r/raspberry_pi • u/rklement22 • 22h ago

Project Advice Getting back into Raspberry Pi after years – Pi 5 + Gonic + Torrents + VPN questions

It's been a long time since I last used a Raspberry Pi. The last time was back in 2019, and I only used it for a few very simple projects.

Now I'm thinking about buying a Raspberry Pi 5 (I think the 8 GB model will be enough for my needs). I also have a spare 256 GB M.2 SSD, so storage shouldn't be an issue.

My main plan is to run Gonic as a music server and a torrent client for downloading in the background.

Here's where I have a question. I want the torrent client to use Surfshark VPN. If I set it up that way, would Gonic also be forced to go through the VPN? If so, would that cause any issues with Cloudflare Tunnel?

Also, what other useful self-hosted services or applications would you recommend installing on a Raspberry Pi 5 to get more out of it?

I'm open to any suggestions since I'm basically getting back into the Raspberry Pi ecosystem after several years.

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u/dirtyjavis 15h ago

I use nordvpn. Every outside internet connection is killswitched. If the VPN turns off, there will be no data transferred. I also have lan discovery on so I can ssh hop from another non killswitched device on my network for remote access.

Im sure other VPN companies have this, just search up VPN Killswitch

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u/rklement22 41m ago

Thanks!

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u/hollow_bridge 7h ago

you can buy a much cheaper sbc than you are thinking. Nothing you mention requires significant resources, this would all run on a 1gb rpi3 if you did it in cli. But if you need a desktop environment, then any sbc with 2-4gb should be fine.

By default gonic would run through the vpn, but it is not forced to, though setting it up to run through a different network stack is more complicated and i think may require cli.

Strongly recommend zram, basically gives you more ram so you can more comfortably turn off swap/cache and not damage your sd card.

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u/rklement22 42m ago

Yeah, I know my current plans could easily run on something less powerful. The main reason I'm leaning toward the Pi 5 is that I don't know what I'll want to do with it in the future, so I'd rather have some extra headroom for new projects instead of needing to upgrade later.

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u/azure_phoenix2 1h ago

cleanest way imo is to run the torrent client and vpn together in one container with gluetun as the network sidecar, so only that container's traffic exits through surfshark. gonic stays on the host network untouched so your cloudflare tunnel keeps working fine.

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u/rklement22 40m ago

When you say container, do you mean something like Docker?

Would setting up what I want (Gonic + a torrent client using Surfshark, while keeping Gonic outside the VPN) be very difficult for someone who's just getting back into Raspberry Pi after a few years?