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PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

pikapods.com

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Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#41

Post by m3nu »

kall wrote: post #30

Looks great. I would love to see some development tooling (if it's license allows), that I'm currently considering self hosting: Posthog, Sentry and Jitsu (aka EventNative). If Sentry setup is too insane maybe GlitchTip. I don't know if you run Clickhouse (needed for PostHog) yet, but I bet it will be used by a bunch of self hosted apps in the future and would be worth it. A very attractive option would be some kind…

Still adding apps every week. Just suggest them here: https://feedback.pikapods.com/

Currently the limitations are: a) they should run on a single https port; b) come with some authentication and c) publish a Docker image of sort.

There is already a "Run on PikaPods" button for our FOSS partners. Hoping to add it to more projects, so people can quickly start using an app.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#42

Post by worble »

m3nu wrote: post #7

Founder here. Nice surprise to see this posted. Any questions, drop them here.

This looks great, I'll try it as soon as I get home. One question before I try, say I want to use FileRun or Photoprism but mount an S3 bucket for the storage, do we have enough configurability to accomplish that?

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#43

Post by m3nu »

harryvederci wrote: post #39
m3nu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major credit cards via Stripe. Later PayPal probably. Yes, it's prepaid and your pod will stop after a few notifications. You can optionally enable automatic top-ups to avoid this. Both possible.

Awesome, thanks. If you're going to tell me it's also possible to remove a credit card after topping up the credit, I'll consider using this!

It won't let you remove the last card because adding a card also unlocks some more "dangerous" apps that allow running custom code. And gives higher limits.

Alternatively add a disposable one-time card. Many fintech apps provide those.

Still, as vendor, I'd avoid putting a random charge on your card and then pay the chargeback fee. Ouch.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#44

Post by m3nu »

worble wrote: post #42
m3nu wrote: post #7

Founder here. Nice surprise to see this posted. Any questions, drop them here.

This looks great, I'll try it as soon as I get home. One question before I try, say I want to use FileRun or Photoprism but mount an S3 bucket for the storage, do we have enough configurability to accomplish that?

Probably yes, so just try it! If any user-configurable env var is missing, I'll add it right away. PhotoPrism already has a LOT of configurable env vars and I don't recall seeing something about S3 there. So it may be inside the app.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#45

Post by phh »

This looks pretty cool, thanks for doing that. I hope you'll manage to extend revenue share scheme. I would appreciate a bit more info about that revenue share scheme (like is photoprism getting 1c/user/month and it's just ""floss-washing"", or is it more? or maybe without showing an actual value, showing photoprims's developer opinion on whether they think the revenue share is fair would be nice)

Even though this clearly target FLOSS-friendly users, which are already aware of stuff, they don't necessarily know all the floss services. So my recommendation would be to make an additional, more opinionated pod page (but I've never made a product in my life, so my advice is probably not worth much): - Show ""competing"" proprietary services in front of the pods, for people to maybe better understand what it is about - Make a subset list of ""recommended"" services, photoprism/photoview are redundant, developer/sysadmin stuff should probably not be listed, pick just one RSS aggregator (I personally use TinyTinyRSS which has a great Android appif I can add my own grain of salt)

Thanks for the product and I wish you good luck

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#46

Post by worble »

m3nu wrote: post #44
worble wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks great, I'll try it as soon as I get home. One question before I try, say I want to use FileRun or Photoprism but mount an S3 bucket for the storage, do we have enough configurability to accomplish that?

Probably yes, so just try it! If any user-configurable env var is missing, I'll add it right away. PhotoPrism already has a LOT of configurable env vars and I don't recall seeing something about S3 there. So it may be inside the app.

Sorry, rather than env vars, it was more about being able to mount it as a filesystem, since I know Filerun at least tell you to do that - https://feedback.filerun.com/en/communities/1/topics/1166-aw...

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#47

Post by m3nu »

phh wrote: post #45

This looks pretty cool, thanks for doing that. I hope you'll manage to extend revenue share scheme. I would appreciate a bit more info about that revenue share scheme (like is photoprism getting 1c/user/month and it's just ""floss-washing"", or is it more? or maybe without showing an actual value, showing photoprims's developer opinion on whether they think the revenue share is fair would be nice) Even though this cl…

I won't share the precise % for each project, but the FAQ at the bottom of the page gives a hint. More than 1ct. Every project is encouraged to link to PikaPods if they think it's fair enough. Or if they want it as hosting option for their users.

Hoping to expand FOSS financing over time. The revenue share won't be enough, I think. So I want an optional sponsorship option to directly support the project. And maybe get a direct line to developers with this. Still early days for this.

I do know that people are willing to pay for the FOSS they use when it's convenient and when they already pay for something. Our other service, https://www.borgbase.com/ has shown this and we collect significant amounts there to support upstream development.

Also keep in mind that many projects aren't ready to receive payments. Either the authorship is unclear (forked many times), they can't/won't issue invoices, just don't want payment categorically.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#48

Post by m3nu »

worble wrote: post #46
m3nu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably yes, so just try it! If any user-configurable env var is missing, I'll add it right away. PhotoPrism already has a LOT of configurable env vars and I don't recall seeing something about S3 there. So it may be inside the app.

Sorry, rather than env vars, it was more about being able to mount it as a filesystem, since I know Filerun at least tell you to do that - https://feedback.filerun.com/en/communities/1/topics/1166-aw...

If it’s not from within the app, then I’m afraid it’s not possible with the current setup. Also not sure if this would be stable enough. I believe PhotoPrism allows mounting webdav from within the app and import pictures from there.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#49

Post by m3nu »

troyjfarrell wrote: post #37
m3nu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sandstorm uses VM templates (Vagrant)[1], so pretty heavy and harder to update. I use Docker images, as provided by the upstream project. So you get the same experience as running it yourself, as well as quick updates. 1: https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/vagrant-spk/packaging-tu...

Sandstorm uses Vagrant as part of the app packaging (for developers) process. It is _not_ used in everyday use of Sandstorm. Instead, "Sandstorm implements fine-grained containers"[1], not VMs. 1: https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/using/security-practices...

I see. So it’s like Docker, but their own implementation? Can’t wrap my head around it right now.

Re: PikaPods – Instant Open Source App Hosting

#50

Post by anon56 »

m3nu wrote: post #28
anon56 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some questions: If I understood correctly, this service only allows managed hosting from a curated list of services/apps? I assume that I cannot run my own docker containers. There are a lot of Run Your Own links/text, which made me think first that I could run my own, but instead it seems that I can choose what can be run for me. Assuming this is OCI based, how are the containers isolated? Is it with cgroups…

> sharing the kernel or are users placed inside separate VMs? The isolation is with users and SELinux. There are no VMs as those are pretty heavy. > the pricing is only listed as monthly. Is there more granular pricing? Pricing is with hourly granularity, but shown as monthly for simplicity. > What about storage/disk/volume encryption? We run only bare-metal servers, so this is less of a concern unless you expect the…

>> What about storage/disk/volume encryption?

> We run only bare-metal servers, so this is less of a concern unless you expect the whole server to be stolen. Data still needs to be accessible all the time.

So, when I delete a file and it is marked as deleted in the file system and it becomes empty space, then when this same space gets allocated for someone else, they can just read my file from the allocated empty space. This doesn't require the server to be stolen or physical access, just someone else reusing the same physical/bare-metal hardware after me. Encrypting files/volumes/storage per user solves this problem. Leaving it unencrypted exposes my data to all other users of the system.

Here is some ideas on how Google handles this: https://cloud.google.com/docs/security/encryption/default-en...

I hope you re-consider encrypting user data.

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