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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

#291

Post by divbzero »

worik wrote: post #269

"for purely private use, I wouldn’t opt for AWS even if I had to choose now. I’ll leave it at that" I will elaborate: I started out with AWS several years ago. I could never work out how they calculated my bill, and had more than one >$100 shocks for hosting my personal services. I moved to DO and Vultr (stayed with DO for no real reason) and so shut everything down on AWS. But I still got a $0.50 monthly charge on m…

This inspired me to finally track down the $0.XX monthly donation I’ve been making to AWS. Through the billing dashboard [1] I discovered a zombie static site I set up ages ago with S3 and Route 53.

[1]: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/bills

(Edit: I found the S3 bucket, but mysteriously no hosted zone to account for the Route 53 bills ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#292

Post by krlx »

rakoo wrote: post #207
danbruder wrote: post #135

Theres an opportunity here for someone to build a "platform" that makes this all plug-n-play; like what the apple/google app stores have done but where the end user has control. Something along the lines of someone buys some hardware with this platform on it and gets a gui that lets me install "apps" on top of it. Personally, I've got a home setup that is on its way to what the op has; but I think there's demand from…

That's what https://yunohost.org/ is doing

Can't believe Yunohost isn't more cited in this thread. I had to setup a whole productivity suite a few weeks ago, it took me less than 2 hours with everything right.

I am particularly impressed by the easiness of the update process.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#293

Post by Johnny555 »

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…

I've got the same problem, I have an ubuntu fileserver I set up a few years ago, but have none of the monitoring/alerting that I'd have if I set it up for my day job. And really, I don't want to do my day job at home.

So it's a bit of a catch-22, I want a secure and stable home system, I don't want to spend much time working on it, but I want full flexibility to install and run what I want, and don't want to trust some off the shelf consumer solution that's likely going to be out of support in a couple years.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#294

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

The author focuses the entire blog post on remote third party services that are alternatives to popular third party services financed by data collection as a "business model". IMO, the single most important component of a home network is not any piece of the hardware/software outside the home that the third parties may control, it is the internet gateway in the home. Routers were the most important computers at the dawn of the internet, and IMO they still are the most important computers today. If the internet gateway in the home is ignored as a point of control,^1 then IMO all bets are off.

A significant amount of data collection by third parties can be eliminated or reduced by retaining control over the internet gateway. Arguably this amount is even greater than what can be affected by simply switching to using carefully selected alternative third parties. IMO, it is a mistake to believe that one can reliably eliminate/reduce data collection simply by choosing the "right" third parties. Whack-A-Mole, cat-and-mouse, whatever the term we use, this is a game the user cannot win. Third parties providing "services" over the internet are outside the user's control. For worse not better, they are subjected to market forces that drive them to collect as much user data as they can get away with.

Regardless of these privacy-destructive market forces, it is still possible to build decent routers from BSD project source code and inexpensive hardware. IMO, this is time well spent.

1. Control by the user

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#295

Post by juliend2 »

Is there a word or expression for this idea of not relying on big corporations for one's cyber presence, communications and other such tools?

I thought about info-independence, but I'm sure someone smarter than I already coined something better by now.

I know it is (always?) open source, but not everything open source liberates one from the cloud giants. So there's something there that needs a name, I think.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#296

Post by gsreenivas »

Mandatum wrote: post #285
gsreenivas wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is Helm - check us out at thehelm.com

See I see this and it's $349 for the hardware plus $99/year. At that point, I might as well just go with a paid ProtonMail or similar solution. My expectations for self hosted isn't to have annual or monthly fees.

This is comparing apples and oranges.

If you want to self-host email, you need a trustworthy static IP address with reverse DNS. It's considerably more expensive to get this from an ISP. Our annual fee also includes storage for offsite backups. You don't get the same privacy assurances using Protonmail as you do with self-hosting either. For example, Protonmail is privy to the content of all outbound email messages in the clear unless you are communicating with the recipient using E2EE.

From a cost perspective, Helm V2 starts at $199 for 256GB of storage. First year costs, including subscription work out to $298. With Protonmail, their entry level plan with added storage at the same price buys you an inbox with about 28GB, a small fraction of what you would get with Helm storage-wise, not to mention we don't limit users, email addresses, domains, etc.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#297

Post by johnbrodie »

12ian34 wrote: post #130
johnbrodie wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, during our migration we did try to move thousands of files from a "Dropbox" folder to a "NextCloud" folder, and indeed the Windows client was not happy. Since it was a one-time thing, the solution was to move the files "manually" over SSH and just run the NextCloud "scan" utility to pick up the changes on disk. I'm running NextCloud via the official Docker image, reverse proxied through nginx.

My good old friend, the Nextcloud scan utility :) I lost count of the number of times I ran that and the trashbin cleanup. These are both problems I never ever want to have to deal with.

eh, I ran the command, alt-tabbed to something more interesting, and checked later in the day to see that it was done. Never had an issue running it, and only ever needed to when I was doing the initial data migration.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#298

Post by lnwlebjel »

clairity wrote: post #38
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've actually daydreamed about starting a computing appliance company that would make a variety of services plug and play for consumers and small businesses, from email to storage, to networking, to security, and to smart home. it's actually the direction apple is headed, but they're encumbered by the innovator's dilemma, which leaves an opportunity for an upstart. google and facebook are similarly too focused on adt…

Having spent the past year frustratingly trying to build these types of things in AWS and spending too much money with mistakes I'd say there is a huge opportunity here. SMB or NFS as a service for example.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#299

Post by codethief »

yakubin wrote: post #280
aidenn0 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that the nix learning curve to be steep but short. The first time you need to make something available for nix (particularly a service), you'll probably copy something someone else wrote, make a few changes and then (if it didn't work) stare at your screen for a while wondering why it didn't work[1]. It is very different which can be very off-putting, but is not usually gratuitously different, and once you ge…

Thank you for the detailed reply. I'll try it out (in a VM first).

There is actually no harm in trying out Nix locally on your machine. You install it to, say, /nix and all Nix will ever touch is this very directory.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#300

Post by patrec »

gsreenivas wrote: post #122
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…

this is Helm - check us out at thehelm.com

You clearly have the upsell part, but where is the "and win over the enthusiast crowd by making it possible to host your own alternatives to those services with a little technical know-how." part?

I and probably many others would be OK with paying for the upsell part, if it's an optional convenience, but nothing I saw on your site indicates it is, or that "own your data" is in any meaningful way true. How do I own my data if any use of it requires me running stuff on your proprietary box, subscribing to your proprietary service?

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