk. Thankfully, a quick-and-dirty switch-off is available by creating a silence flag file:

touch $HOME/.hushlogin

Brilliant, and “Hurray for the sounds of f*****g silence!” as Nicolas Cage said in Con Air (1997). Trust Ubuntu to come up with a way of shamelessly self-promoting their other warez via MOTD in addition to the information they already collect.

What next?

Week two, that’s what’s next. I have sunset quite a few of the projects for which I required a VPS. I’m not particularly looking to self-host things just for the sake of it. I do have a real need for Jellyfin and a few of my own automation scripts like my reminder bot, for example. Besides those, I don’t desperately need to add anything else onto the server. Yet.

I will get the itch again one day soon, no doubt about that. But for now, I’m happy with the results and will continue this way for a while.