Plex, Torrenting, PiHole, oh my

[Kane One]

Hi Geek Emporium,

I know this forum seems to be mostly focused on gaming, but I thought I’d ask you all to rate my home networking/media setup.

Raspberry Pi: docker container running WireGuard and another running PiHole. PiHole has the DNS pointing to NordVPN’s SmartDNS to get around blackouts on ESPN+ and MLB.tv

Router: RT-AX86U with the DNS pointing to the PiHole

Another Raspberry Pi: docker container running Plex

On my phone, I have WireGuard set up to automatically connect to my home VPN so I have the benefits of using PiHole wherever I am.

On every home device, since the router is pointing to PiHole as the DNS, I don’t need to configure anything there.

The only open port is for WireGuard. I didn’t need to open ports for PiHole and Plex because I can connect to those through the VPN.

Future enhancements:

Install qBitTorrent on a third Raspberry Pi which I already own, and have that container and Plex both be able to access an external hard drive as an NFS. This third device will be setup to use NordVPN.

I tried adding NordVPN on the router level, but internet worked only on my laptop, but somehow not my phone. Really I’ll only need that for torrenting anyway, so I’m fine only having that setup on this one Pi.

Are any of you doing anything similar?

Also just in case this needs to be said to the mods: everything above that I mentioned is legal. Torrenting and VPNs are both legal.

Click to read more...

 

[aleshemsky83]

Yeah I do have a plex set-up its really easy, actually theres a lot of stuff at my library I like to rip too, also plexs free streaming has gotten kind of underrated it has a nice condensed selection. My only issue is its very hard to figure out how to setup remote streaming on plex (i.e. streaming outside your home wi-fi network), you need to mess with your router settings, I've tried again and again but it never really pans out.

I'm looking to setup a Pi-hole too but to be honest its gotten so expensive to buy a raspberry pi im probably just gonna buy an old optiplex and see if that will work to setup. I can get those off facebook for like $50

 

[Kane One]

Yeah I do have a plex set-up its really easy, actually theres a lot of stuff at my library I like to rip too, also plexs free streaming has gotten kind of underrated it has a nice condensed selection. My only issue is its very hard to figure out how to setup remote streaming on plex (i.e. streaming outside your home wi-fi network), you need to mess with your router settings, I've tried again and again but it never really pans out.

I'm looking to setup a Pi-hole too but to be honest its gotten so expensive to buy a raspberry pi im probably just gonna buy an old optiplex and see if that will work to setup. I can get those off facebook for like $50

Yeah Pi’s themselves are cheap, but impossible to find. I had to buy a bunch of starter kits that come with a case, wires/adapters, etc, even though I just ended up throwing that stuff out since I just want the Pi.

But to get Plex outside your wifi, there’s a bunch of ports you’d have to open. I preferred to not do that and instead run my own VPN.

I didn’t mind spending the money on all these Pi’s (I have 4) mostly because I’m a software developer and thought I’d use it to learn docker, so I got my money’s worth there. Then it just evolved into this setup.

 

[Kane One]

Just in case anyone was interested (doubt it lol), I set up the third Pi to run an NFS server for an 8TB external hard drive (HDD because I wasn’t willing to spend a lot on an SSD), another container that runs NordVPN, and another for qBitTorrent. Pretty flawless so far.

 

[Kane One]

Since there’s clearly an overwhelming amount of interested people here, I’d thought I’d share an update.

On yet another Raspberri Pi, I’m running two containers:

1. NordVPN just for networking for the container below.
2. A pretty neat docker image called iptv-proxy.

The proxy takes an input m3u file that you would normally upload into an IPTV player and returns a new m3u file with all the URLs pointing to the proxy.

By doing this, I can have an IPTV player on my TV where the connection for streaming would go through a VPN (container 1), because I don’t want a VPN running on my entire network, and instead only want a VPN to be used for specific use-cases.

Then because every IPTV player for LG TVs are terrible, I bought an Amazon Firestick and jailbroke it so I can install TiviMate which is probably the best IPTV player available. Then TiviMate is pointing to the m3u file which comes from the IPTV proxy container.

Thanks for joining my TED Talk.

@Viqsi if you’re interested

 

[Viqsi]

On every home device, since the router is pointing to PiHole as the DNS, I don’t need to configure anything there.

How is PiHole doing for y'all? I keep considering trying to sell folks here on it but I'm not familiar enough with it or how to adapt it to our setup (I'm in an attached rental housing arrangement with family members, so we've got shared AT&T fiber, and we got so exhausted with trying to roll our own stuff over years and years that we ended up going as-low-cost-as-possible Ubiquiti for damn near everything. Very few Pis involved; most of our stuff is qemu/kvm virtual machines on a rackmount server we got surplus some time ago.)

I know I should be helpful and get our VPN capabilities working again someday - Papa would love to do that again. I should, but I still have too many traumatic flashbacks. Y'see, back when we set it up originally, WireGuard didn't exist yet AND we were trying to use Samba shares over the Internet, so I found a nice tutorial on how to set up OpenVPN bridging and oh g-d its all coming back to me again make it stop make it stop

* * *​

Yeah I do have a plex set-up its really easy, actually theres a lot of stuff at my library I like to rip too, also plexs free streaming has gotten kind of underrated it has a nice condensed selection. My only issue is its very hard to figure out how to setup remote streaming on plex (i.e. streaming outside your home wi-fi network), you need to mess with your router settings, I've tried again and again but it never really pans out.

