MT Server

A ready-to-fill private family server with files, photos, documents, games, secure access, automatic maintenance, and verified backups—running on hardware the family owns.

MT Server is being built for people who want the benefits of a home server but do not have the time or technical background to assemble and maintain one themselves.

The intended experience is simple: plug it in, complete a guided setup, create the family accounts, and start uploading.

MT Server is in active development. The first prototype architecture is complete, the source repository exists, and the first working safety component has been built and tested. It is not yet available for general installation.

What MT Server Does for a Family

Family files often end up scattered across phones, computers, USB drives, subscription services, and several unrelated cloud accounts.

MT Server is intended to give a household one private place for the material it owns and depends on:

  • personal and shared files;
  • phone photographs and family albums;
  • receipts, manuals, warranties, and scanned records;
  • calendars and contacts;
  • games and game saves;
  • automatic backups;
  • simple health and storage reporting;
  • optional secure access while away from home.

The family should not need to understand Docker containers, Linux mount points, databases, scheduled tasks, or command-line administration to use the finished system.

Server healthy. Backup current. Storage available.

What Is Included in the Basic Build

  • Debian 13: The stable operating-system foundation.
  • Docker Engine and Docker Compose: A consistent application platform.
  • Ansible: Repeatable installation, configuration, checking, and recovery automation.
  • Nextcloud: Private files, shared family folders, phone uploads, calendars, contacts, and file sharing.
  • Nextcloud Memories: A chronological family photo timeline using the same photo originals stored through Nextcloud.
  • Papra: A household document cabinet for receipts, manuals, warranties, scanned records, and important paperwork.
  • RomM: A family game library with catalog information, artwork, browser play where supported, saves, and save states.
  • Nginx Proxy Manager: Managed access to the server’s web applications.
  • Restic: Encrypted, incremental, deduplicated, and verifiable backups.
  • Local monitoring: Health, storage, drive, service, update, and backup reporting.
  • MT Server dashboard: A simple family-facing starting point and administration view.
  • Setup, recovery, and ownership documentation: Instructions intended to remain with the machine and the family that owns it.

Tailscale may be offered as an optional method of secure remote access. It will not be required for normal use inside the home.

Immich is not part of the basic build. It may later be offered as a heavier advanced photo package for machines with suitable resources.

Local-First and Offline-Capable

MT Server is not intended to remain permanently disconnected from the internet. It is local-first and offline-capable.

During an internet outage, the family should still be able to use locally stored files, photographs, documents, games, the dashboard, and local administration.

Internet access may still be needed for initial installation, software updates, container downloads, optional metadata, and remote-access services.

The initial local dashboard address is planned as http://mt-server.local. Direct local-network addresses and emergency service access will also be documented so a failed proxy or local name service cannot lock out the administrator.

The Storage Model

The standard MT Server design uses two permanent drives and separate backup storage.

Drive 1 — System

The system drive contains Debian, Docker, containers, application databases, configuration, caches, previews, indexes, logs, Ansible, and the MT Server management tools.

The recommended production target is a 256 GB SSD. Early prototypes may use ordinary hard drives because the project is intentionally being tested on available salvage hardware.

Drive 2 — Family Storage

The family-storage drive contains the material the household adds or owns: files, photos, documents, phone uploads, media, games, game saves, scanned records, and other household content.

The standard storage root is /srv/mt/storage.

Separate Backup Storage

Backups are stored separately from the two permanent drives. The backup destination may be an external drive, a removable drive, or eventually part of a two-drive rotation.

Where practical, the backup drive should be equal to or larger than the family-storage drive.

A practical finished configuration is a 256 GB system SSD, a 4 TB family-storage drive, and a separate 4 TB backup drive. Smaller systems remain possible for lighter households.

Backups and Recovery

Restic is the accepted backup engine. It is free, open source, subscription-free, encrypted, incremental, deduplicated, verifiable, and usable entirely offline.

The initial proposed retention policy is:

  • 7 daily backups;
  • 5 weekly backups;
  • 12 monthly backups.

A backup job must confirm the correct destination, complete successfully, verify the result, apply the retention policy, and visibly report success or failure.

The recovery plan will cover both individual file restoration and rebuilding the complete server onto a replacement system drive.

Designed for Real-World Hardware

MT Server is being designed around hardware people can realistically obtain: retired office desktops, older small servers, mismatched drives, modest-memory machines, and systems with older BIOS or UEFI implementations.

Reuse is not merely a compromise. It is part of the project’s purpose. The software should inspect a machine and explain what it can safely support rather than assuming that every family is starting with new hardware.

Current memory targets are:

  • Under 4 GB: Not supported for the complete basic stack.
  • 4–8 GB: A provisional low-memory profile that must be proven through testing.
  • 8 GB: The recommended normal target.
  • 16 GB: Preferred headroom, but not a requirement.

The 4 GB minimum will be kept only if real testing shows that the complete basic system remains acceptably usable.

Current Development Status

MT Server has moved beyond the initial idea stage and is now an active software project.

  • Phase 0 architecture is complete.
  • Twelve Architecture Decision Records have been accepted.
  • The canonical Git source repository has been created.
  • The project uses the GPL-3.0-or-later license.
  • An isolated development environment is in place.
  • Repository validation and linting have been established.
  • The first operational component has been built.
  • Thirty-six automated tests are passing.
  • The repository working tree is clean.

The First Working Component

The first working component is a read-only machine preflight checker.

It inspects a potential server and reports:

  • operating system and architecture;
  • CPU and installed memory;
  • BIOS or UEFI boot mode;
  • wired networking and routes;
  • filesystem capacity;
  • available disks;
  • drive models, serial numbers, UUIDs, and mounts;
  • existing Docker and server software;
  • compatibility with the first MT Server prototype.

The checker does not format, mount, enroll, or erase disks. It does not install packages, modify services, change networking, or alter the inspected machine.

It was tested on the Atoll workstation in normal mode and in Ansible check mode. Both runs returned changed=0, confirming that the inspection remained read-only.

What Happens Next

Physical prototype testing begins next. The first disposable target will use an existing 60 GB drive with Debian 13 installed.

  1. Run automated fixture tests.
  2. Repeat read-only testing on Atoll.
  3. Test a disposable Debian 13 physical machine.
  4. Test several mismatched salvage systems.
  5. Measure low-memory performance.
  6. Build safe storage enrollment.
  7. Build the Docker foundation.
  8. Add and test one application at a time.
  9. Test backup and full restoration.
  10. Rebuild a complete prototype from the beginning.

The goal is not to make MT Server work on one ideal computer. The goal is to prove it across the uneven hardware families, community groups, and scroungers can actually obtain.

Optional Packages Planned for Later

MT Media

Jellyfin, Kavita, Audiobookshelf, and related music or media services.

MT Photos Plus

Immich, facial recognition, advanced object search, and heavier photo or video processing.

MT Games Plus

Minecraft, Luanti, OpenTTD, and dedicated multiplayer servers.

MT Web

WordPress, Git services, public website hosting, and expanded Cloudflare routing.

MT AI

Ollama, Open WebUI, and other local AI tools on suitable hardware.

A Raspberry Pi 4B and tiny-server experiment may also be explored later. The first supported build remains Debian 13 on amd64 hardware.

MT Server is in active development and is not yet downloadable or ready for general installation. This page will continue to document the design, testing, and work required to turn it into a repeatable family-server system.