41–50 of 145 posts
Is there a benefit to doing this over something like Cloudron(1)? I see this being for people that just want things to work without much of the effort to make it so. If that’s the case, a simple web UI that treats all the little solutions as “apps” in a way makes sense. Not plugging here, just curious to the practical everyday differences. 1. https://cloudron.io
Cloudron.io seems pretty nice, speaking as someone who uses/works on a different platform (Sandstorm.io). Cloudron is going to cost you money if you want the benefits of automatic updates and the like, which is a downside for some (I think paying for good products/services is worthwhile), but I absolutely think making management of a ton of apps simple like a phone is the key to self-hosted online services. One of th…
Isn't this just duplicating effort that's probably already been done, in many cases by the first-party maintainers, in Dockerfiles? I don't mean to start 'Docker vs. Ansible', I just wonder why if you wanted a quick way to setup a single-server 'own private cloud' you wouldn't just go with what already exists, and list the images you want in a docker-compose.yaml file? (Which would additionally set you up for 'scalin…
Not everyone wants Docker installed on their servers. It’s not a requirement with this playbook. Furthermore, if you do want to use containers, there are tools like ansible-bender[1] that use Ansible to build container images. [1] https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-bender (edited the link to point to the ansible-community repo)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But I'd have thought if you care that Docker isn't installed on your servers, you're probably not running this anyway? It seems to me that the target demographic is people that just want the least effort minimal faff way of getting some services up and running for personal non-production use. And for that it was my suggestion that many of the services probably already provide a Dockerfile upstream, so the easiest thi…
This project has nothing to do with Docker, and there are many reasons why someone would want to avoid running Docker on a server (a separate issue from using containers). I'm confused about why you think Docker is relevant to this set of Ansible playbooks, and also why this would only be suitable for "personal non-production use." The only requirement for a remote host to be managed by Ansible is python, and even th…
The first line of the readme says it's for a 'personal cloud'.
Every time I attempt to use Ansible (or its kin) to manage my own network, it feels overly obtuse and ultimately unhelpful. Its gains seem to be rooted in configuring a large number of identical servers, and isn't geared for a handful of hosts with some commonalities and some differences. Writing playbooks feels like a still-imperative wrapper around shell commands, just in a bespoke and verbose YAML syntax.
Instead I am using my own script that runs a tree of files through a template engine, drops them on each host being configured, and then runs triggers based on what has changed. This seems utterly simplistic, lacks polish, eschews common practices, etc. But the overall configuration seems straightforwardly grokkable compared to the heavy tools.
For those in the market to run a private cloud, please try https://cloudron.io . Our motivation is to make it simple to selfhost apps . The main advantage is that we take care of automatic updates across all the apps we package. Happy to answer any questions. Disclaimer: I am the co-founder
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everyone wants Docker installed on their servers. It’s not a requirement with this playbook. Furthermore, if you do want to use containers, there are tools like ansible-bender[1] that use Ansible to build container images. [1] https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-bender (edited the link to point to the ansible-community repo)
This looks useful. Is the fork more out of date than the source it was forked from, or am I reading the dates wrong?
I just copied the first link that showed up in a search, which looks like it's the personal repo of the project maintainer but is pretty far behind the upstream repo now.
There are so many servers and apps being installed by Sovereign that I'm certain few would be able to keep it secure ( https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/wiki/Software-used-by... ). The big win for the cloud is that you're paying a fraction of the cost for access to a, typically, enormous security and operations team. If you want to build software like this that allows people to self-host, you need to scale down…
For some things, I'm happy to use SaaS providers, where they are responsible for the whole stack. For others, I'm happy to use apps, where they just provide the code, and I provide the platform. But for a number of things, I want something in between: I provide storage and compute, they provide code and operations.
Bitwarden for me is a good example. They're a password manager who provides their backend as a docker container anybody can run. I like that, as I don't really want them to have my data, and if they go out of business, I don't want to be cut off from my passwords. But I won't run the backend myself, because I don't have the time and expertise necessary to make sure it stays secure.
Another good example is photo hosting. I would rather keep all my photos on space I control. But I also need modern, maintained software for syncing, serving, and controlling access to photos and related data. I'm happy to pay somebody to make and maintain that software, but not nearly as happy if that means that at any point they might shut down and take my data with them.
I suspect we're headed toward a future where people like Synology and Digital Ocean sell storage+compute, and then other companies sell and maintain user-selected software that runs on those environments. Basically, some sort of app store for servers. But I'd love to see this happen in an open, nonproprietary way, as the drawbacks of Apple's and Google's app stores have become pretty clear.
This is a pretty cool setup! I have been tinkering in the self-hosting world for awhile now and I would say my biggest piece of advice is to learn Docker. (Not trying to shill for Docker here or start a Docker vs. Ansible flame war.) In my personal experience, Docker images (and docker-compose orchestrations) are more pervasive than Ansible playbooks and when it comes to self-hosting for personal use, hosting all my…
> Not trying to start a Docker vs. Ansible flame war Don't worry, they serve very different purposes. You already probably know but Docker is for running applications in isolation, while Ansible is for provisioning and configuring hosts. For instance, you won't use Docker to harden sshd on your hosts but Ansible.
If this project piques your interest, please consider contributing! We could really need more helping hands.
Ansible is easy to learn and most (not all!) problems due to new versions are easy to fix.
Also, if you only want to use a fraction of what Sovereign has to offer to reduce your server's attack surface, that's easy! Just follow the instructions.