My father and siblings are the ones who mess with Plex, not me, but he seems to have found that the most effective means of sharing with them involves passing hard drives around.

 

[Kane One]

I don’t notice any sort of internet speed increase due to blocking ads, although some people will claim otherwise.

I mostly just use it because I don’t like the thought of my smart TV sending all the telemetry data to their servers, as it’s none of their business. Looking at the dashboard, I see there were 24k requests that attempted to go out in the past 24 hours. 10.5k of those were from my f***ing TV.

And now that I just bought that Amazon Firestick, I’m sure Amazon will try to take some liberties with my data, which now won’t happen.

PiHole should still be used alongside an ad-blocker on your browsers, because PiHole is really a DNS blocker, not an ad-blocker. Some websites (YouTube and Reddit, for example) have their ads being served through the same DNS as their content provider, so PiHole can’t distinguish between ads and content, therefore PiHole cannot be used to block Reddit or YouTube ads.

 

[PK Cronin]

Since there’s clearly an overwhelming amount of interested people here, I’d thought I’d share an update.

On yet another Raspberri Pi, I’m running two containers:

1. NordVPN just for networking for the container below.
2. A pretty neat docker image called iptv-proxy.

The proxy takes an input m3u file that you would normally upload into an IPTV player and returns a new m3u file with all the URLs pointing to the proxy.

By doing this, I can have an IPTV player on my TV where the connection for streaming would go through a VPN (container 1), because I don’t want a VPN running on my entire network, and instead only want a VPN to be used for specific use-cases.

Then because every IPTV player for LG TVs are terrible, I bought an Amazon Firestick and jailbroke it so I can install TiviMate which is probably the best IPTV player available. Then TiviMate is pointing to the m3u file which comes from the IPTV proxy container.

Thanks for joining my TED Talk.

@Viqsi if you’re interested

I'm definitely interested and enjoy reading what other people are doing.

I set up a Plex account 10-15 years ago and really enjoyed it, but it was a little cumbersome at the time and I didn't feel safe with automatically torrenting/uploading to Plex. Might have to dip my toes back in the water and see if anything has improved over all this time.

 

[dapowl]

Neat Topic, subscribed

where do you get your m3u from

 

[Kane One]

Neat Topic, subscribed

where do you get your m3u from

I don’t want to share any on HF as it’s probably not allowed, but you can search Google for good IPTV providers.

 

[Supermassive]

I have the lifetime Plex subscription and a good VPN. Plex actually runs well over the VPN to remote access. I have a few 12 tb drives hooked up. I'm not techy, thankfully Plex is an easy set-up.

 

[Kane One]

I have the lifetime Plex subscription and a good VPN. Plex actually runs well over the VPN to remote access. I have a few 12 tb drives hooked up. I'm not techy, thankfully Plex is an easy set-up.

Yep, this is how I have it set up.

For myself to access remotely, I use a VPN to my home network.

 

[Kane One]

So an update on that IPTV proxy container I’m running. It unfortunately doesn’t redirect the channel logos or the EPG (the guide) through the proxy, so I’m working on making my own.

I’m not a Python person, but a simple Flask proxy made the most sense to me, rather than a .NET web app that I’m more familiar with from work.

GitHub - parker1992/iptv-proxy: Simple Flask proxy app for m3u files.

Simple Flask proxy app for m3u files. Contribute to parker1992/iptv-proxy development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Feel free to critique.

 

[Kane One]

Ok another update.

The proxy service I made works flawlessly so far.

 

[Viqsi]

So an update on that IPTV proxy container I’m running. It unfortunately doesn’t redirect the channel logos or the EPG (the guide) through the proxy, so I’m working on making my own.

I’m not a Python person, but a simple Flask proxy made the most sense to me, rather than a .NET web app that I’m more familiar with from work.

GitHub - parker1992/iptv-proxy: Simple Flask proxy app for m3u files.

Simple Flask proxy app for m3u files. Contribute to parker1992/iptv-proxy development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Feel free to critique.

As a fellow programmer and as a documentation hound I am obliged to condemn you on your lack of comments.

 

[Kane One]

As a fellow programmer and as a documentation hound I am obliged to condemn you on your lack of comments.

It’s sElF dOcUmEnTiNg

Lol let me go through it later today and add comments to the sections that may look unclear.

 

[Kane One]

As a fellow programmer and as a documentation hound I am obliged to condemn you on your lack of comments.

I just added some comments to the code. Maybe tonight/tomorrow I'll add more to the README on how to actually use it and what this actually does.

 

[Kane One]

As a fellow programmer and as a documentation hound I am obliged to condemn you on your lack of comments.

A few hours ago I updated the README with a better description of what the repo does and how to use it with docker.

 

[Supermassive]

As a Steam Deck owner, can confirm that there is a Plex app for Steam Deck, and it rocks.