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Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

liminality.xyz

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Re: Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've installed and abandoned ownCloud several times, mostly because it is far too heavy for what I need and I had concerns about its security. I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. It took more work to set up but I have Seafile self-hosted on the smallest DigitalOcean VPS and it works beautifu…

> I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. Did you host OwnCloud yourself? But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy? > I'm still looking for a good self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV option that doesn't require PHP or MySQ…

> Did you host OwnCloud yourself?

Yes, I prefer to self-host anything I can. I'm lucky to have a gigabit FTTH connection and moving lots of data around is no problem. I still prefer to use a remote VPS because some things are best left to the pros.

> But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy?

Seafile has a much smaller attack surface (no PHP, MySQL not required, etc) and handles the client-side encryption itself. We are discussing degrees of trust here, so while I was happy to trust ownCloud and the VPS to be there for a request, and to not corrupt my data, I didn't trust that my sensitive data was safe if the server was compromised. EncFS was a workaround, but it cluttered up Nautilus with extra drives since every encrypted directory had to be mounted as a drive. Now I'm comfortable trusting Seafile to do all that because an attacker would need to compromise both my VPS and my local machine to gain access to sensitive data. This is orders of magnitude less likely and for me is an acceptable risk, especially considering the simpler software stack.

And I'm definitely checking out radicale, thanks for the tip. If it does contact photo sync (annoyingly not currently supported my FastMail CardDAV) I'll give it a try.

Re: Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've installed and abandoned ownCloud several times, mostly because it is far too heavy for what I need and I had concerns about its security. I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. It took more work to set up but I have Seafile self-hosted on the smallest DigitalOcean VPS and it works beautifu…

> I also had to set up EncFS on my local machines for client-side encryption of sensitive files because there was no way I was trusting that to ownCloud server-side. Did you host OwnCloud yourself? But you didn't trust the software with your files? In what way is the SeaFile solution you are running now more trustworthy? > I'm still looking for a good self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV option that doesn't require PHP or MySQ…

[deleted]

Re: Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

#15
post #3

It's sad that if you want a fast Internet around here you are put behind ISP wide NAT which means you can't host anything from home, so all these "self-hosted" things aren't really self-hosted for me.

Setup a VPN or some sort of tunnel that you connect to from your home and proxy TLS across it that terminates on your hardware.

Your VPN provider can probably MITM that much like your ISP could but not without messing with the certificates that you're pinning.

You shouldn't have to do that but given the circumstances it'll work. Whether you can be bothered is another discussion.

Re: Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

#16
"N self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services" is becoming a meme.

Here's 43 self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services, with one-click demos you can try yourself!

https://apps.sandstorm.io/

Tiny Tiny RSS, Ghost, Gitlab, and Rocket.Chat are in there.

ownCloud is missing, but you can try Davros, which is compatible with the ownCloud client apps. https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8aspz4sfjnp8u89000mh2v1xrdyx97...

Ampache is missing, but you could try Groove Basin for music -- it's neat in that you can share control of the playback with other people, to implement a communal music player. https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/wfg1r0qra2ewyvns05r0rddqttt57q...

(But also someone should package ownCloud and Ampache for Sandstorm! https://docs.sandstorm.io)

Re: Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

#18
some other weapons of choice:

WordPress - https://wordpress.org/ - because "WordPress is the Kalashnikov of the web." (https://t.co/QgsYYUFTbo)

Syncthing - https://syncthing.net/ - for distributed file syncing

Baikal - http://baikal-server.com/ - for contact & calendar syncing

rss2email - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/rss2email - because email is stable, solid, and not going anywhere

Tox - https://tox.chat/ - p2p, encrypted instant messaging w/ video & audio

Re: Self-hosted alternatives to popular cloud services

#20

Although this is a nice write up about a possible setup for self hosted alternatives for popular cloud services, I don't like it. It falls short to compare the different possible services and the possibilities you can have with them. OwnCloud is nice, but why should I pick on OwnCloud and not SeaFile. Ampache is cool, but why not Subsonic? I would like to read the reasoning behind the individual choices OR the reason…

> RocketChat I don't know and I should look into but I do feel that XMPP should be the chat replacement for all

Agreed. Given that there are multiple, open source servers, several good open source Web clients and literally hundreds of native libraries/clients, XMPP seems like the obvious choice here.

What irks me even more - Rocket Chats homepage: > Native client applications available for download on Linux, Windows and OSX.

Rocket Chat's GitHub Repo for the "Native" desktop Apps: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat.Electron

Call it a desktop app, sure. I won't use it, but I won't begrudge you the term desktop app. If you're bundling NodeJS and using a webview, your app isn't native.

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