Screw it, I’ll host it myself • Hacker News Board

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#141

Post by npteljes » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

planb wrote: post #9

Funny headline, because every time I try to self-host anything important like mail, I learn how deep that field is and how little I know and that I'll probably need many many hours to do everything right and in a secure way (and my mails would still have a higher probability to be classified as spam). Then I think: "Screw it, I'll just use GMail"

You could also look for alternative providers. Posteo for example promises to run on FOSS code, and is endorsed by FSF. Definitely a middle ground between an artisanal email setup and gmail.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#142

Post by mikestew » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #106

Ajedi32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware sales. People will pay for the convenience of a device that works out of the box with minimal setup. On the software side, integrate tightly with your own subscription services (offsite backups, VPS, etc) to upsell to those who want that, and win over the enthusiast crowd by making it possible to host your own alternatives to those services with a little technical know-how. Open source most components to app…

Isn't this basically Synology?

Alternatively, it's what Windows Home Server might have become had MSFT kept at it. OTOH, the fact that Microsoft abandoned it might be an indicator of how well such a thing might sell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#143

Post by clircle » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

I have a similar setup, but I'm using a raspberry pi. Does anyone know a good iOS client for Nextcloud Music?

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#144

Post by arrozconcosas » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #68

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #4

The diagram alone is more than enough of an argument to dissuade me from giving this a shot right now - it's simply too complicated and too much to manage for the amount of time I can dedicate to it. BUT - I'm really thankful for people who keep posting and sharing these sorts of projects; they're the ones iterating the process for the rest of us who need something a bit more turn-key. I'm excited to see this eventua…

I think the diagram gives a skewed view of how hard this actually is. I run a very similar setup only my VPS is only a proxy for my home server and it requires very little maintenance. I run everything with docker-compose and I haven't had to work on my setup at all this year and only about 8 hours in 2020 to setup the Wireguard network to replace the ssh tunnels I was using previously for VPS -> server communication…

The technical language in this makes me ditto the first comment that this is too much for many people out there like myself

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#145

Post by clairity » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #110

clairity wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. it’s mostly tough because of the high upfront capital costs (manufacturing, r&d, and marketing). people still talk fondly about discontinued apple routers…

> there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. I also think it's still a little too nerd-focused for the average consumer. I'd say I know far more about security, networking and hardware than the aver…

i think you need to go up a level of abstraction from this perspective to see the utility for the average consumer. we each have computers all around us, phones, tablets, tv's, and increasingly everything else. it's so hopeless to manage, much less understand, these mysterious machines for more and more people. what you want is a company you can trust to manage these things for you but gives you the ultimate, yet cognitively bounded, control over them.

for instance, plug in a smart device and have confidence that it's not doing surreptitious things behind your back, because it's automatically segregated into its own vlan and given only enough network access to be controlled by you without needing to know much about the underlying technologies involved.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#146

Post by tmottabr » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

dade_ wrote: post #53

12ian34 wrote: post #8

I'm curious as to for how long you've been using this setup specifically in regard to Nextcloud, and how many and what volume of files you store in it? I've set up a few Nextcloud instances in the last 2 years on Digital Ocean VPSs and Raspberry Pis and I ran into so many problems and difficulties which scaled with the quantity and size of files I hosted on it. I took care in setting up everything to a relatively sol…

Raspberry Pis are toys, don't use them for anything important. I've been running NextCloud on an Intel NUC i7 in a Linux container so I can easily snapshot and backup. Recovery is easy in the event of a hardware failure as replacement NUCs are available off the shelf. All I need to do is swap the HD and RAM and I am back in business.

i have all of that with a pi 4 with an usb 3.0 2tb disk connected..

Raspberry pis are so cheap that you can keep a spare one around just in case the hardware fail.. although i have 3 hosting different stuff in my network and does not fell the need to have a spare one.

i can get a new one by tomorrow cheaper then any used NUC out there and all i have to do is remove the sd card from one and put in the other, plug the usb disk and i am good to go.

my home servers are all pis, with the older turning 8y already, and have not had a single problem with them all this time.. likely my disk will die much sooner then the pi.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#147

Post by clircle » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

TimBurr wrote: post #35

Depending on what you need, a NAS + Syncthing is much simpler than the linked article. Building a PC isn't hard, and keeps prices down. These days, a RPi 4+2 USB HDDs would run circles around the motherboard on my NAS. Syncthing is a great continuous backup solution. I use ~/NOTES as a scratchpad, and it updates automatically between my various computers. It gives you pretty granular control over shares, and I back u…

Syncthing is great, but the lack of first party iOS client drove me to Nextcloud.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#148

Post by mikepurvis » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #145

elliekelly wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are actually tons of companies in this space already making money (e.g., wyze), but it’s highly fragmented and none have a unified vision or product strategy yet. so yes, they’re vulnerable to the behemoths right now, but those dynamics aren’t locked in yet. I also think it's still a little too nerd-focused for the average consumer. I'd say I know far more about security, networking and hardware than the aver…

i think you need to go up a level of abstraction from this perspective to see the utility for the average consumer. we each have computers all around us, phones, tablets, tv's, and increasingly everything else. it's so hopeless to manage, much less understand, these mysterious machines for more and more people. what you want is a company you can trust to manage these things for you but gives you the ultimate, yet cog…

"a company you can trust to manage these things for you"

"automatically segregated into its own vlan"

Aren't these goals fundamentally at odds? I would imagine that Joe consumer (if they care at all about any of this) would be rather more inclined to entrust the role of orchestrating/segregating their home network devices to an entity like Google than to some random startup.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#149

Post by m463 » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #4

The diagram alone is more than enough of an argument to dissuade me from giving this a shot right now - it's simply too complicated and too much to manage for the amount of time I can dedicate to it. BUT - I'm really thankful for people who keep posting and sharing these sorts of projects; they're the ones iterating the process for the rest of us who need something a bit more turn-key. I'm excited to see this eventua…

I think do a little at a time and keep at it. Over time it adds up.

At sometime you will hit something interesting: Personal Sovereignty.

I've seen other folks hit this in weird ways.

My friend started working on cars with his buddy. They finally got to an old vehicle they took all the way apart and put it together. He had gotten to the point where he could pull the engine and put it on a stand, weld things, paint, redo the wiring harness.

I remember one day I went and looked at it and he sort of casually said, "I can do anything".

Anyway, I think the diagram says something else to me. It says he understands what his setup does enough to show it/explain it to someone else.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#150

Post by akho » Wed, Apr 07, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

Vultr seems entirely unnecessary in this picture (but the referral dollars probably help). They are just hosting stuff for themselves, right? The Synology can do all that (through VPN for the on-the-go devices). Separate VPSes for things like a 1-user Monica instance are insane.