I bought a Lenovo Mini PC on ebay for like $70 with the goal of turning it into my 24/7 running seedbox. I want to do this so I can free up my main computer from always having to be on and running qBittorent. Not to mention also having to run a VPN constantly for all that computers internet traffic.
What’s the best way to go about this ?
My attempts haven’t been so great. Can’t seem to RDP into the machine because it’s using a VPN, so it’s not on the same network. So I think I’d need to setup a domain that would point to it publicly ? Which sounds risky.
I run a 2018 mac mini as a seedbox. Just set the vpn to not apply to local network and I can access via the lan for everything from smb to remote control. Main issue is the watts needed to handle encryption for so many peers. Probably switch to M1 at some point.
I use a similar setup to what you’re trying to do, but with the client running in a VM over OpenVPN. As u/ElectronGuru said, you need to get the VPN to tunnel only non-local traffic. For OpenVPN, a few lines added to the config accomplishes that.
You’re gonna want to look into a remote management application. I use RealVNC Server but that’s not free. I think someone mentioned Google Remote desktop is free though and it won’t matter if it’s connected to a VPN Server since the agent will manage that for you. Unless the VPN provider blocks the ports used by Google Remote Desktop.
There’s also the alternative of just setting up split tunneling to prevent your local network from being inaccessible by the VPN.
A third more fun option would be to use Cloudflared Zero Trust. Requires a little more work but gives you a lot of manageability. You’ll learn a lot from it.
That all said, your seedbox will still be eating up your upload bandwidth. If you really want to be all in I would get a separate internet circuit to dedicate for it. Naturally this is a premium move thats not necessary, but it would allow you to run your seedbox 24/7 without any impact on your primary internet connection.
Go to a provider that allows you to use the standard OpenVPN client or enable LAN access or disable leak protection in their client to allow local connections.
You now have been warned that you’ll need to find a way yourself to make OpenVPN GUI automatically connect on startup
This VPN must allow port-forwarding - see my profile for other guides
rTorrent for headless servers, qBittorrent and BiglyBT have good management interfaces for graphical hosts
You must bind the client to the VPN interface to avoid leaks
Set this all up to autostart
Make sure to enable in BIOS “Restore Power after AC Loss”
Remote desktop connections for emergency/maintenance. If RDP does not work, there’s AnyDesk and VNC (TightVNC Server for Windows is free). I cannot recommend Teamviewer in good faith.
You don’t need a dynamic DNS domain unless you want to access the machine from the outside. If you wanted, AirVPN has this out of the box and multiple port forwards, one for Bittorrent transfers, one for the web interface. There should be no security vulnerabilities opening up the web interface with a strong user/password combo.
Consider the electricity bill, a fun project may include turning a Raspberry Pi type board into your seeding center or an old Android tablet with separate power jack and USB port to connect external HDDs to.