Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#81

Post by nfriedly » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

asoplata wrote: post #77

nfriedly wrote: post #69

Does anybody have a good recommendation for an automated Gmail backup? I am happy using Gmail for now, I just want my own copy of all of my emails that I can search and read - offline if necessary. I tried to use Nextcloud's email app to backup my gmail, but after sending it up I realized that it is just an alternate interface to access email on Google's server, not a proper backup solution. (It only supports IMAP, n…

I recommend using isync (aka mbsync) https://isync.sourceforge.io/ to download an offline, IMAP-style copy of your email; it seems to be faster than offlineimap http://www.offlineimap.org/ which does the same thing. Many people have it run on a simple cron job. You can then use Thunderbird etc. on your full local copy of the mailbox.

Thank you, I'll try that out!

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#82

Post by thombles » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #71

The hardest thing people need to ween themselves off of is email, which I didn't see mentioned here at all. Many people don't think there are viable Gmail alternatives, but on Drew DeVault's recommendation I recently switched myself over to using Migadu[1] and the experience has been fantastic. That said, I am running CalDAV and CardDAV at home on my own hardware, but they do offer a simple version of both that shoul…

Take care with Migadu if you use mailing lists. I troubleshooted some issues with bounces earlier this year and both users in question were using Migadu - they had ended up with the unusually strict "p=reject" DMARC policy. Every time they sent an email to the list I was on, my account would (correctly) trigger a bounce and after several of these incidents _my_ subscription would be removed from the mailing list for too many bounces. I'm not even sure whose fault this situation is, but it's something to keep in mind.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#83

Post by nfriedly » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

g_p wrote: post #79

nfriedly wrote: post #69

Does anybody have a good recommendation for an automated Gmail backup? I am happy using Gmail for now, I just want my own copy of all of my emails that I can search and read - offline if necessary. I tried to use Nextcloud's email app to backup my gmail, but after sending it up I realized that it is just an alternate interface to access email on Google's server, not a proper backup solution. (It only supports IMAP, n…

Getmail is probably your best bet for an automated email backup - that will fetch your email over IMAP (getmail-gmail-xoauth-tokens can use oauth to connect to IMAP) and store it as a maildir or mbox. You can then use that with whatever client or search system you like. You could then use this maildir as the backend for a dovecot IMAP server and use any webmail client of your choosing to connect to this and search it…

Thanks! That sounds like about what I'm looking for!

And, yea, I'm not so concerned about which protocol to use or deleting the email from Google's server, I just want my own local copy of it.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#84

Post by ronlobo » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

ArchD wrote: post #55

Nextcloud and owncloud are written in PHP like so are many other web server apps, especially wiki servers. I've always had misgivings about the security of using and running PHP. Does PHP software still tend to be insecure as in the past? Why are there so many web apps (especially wiki servers) written in PHP instead of e.g. Python, Rust or some other language?

They even had to come up with their own security scanner (https://scan.nextcloud.com/). I assume because they don't even trust their own code mess or cause you can f-up your PHP conf in so many ways that your server becomes vulnerable.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#85

Post by ekianjo » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

nr2x wrote: post #42

I had a few instances of OwnCloud and various NAS setups over the years. Then I had a kid and dumped everything into iCloud when I realized I’d no longer have time to keep it all secure/patched. Time cost of these setups is real.

> Time cost of these setups is real.

Compared to the maintenance cost of something equivalent 10 years ago, it's a lot better now. I don't find it meaningfully inconvenient, even with kids.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#86

Post by kayson » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

kmclean wrote: post #74

kayson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of self-hosted services, including Nextcloud, and by far the majority of my time spent on the infrastructure is messing around with new stuff and changing things for fun. Actual maintenance time is nearly 0.

That's really reassuring to hear! I'm planning to stick with this for a year or two to see what pain it actually causes me, but I could definitely see maintenance headaches being thing to motivate a switch to something else. Hopefully I have the same experience as you, though!

To be fair... I think the learning curve causes higher maintenance time cost at the beginning. But eventually you get stable infrastructure as code set up with good log monitoring and backups and you really don't have to think about it anymore. Any problems and you'll get an alert.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#87

Post by rixed » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #16

I tried nextcloud for a couple months earlier this year and found it to be overcomplicated poorly engineered junk. It was super unreliable on iPhone. Simple things that should have worked perfectly, like uploading or downloading files, were very unreliable. There’s a certain class of software, usually written these days in a PHP, python, or JS, where there’s a big focus on making it “easy to use” or having a nice UI…

Very same experience here, except that I ended up with a simple webdav server to share with family and friends. And it was already quite frustrating to realize how few servers are available and how many client applications pretending to support that rather simple protocol were actually not working properly. Tells a lot about how badly selfhosting have fallen out of fashion. I can remember a time when you would get better service when hosting your own file sharing, emails, DNS, VoIP... and plenty of good free software servers for everything to choose from, but it seems not to be the case any more.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#88

Post by jackpea » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #69

Does anybody have a good recommendation for an automated Gmail backup? I am happy using Gmail for now, I just want my own copy of all of my emails that I can search and read - offline if necessary. I tried to use Nextcloud's email app to backup my gmail, but after sending it up I realized that it is just an alternate interface to access email on Google's server, not a proper backup solution. (It only supports IMAP, n…

https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back Got Your Back (GYB) is a command line tool for backing up your Gmail messages to your computer using Gmail's API over HTTPS.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#89

Post by indigodaddy » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:36 AM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #46

indigodaddy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle Cloud has the best Compute/VM Always Free Tier around (2x 1G RAM/50G VMs), which is likely sufficient for a small matrix/synapse server, so realistically you could do it for zero. I don’t know how much network transfer is included in their free tier, however (I’ve looked but never seen it clearly stated anywhere).

So, what, Google is bad now, and Oracle good? Funny world.

I thought I was just talking about vm/compute, which is quite a lot different than using a mail service where you are essentially the product.

Re: Setting up your own Nextcloud instance to get off of Google

#90

Post by sieabahlpark » Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

nr2x wrote: post #42

I had a few instances of OwnCloud and various NAS setups over the years. Then I had a kid and dumped everything into iCloud when I realized I’d no longer have time to keep it all secure/patched. Time cost of these setups is real.

Find a technical friend you can pay to do it on the side. Share it with friends and all chip into the cost.