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I don't need a VPS anymore

greenash.net.au

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Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#181

Post by nonamenoslogan »

benplumley wrote: post #129
cutler wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been available for a long time but when I tried I forget which but one of the 6 url formats didn't work, ie. http://domain.com http://www.domain.com https://domain.com https://www.domain.com domain.com www.domain.com Try them all with your domain. Unless things have improved one of them will fail.

Just tried with my custom-domain GitHub pages, things have improved since you tried.

I'll echo this, all format versions of my personal domain work with Github pages too.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#182

Post by vineyardmike »

anothernewdude wrote: post #147
pan69 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not obsolete. It's just that some people just want to drive their car and get it serviced somewhere every once in a while rather than doing it themselves. Same for servers.

No, some people want to rent from a fleet of cars, so that even if it needs servicing it can be replaced in less than a second.

Or they want a taxi.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#183

Post by jaza »

richardfey wrote: post #173
jaza wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Sure, maybe successful attacks in those categories are unlikely. But my main point was, so long as I maintain my own VPS, they're still possible, and I'm responsible for defending my box against them. Whereas in SaaS land, I don't even know what physical / virtual boxes the provider has, nor do I care, because I'm not responsible for their security nor for anything else regarding them.

If you have run VPSes for some time, how come you have not learnt and taken some steps to make it less prone to attacks? That's the part I don't find credible enough, or can't share the rationale to include it in this post.

Author here. Like I said in the article, "... I've picked up more than a thing or two when it comes to Linux sysadmin". I did harden my VPS here and there, over the years. And there never was a successful attack on my VPS - not that I'm aware of, at least.

But that doesn't change the fact that I simply don't want to manage a VPS anymore. Like I also said: "However, I've learnt what I have, out of necessity, and purely as a means to an end. I'm a dev, and what I actually enjoy doing, and what I try to spend most of my time doing, is dev work. Hosting everything in SaaS land, rather than on a VPS, lets me focus on just that."

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#184

Post by sliken »

willis936 wrote: post #36
paxys wrote: post #33

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” - Carl Sagan The same can be said for self-hosting. Everyone trusts some other person or company at some level in the stack. It's all about balancing the tradeoffs and finding a sweet spot that works for you. Too many people miss the forest for the trees – the important thing is to create and get your work out there, not endlessly arg…

No one never needs to trust copper wires or single transistors. One could, in theory, build an entire computer from discrete components and never have to trust external hardware or software. Of course, it wouldn't be very practically useful and would be a monumental amount of effort. But hey, it's a cozy thought for those chasing the trust dragon.

Heh, check out the precursor. No blobs, serious concern over even simple chips like display controllers and keyboards. They implemented the risc-v CPU in an FPGA with opensource files, etc.

Definitely the most trustworthy computer I've seen.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#185

Post by simonhamp »

dangero wrote: post #155
simonhamp wrote: post #153

I'm not sure I understand why you would have a long-running VPS that you need to manually upgrade. Just build a new one with all of the system upgrades already in place and switch everything over... surely that's easier and safer?

Is this a joke? And if not can you give a longer description of how this is easily done? How do you transfer all configuration to the new system and how often are you doing this?

No not a joke. I've done this many times.

Use a server image as the base which uses the latest version of the OS and core packages and then have your own custom install scripts that initialise the new server with the elements you need from the latest versions.

Getting those scripts right is the key part.

Once these are set up, standing up new servers and burning old ones is a cinch.

Anything that's not in a repo or package needs to live off-server, possibly in a cloud

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#186

Post by cutler »

dmitriid wrote: post #150
jaza wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's up to you when you think a traditional server back-end is still warranted, there are certainly still cases where it makes sense. But if all you need is a contact form, then I'd argue that it doesn't make sense! Yes, I agree, Netlify Forms is a rip-off, if you need more than the free limit of 100 submissions per month (which personally I don't, but of course many people do). But there are many other options for s…

> It's up to you when you think a traditional server back-end is still warranted All the cases outside of "oh, I dump my thoughts on the page once a year". Even for a blog in the modern world I would like: - automatic crossposting to Twitter and Facebook - automatic retrieval and reformatting of external content (because, for example, twitter embeds are very cumbersome, heavy and slow) - automatic retrieval of video…

JAMstack isn't really serverless at all. It's a myth.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#187

Post by cutler »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #145
cutler wrote: post #21

Fine if you can make do with static sites but that's hardly a common use case. Most of us who use a VPS are hosting Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel + PostgreSQL or MySQL where the memory costs are a fraction of the equivalent cloud offering. I tried Github pages once, rather than Netlify, and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I checked it's sti…

>Fine if you can make do with static sites but that's hardly a common use case. This feels odd to me. Unless you are building a web site that is a product, why do you need anything besides a static site? I am going to go as far as to claim that: most websites should be static sites. >I tried Github pages once, rather than Netlify, and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I check…

It was about 2 years ago. Followed all the instructions but one of the https variants didn't work. I'll have another go. What's the url of your blog?

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#188

Post by cutler »

npsimons wrote: post #164
cutler wrote: post #21

Fine if you can make do with static sites but that's hardly a common use case. Most of us who use a VPS are hosting Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel + PostgreSQL or MySQL where the memory costs are a fraction of the equivalent cloud offering. I tried Github pages once, rather than Netlify, and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I checked it's sti…

> Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel /me over here reverse proxying to Hunchentoot with CL framework of the week. Have yet to see a serverless setup that even has any idea what CL is . . .

Why would a serverless setup need to know anything about CL if it's just exposing an API endpoint?

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#189

Post by cutler »

nonamenoslogan wrote: post #180
cutler wrote: post #21

Fine if you can make do with static sites but that's hardly a common use case. Most of us who use a VPS are hosting Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel + PostgreSQL or MySQL where the memory costs are a fraction of the equivalent cloud offering. I tried Github pages once, rather than Netlify, and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I checked it's sti…

Github pages works fine with HTTPS and my personal domain, and has for a couple years now.

What's your domain?

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#190

Post by lolplol »

trey-jones wrote: post #57

I might need some perspective. Every time I read one of these I'm just shaking my head, and yes the arguments are Less Power, Less Control, but also SysAdmin is me. That is my identity, and the part of the job that I like the most. I solve problems with configuration before code. So I hate to think that I'm becoming obsolete, of course. I also don't think that I am, because I do think that my way has some clear and d…

When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and some people build windmills.

You strike me as the type of person who wants to think about themselves as building windmills, but your resistance to embracing technology is building walls.

You’re being a Luddite, afraid of the textile mill because of the time you spent learning to weave. That’s not a good thing for someone who likes technology to do.

Go and learn go, and become an SRE.

That’s all the awesome parts of sysadmin, but modern, automated and without the massive downsides.

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