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Screw it, I’ll host it myself

markozivanovic.com

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Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#251

Post by bogwog »

harikb wrote: post #241

While I agree shit happens, it is sad to see exaggerated stories without sufficient details being repeatedly quoted by other people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311417 In addition, traditional non-tech companies screw people on a regular basis. I know I am resorting to whataboutism, but let us not panic and try to build our own cloud. One has to consider what happens and when one gets decapitated in a auton…

There's nothing exaggerated about that story. Apple cut off access to his accounts and services because of a payment issue (which wasn't even his fault).

Even if it was his fault, and he just decided not to make that payment, the story still illustrates how much power Apple has.

It's like if you missed a car payment, and the bank used their connections to cut off your cell phone, water, electricity, etc until you paid. Whether or not missing a payment is immoral/wrong, giving a private company so much power over an individual's life is absurd. That's some mafia, break your knee caps with a baseball bat-type shit.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#252

Post by reaperducer »

shaan7 wrote: post #119
api wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

Well that is only if you look at software/ops as a 100% commercial undertaking. It is not. One way to understand why people self-host is to understand why people self-cook their food. It takes significantly longer to prepare food (get raw material, cut, cook) than ordering it. People still do it for $reasons - some find it fun, some find it cheaper, some find it nice to be able to control the taste, some find it more…

Well that is only if you look at software/ops as a 100% commercial undertaking. It is not.

Your time is only free if it is worth nothing. My time is very valuable. I happily pay other people and companies to do things for me because I'd rather have the time.

I think it's just a normal part of life. When you're young, you have more time than money. When you're old, you have more money than time.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#253

Post by heavyset_go »

mikepurvis wrote: post #50
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…

> 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. Yeah. I have a basic home server and I feel like even with fairly modest needs/desires (Jellyfin, Deluge, Zoneminder, some kind of file syncing, I gave up on photos because my whole family uses Google for that), it's h…

You can migrate from docker-compose to Swarm very easily, and it'll handle redeployments automatically for you.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#254

Post by reaperducer »

TkTech wrote: post #117
api wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date. It's how I learned Kubernetes, it's how I learned Traefik, nginx, and apache before that. It's how I learned how the different packaging and distribution ecosystems work for many different languages and frameworks. I intentionally host and backup some things on AWS, GCloud, and Azure. Other…

As a developer, all of the time I spend working on hobby projects (and self-hosting has turned into a hobby) keep me up to date.

True for some things, like things that are not at all related to your work. But your job should be actively trying to make you better at your job, and a better person.

Large companies like the one I work for hire outside firms to offer classes to the employees for free, and on company time. If there is a new version of a piece of software that is significantly different from an old one, my company pays for the users to go to training, or to train online. This is very common for products like Office or the Adobe suite. But for some reason, as developers, we too often think that we're supposed to better ourselves on our own dime. If it benefits your current employer, the current employer should chip in.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#255

Post by Nullabillity »

imwillofficial wrote: post #89
ziml77 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am perpetually confused about why people think that self-hosting on a VPS solves their privacy and security problems. While I'm sure there are controls in place at reputable VPS providers, it wouldn't be too difficult for them to grab absolutely anything they want. Even disk encryption doesn't save you. You're in a VM, they can watch the memory if they need to. Using a VPS can also make you more identifiable. Your…

So I agree with your sentiment, your details are a little off. “it wouldn't be too difficult for them to grab absolutely anything they want. Even disk encryption doesn't save you. You're in a VM, they can watch the memory if they need to.” It would be difficult because you’d have to have host access. VM disk encryption is now tied into an HSM or TPM these days, host access wouldn’t help. As for memory, that is now us…

> It would be difficult because you’d have to have host access.

Which AWS has, by definition.

> VM disk encryption is now tied into an HSM or TPM these days, host access wouldn’t help.

Are you passing all of the data through the TPM? If no: you still need to keep the key in memory somewhere, the TPM is just used for offline storage. If yes: the TPM, and the communication with it, is still under AWS' control.

> As for memory, that is now usually encrypted, so no dice there either.

Still need to keep the key somewhere, so same concern as for disk encryption. Except I can pretty much guarantee you're not putting the TPM on the memory's critical path, so...

> The security of a big name public VPS is astoundingly better than what you can do yourself.

Feel free to back such claims up in the future. Because right now this seems to be as false as the rest of your post.

> Using a VPS isn’t going to make you more identifiable to google, because you’re not using google now.

What? It certainly won't make you less identifiable either.

> Using a VPN isn’t going to make you more identifiable to your ISP, because all they can see is that you have a VPN up.

Your VPN provider, on the other hand, can now see all of the traffic, where before they couldn't. So the question is ultimately whether you trust your ISP or VPN provider more.

> Why not use a VPS for VPN? Well you’re only right it would suck if your threat model includes governments or hostile actors, me hiding from my ISP

Sure, if you trust the Amazon over your ISP that makes perfect sense. Then again, this is the Amazon that seems to love forcing their employees to piss in bottles, and is on a huge misinformation campaign against treating their employees properly.

That seems like an upstanding place with great leadership.

> or on a public Wi-Fi? Not a problem.

Makes some sense, but it wouldn't really give you much more than hosting the VPN at home. (Well, you'd still have to do the same calculus here for home ISP vs Amazon.)

> You conflate a few ideas and threat models.

Pot, meet kettle.

> Ref: I work for Amazon AWS, my opinions are my own insane ramblings.

Good to know that AWS employees are either clueless about their own offerings, or deliberately spreading misinformation.

Seems like a place that I'd love to trust...

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#256

Post by bndw »

qznc wrote: post #118
bndw wrote: post #18

IMO you can get 90% of the utility here (owning your data) with just the NAS and rsync. 1. Don't feed the FAANG 2. Store your SoR media, notes, documents on your own NAS 3. Automate a backup of the NAS, preferably both on and off site (I use rsync from a pi + large disk + cloud blob storage)

NAS fails for smartphone integration. Photos should auto upload. Calendar, todos, and contacts need to show up in the usual apps. It needs to be available from remote.

Smartphone integration isn't necessary for everyone (myself included), but I appreciate most people want it.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#257

Post by yosito »

> it’s all fun and games until someone loses access to their private and/or business data because they trusted it to someone else

Or it’s all fun and games until someone loses access to their private and/or business data because they lost their encryption keys... there are two sides to that coin.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#258

Post by SamPatt »

bentcorner wrote: post #233
dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

Agree that documentation is key here. Anything you do that is beyond the vanilla "pave the install and plug it in" should be written down. It doesn't need to be perfect - I have a onenote notebook that has the customizations that I've done to my router (static IP leases and edits to /etc/config/network), and some helper docs for a local Zabbix install in docker that I have. I recently how to migrate a database from o…

I set up a folder for notes that shares across my network using SyncThing and is backed up with a FreeNAS box.

That folder is just a collection of markdown files for each program / system and when I save on one device it updates the documentation on them all.

I use Atom to view and edit them on my Linux machines and a markdown editor app on my phone. This allows me to search across the notes too.

I've had this fairly simple, free, open source setup for years with no problems.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#260

Post by eptcyka »

dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

Nix helps with this. Or at least it intends to. I still need to track down what's vulnerable and what isn't, but most of my setup is reproducible thanks to Nix.
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