Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 194 posts

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#151

Post by kickaha »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #149

> I can HERPaDERP install packages on client and server, and copypasta configs I don’t understand. Where do I go to understand? Other commenters have a good bunch of resources on what to do, but if you're really interested in understanding the fundamentals imo there's no better way than to RTFM. Sometimes the manual will have things you don't understand, and then you'll have to google that thing. For networking I hig…

Yes! THANK YOU! I am so grateful for all the replies, but this may ultimately be among the most useful.

If I could go back and reframe my question, it would be “Which FM should I R?” :-)

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#152

Post by star-glider »

kickaha wrote: post #131
star-glider wrote: post #126

Setting up WireGuard is definitely the way to go. I learned a ton about networking doing that. It's a beautifully elegant implementation and actually very easy, but it exposes a lot of networking concepts that are important to understand. Don't use PiVPN and the like, just install it and write the configuration files manually. I used WG to get two homes talking to each other. A Pi at each end running WG, with static…

This is definitely a direction I will explore. > in cities and other areas that actually have competitive markets for ISP Ho, ho. Out my window I just LITERALLY saw a bald eagle swoop down on a tumbleweed.

Sounds beautiful, and I hope your Starlink terminal is working well. :)

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#153

Post by 3np »

kickaha wrote: post #79
jrockway wrote: post #60

My thought on networking is to make sure you only expose SSH and HTTPS; firewall everything else off. SSH seems like a constant source of problems for people new to running servers; within seconds of your server coming online, people will be trying to guess usernames and passwords. Configure it so you can't log in as root, and you can only authenticate with a key. These folks will never guess your key in a billion ye…

Another example of just the kind of concrete answers I was hoping for.

Once you have a stable setup you could even shut off public SSH and instead have it available only over Wireguard (I saw you already mentioned Tailscale). Tor Hidden Services are also an option that are straightforward to set up (you don't even need to think about fw/nat as long as you have tor access) but a bit off gaps in terms of recent accessible docs. If comments indicate interest I may get around to publishing some stuff on that lying around in the drafts folder.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#154

Post by 3np »

Larrikin wrote: post #30
Xeoncross wrote: post #16

It depends on what direction you want take. You could purchase a $5/mo digital ocean server or a $5 raspberry pi and start by installing https://pi-hole.net , https://nextcloud.com , https://syncthing.net , https://www.plex.tv , or some other software to get the first (largest) thing you want resolved. Then move on from there and install the next package you need. Ad blocking for your phone? VPN for work? Self hosted…

Why is the self host advice to always buy a Raspberry Pi, use an old crappy computer you have lying around, etc? I have a very beefy desktop for the first time in over a decade (maxed out Mac Studio) and I am wondering is there any real downside to having these services run on it?

You may want your services to have good availability while being able to shut off and reboot your (likely power-hungry) desktop without concern.

Especially for DNS. Like, your system reboots for an OS update and now the rest of your the devices on your network have connectivity issues for an hour or so. Or you have a hardware issue and now you lack both the infra and the workstation so getting things up and running again becomes triply annoying.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#155

Post by boppo1 »

kickaha wrote: post #113
boppo1 wrote: post #92

This might be controversial, but I recommend picking up copies of: - K&R - Stroustrup's 'Tour of C++' - Programming Practice and Principles You don't have to do the exercises because your main goal isn't to become a programmer. But reading through these and getting an idea how data, types, memory, and files work at a low level will help add a LOT of context to using Unix-based operating systems. The first two books y…

I know enough to know who Kernighan, Ritchie, and Stroustrup are. I know enough to know why this (sincere, and appreciated!) answer is being downvoted. :-) (I encountered these gentlemen in the 1980s. Before I changed my major.)

Haha, well you did say you were a total beginner. Perhaps you are more intermediate.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#156

Post by kickaha »

sliken wrote: post #142
kickaha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really good advice. I still have flashes of “Ohhhh righhhhhht it’s a VIRTUAL machine---I can...” make a snapshot, clone it and test new stuff, etc. etc. etc. I’ll be happy when it fully sinks in.

Generally I try to avoid VPSs. They are long lived, it's easy to accumulate undocumented state, and have substantial memory, disk I/O, and network I/O overhead. You may end up with a years old VPS with many changes over the years, and ugly things accumulate. Maybe you built a package from source, but now it's got a security vulnerability, but your forgot it's there. So apt upgrade doesn't help. Not to mention any sec…

Wow, thanks. This is a good and useful perspective. I shall endeavor to make my VPS a source of nutrition rather than a source of affection. :-)

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#157

Post by sliken »

sliken wrote: post #142
kickaha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really good advice. I still have flashes of “Ohhhh righhhhhht it’s a VIRTUAL machine---I can...” make a snapshot, clone it and test new stuff, etc. etc. etc. I’ll be happy when it fully sinks in.

Generally I try to avoid VPSs. They are long lived, it's easy to accumulate undocumented state, and have substantial memory, disk I/O, and network I/O overhead. You may end up with a years old VPS with many changes over the years, and ugly things accumulate. Maybe you built a package from source, but now it's got a security vulnerability, but your forgot it's there. So apt upgrade doesn't help. Not to mention any sec…

Can't reply to your reply, it's too deeply nested.

Even better than a VPS with multiple services is (IMO) a container per service. So you get a nice clear single function container, but don't have to pay the memory and performance overhead of having a VPS per service.

Containers have zero memory/performance overhead (it's based on cgroups, which normal linux processes have anyways), minimal disk overhead (not need for an OS install for each one), and saves a ton of ram (each VPS requires at least a linux kernel).

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#158

Post by anderspitman »

rambambram wrote: post #134
apitman wrote: post #127

The reality is that we've let you down. Self-hosting shouldn't be any more complicated or less secure than installing an app on your phone. You shouldn't need to understand DNS, TLS, NAT, HTTP, TCP, UDP, etc, etc. Domain names shouldn't be any more difficult to buy or use than phone numbers. Apps should be sandboxed in KVM/WHPX/HVP-accelerated virtual machines that run on Windows, Mac, and Linux and are secure-by-def…

Interesting projects! I bookmarked boringproxy for later reference. Just a quick comment: the feed on your homepage is nice - like a personal timeline - but it misses an RSS feed! ;)

Thanks. Ah yes RSS. I started working on my static site generator about 2 years ago. That's when I got distracted with the sad state of selfhosting and have been going down that rabbit hole ever since. I'll know I've reached my goal when my dad can run a blog (with RSS) on his own hardware without having to know anything other than writing and selecting photos.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#159

Post by sumosudo »

I have a rather powerful dev box, on which I run yggdrasil[1]. With my mobile unit laptop, that self-hosted dream is a reality. PowerDNS[2] with admin[3] and smallstep[4] are the cherry on top.

[1] https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/

[2] https://www.powerdns.com/

[3] https://github.com/PowerDNS-Admin/PowerDNS-Admin

[4] https://smallstep.com/

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#160

Post by sumosudo »

kickaha wrote: post #116
yamtaddle wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - git: Gitea "Why gitea and not bare repos?" - Better repo, user, and access management, all from a browser. - LFS support. - Being able to browse code in... well, a browser, is really nice. - GH-like workflows generally, if you want that. You can have it use sqlite for the DB to make it extremely easy to manage and backup and such. I'd expect that to be fine up to at least 50 moderately-active users, and maybe muc…

Fair enough. But I just want a place to put dotfiles that I can share between machines. If I had more complex needs than that, I would probably not have had to ask this question!

Chezmoi works for me

https://www.chezmoi.io/

Post reply on HN