What's new at ElfHosted?

Introducing Joplin Server

Today's new app is a fresh request from one of our fellow elfies.. Joplin is a 100% open-source , markdown-driven note-taking app, similar to Obsidian or Logseq. There are apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux, even a terminal app!

Joplin Server is the open-source version of the sync engine behind https://joplincloud.com, which takes you beyond simple apps, by enabling cross-device sync, sharing, publishing, etc.

Adding Joplin Server to your "Elf Stack" will let you utilize your ElfStorage (pass go, collect 100GB) for storing notes, attachments, etc.

The "publish note" feature is pretty - here's an example of what a published note looks like - it's published by joplin-server (so you can edit it with any client on any device), and it's auto-updated whenever the note is updated.

If you don't trust a seedy seedbox host with your super secret notes (and why should you?), you can enable E2E encryption in the client apps, which (like Seafile) means that all that's stored in ElfStorage is the encrypted blobs, and some metadata in the postgresql database.

When is SSO provided?

I had feedback from a user today after a recent post about exposing various app APIs without SSO, pointing out that that SSO was applied a little inconsistently across our apps. For example, Jellyseerr was exposed publically (it has strong auth and is used to share media requests), but Overseerr (of which Jellyseer is a fork) was not!

This is now fixed

To clarify, here's how SSO is applied, based on the intended audience / purpose of an app:

1. Apps that only you (the user) would use, are behind SSO without any native auth, where possible. This includes download clients, apps without auth (openbooks), Arrs, etc (although these can be optionally exposed to a limited degree)
2. Apps which you might want to share (Plex, Navidrome, Kavita, Overseer, etc) and which provide their own trusted auth, are exposed without SSO, since their entire purpose is to share media / content with a wider audience than just yourself!

Introducing Miniflux

I've been a fan of Miniflux since I publicaly ditched TinyTinyRSS for it, 6 years ago. (read all about it!)

Miniflux is part of a class of apps I'm hoping to add more of - standalone apps which leverage an external database backend (like MySQL or postgreSQL). In this class we already have Seafile and Mattermost, and I hope to add NextCloud in the near future. (and hopefully eventually Radarr and Sonarr!)

Using a "real" database (as opposed to sqlite) makes backup / migration a little tricker, but I've implemented automatic daily backups for the database component (they'll go to /storage/elfstorage/backups/<app>/), alongside whatever backup / export option the app natively provides.

See more on the app page, or perform a 24h trial / subscription at the store!

More news...

Exposing Arr/Downloader apps without SSO

Until now, when a user has asked

"how can I access my media apps with NZB360 or Lunasea?"

The answer has been:

"sorry, the SSO which protects the apps relies on a browser cookie, which won't work in a separate app".

From today though, the answer is:

Change your API key / password, subscribe to an "Exposed!" service, and enjoy your exposed access!

Read further for details about how it works, and why..

New basic streaming bundles

As alluded to a few days ago, now that we can sell storage in 1TB "chunks", I've created some discounted bundles in the store for minimal streaming stacks.

For users who just want to get started with the basic toolset for media management, we now have bundles with Jellyfin/Plex/Emby, Radarr, Sonarr, and SABnzbd, with the option for 1TB extra storage bundled in.

The pricing is a bit of an experiment - feel free to send feedback re how you think these stack up :)

ElfStorage refactored, 100GB free, 40% cheaper

ElfStorage is our internal storage platform, providing basic network-attached storage for new users, and users who choose not to BYOS.

Following some recent feedback, we've made the following changes:

1. Initially sized at a puny 10Gb, all users now get 100Gb storage in /storage/elfstorage for FREE with their account.

2. ElfStorage is now a daily subscription (previously monthly), so that it can be added to existing subscriptions and funded with ElfBuckz, rather than being a totally separate, monthly subscription. This also makes it easier to try out with your initial $10 ElfBuckz.

3. ElfStorage's monthly price is now 40% cheaper, at $6/TB, instead of $10/TB ($0.20/day)

Read more for ElfStorage questions, Seafile fixes, and app bundles..

Downloader Dashboard stats

If you're an SABnzbd user, you may have noticed a little error icon over your SABnzbd link on your dashboard. This is where your download stats are supposed to be displayed, but due to the trickery that our SSO plays with CORS, this wasn't happening.

The trickery is now fixed, so enjoy your beautiful dashboard!

Oh, and qBittorrent users, there's a little surprise in there for you too:

(sorry ruTorrent users, no love for you yet, although the Homer dashboard does support ruTorrent, it doesn't send your credentials via cookies, so doesn't work with our SSO)

Our Elf-erral program, 10% for life!

Having a base platform nice and stable, we're now looking for more users, and one option I'm going to try is a referral ("elf-erral") program. The plan may be subject to change, depending on how the plugin / user flow actually works, but for now, here's the deal:

1. Every user gets a unique referral URL, both on their "my account" page, and on every product page in the store.
2. When a someone (not you!) uses your referal link, signs up, exhausts their free $10 ElfBuckz, and then tops up their ElfBuckz balance, you get 10% of all their future ElfBuckz top-ups. For life.

Given the minimum ElfBuckz top-up is $10, if you refer 10 users, you'll end up with at least $10 (10 x 10% of $10) credit to use for... buying more ElfBuckz! 💪

Introducing Openbooks

Today we added Openbooks, a tool which allows you to download ebooks from irc.irchighway.net quickly and easily.

Currently, Openbooks is hard-coded to save downloaded content to /storage/elfstorage/downloads/completed/books, and changing this is non-trivial, since it's a commandline argument fed to the application binary, rather than a user-configurable UI setting. If changing the download location is important to you, we may be able to effect this in future using ElfBot.

While Readarr -> Openbooks -> Calibre -> Calibre-Web would be the "holy grail", it doesn't look like we'll see Readarr integration. However, I have noticed some issues on the Openbooks GitHub repo which explain how to setup a Calibre "auto-add" directory, which would create the "slightly-less-holy grail" of Openbooks -> Calibre -> Calibre-Web. For this to work, we need to switch to the VNC-in-browser version of Calibre, which I'll try to do over the next few days.

See more on the app page, or perform a 24h trial / subscription at the store!

More news...

Beware exhausted ElfBuckz

Some users noticed today that their ElfBuckz balaces were exhausted, or near-to-exhausted. Currently, the system won't tell you if your ElfBuckz are running close to empty, it'll just tell you that your renewals failed, and leave you to figure out why!

I have a plan to send out notification emails re low balances, but for now, check in on your ElfBuckz balance occasionally to make sure you've got enough! You can also subscribe to a monthly ElfBuckz topup once you've got a handle on your expected usage requirements.

Added SSH Rclone mounts

We had our first request from a user wanting to mount data from a seedbox provider, in order to run an app not supported by that provider (Pyload). Consequently, we now have an SSH rclone mount product group for such a configuration. One interesting discovery was that the password submitted when you place the order needs to be an rclone obscured password (which is not really secure, since rclone can decode it again, but it prevents casual "shouldersurfing").