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Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

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Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#161

Post by dotancohen »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #132

There is really no benefit to self-hosting for an individual's basic productivity tools. Just back up your files. When your managed hoster becomes insufferable, upload your backed-up files to a new managed hoster. You will spend 100x more time (and money) curating your self-hosted thing than just backing up and uploading once or twice in your lifetime. I have switched email providers 3 times in 25 years. With the las…

I call this "leveraging the open protocols". Very smart people wrote very details specs that other very smart people implemented. Leverage that for robustness, instead of fighting the sisyphean server management issues.

As far as hobbies go, self-hosting is very rewarding. But if a hobby is not the end goal, then don't do it yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#162

Post by dotancohen »

rexreed wrote: post #150
qbasic_forever wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syncthing is a flawless Dropbox replacement in my experience. There's a big caveat that you need something like a NAS or your home server always online with it though as it's peer to peer sync only.

Syncthing doesn't support my older Mac devices anymore. I can't get Syncthing to work on Mac OSX Yosemite (10.10.5). And no, the device is not upgradable for a variety of reasons not worth going into. Any solutions there?

Depends on your use case. Maybe simple rsync and cron would be viable.

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#163

Post by sitzkrieg »

i will echo what others have said, avoid aws for the higher charges, a cheap vps should be plenty

i run nextcloud on a vps from a gaming provider and got it hauling, heres a few things i learned

- avoid the snap of nextcloud, i could not get it working 100% (many apps would mysteriously not work etc), i am using a manual install from zip w zero issues

- if you are planning on using s3 as backing store, set it up BEFORE any users, otherwise you may lose data on disk. with that said, i use local storage and backup to s3, using s3 as the backing store in nextcloud made it obviously slow

once youre setup i recommend tuning php-fpm following their guides

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#164

Post by Phelinofist »

preya2k wrote: post #42

Don't expect too much from Nextcloud – it will not be a 1:1 replacement for commercial services from Google, Microsoft, etc. Prepare to spend much time debugging, configuring, reading tickets, etc. If you only want files and Cloud office, consider using alternatives like Seafile[1] or the new OwnCloud rewrite in Go called OCIS[2], which are MUCH more stable than Nextcloud. [1]: https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ [2]: h…

Nextcloud is really just awful to manage. It is kinda insane that you have to do all major version migrations consecutively _manually_, so if you are on 10 and didn't upgrade for a while and current is 13, you have to do 10->11, 11->12 and finally 12->13.

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#165

Post by johnklos »

sneak wrote: post #124
johnklos wrote: post #122

Why not run it from your home network? You're likely already paying for home Internet, and since most of the access will be local, it'll be neither slow nor will it cost anything. Don't forget that running your stuff and putting your data onto servers belonging to big corporations means that even if they're not scanning everything the way Google scans your email, they can still access it, so it's better, but not worr…

This is against the ToS for most residential internet providers and can subject you to disconnection/ban from one of the few/only carriers available in your city.

"Most"? Nope. Perhaps that was true twenty years ago, but it's definitely not true now.

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#166

Post by camdv »

lurker_jMckQT99 wrote: post #50
jerf wrote: post #18

If you're worried about costs, I run Nextcloud locally in my house, and just deal with the fact it's not externally available. Everything syncs when it is in the house, which is just about always for the laptops and pretty often for the cell phones, and when it is out and about it just doesn't. It all works out. I have a backup process running on it, but back up disk space is a lot cheaper than live disk space attach…

I run Nextcloud "locally" too. It's "local" in the sense that it sits on an laptop-turned-server by my desk [0]. Add a domain name, a simple dynamic DNS [1] and a forwarding rule on your router ; your local machine is now reachable from everywhere. No (useless for that usecase) additional intermediary like Tailscale in the middle. It has the added benefit of allowing you to share everything that is on Nextcloud with…

I wouldnt call Tailscale "useless" in that case. If you use Tailscale there, you dont have to port forward, so you have no exposure to the general internet. No one bashing on your port, looking for vulnerabilities. You don't need a DDNS, since Tailscale gives you a fixed address for your machine that persists. So you can set a single CNAME record with your Domain hosting service and you're done. And Tailscale has clients for all platforms, including mobile, so it "just works" with all your devices. It's free for up to 20 devices.

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#167

Post by l72 »

preya2k wrote: post #42

Don't expect too much from Nextcloud – it will not be a 1:1 replacement for commercial services from Google, Microsoft, etc. Prepare to spend much time debugging, configuring, reading tickets, etc. If you only want files and Cloud office, consider using alternatives like Seafile[1] or the new OwnCloud rewrite in Go called OCIS[2], which are MUCH more stable than Nextcloud. [1]: https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ [2]: h…

This also doesn't reflect my experience. I have very minimal issues with the Nextcloud instance that I have been running on a small fanless computer at home for several years now.

It has even passed the non-technical spouse test, which is important!

It is used for files storage/sharing, backups, photo backups, recipes, calendar (caldav), contact (carddav), todo lists, bookmarks, webmail (rainloop to an externally hosted imap provider), and other stuff, all from Linux, Mac OSX (spouse) and iphones.

My biggest complaint is that there isn't an LTS version, and since you can't skip versions when upgrading, I feel like I need to make sure I update every 3-4 months, even though it isn't publicly available on the Internet (it is on my local network which is always available on all devices thanks to wireguard)

Re: Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?

#168

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #155
aborsy wrote: post #139

What’s the point of replacing one corporation with another (especially if you have to maintain the server yourself)? Host it on cheap hardware at home, with plenty of RAM and CPU. If the power is off for 15min, that doesn’t matter for personal use. As a plus, you can host it in plaintext (or at least, load the LUKS key), so that applications can index your data, allowing a lot of cool stuff. You can lock it in down m…

> What’s the point of replacing one corporation with another (especially if you have to maintain the server yourself)? I dont think most people have issues with corperations in principle. It is a few particular companies people want to avoid. Hosting is commoditized; if your host becomes a problem you can migrate. This isn't as easy with Google.

> Hosting is commoditized; if your host becomes a problem you can migrate.

Not so when you are using custom offerings from a hosting company. OP specifically mentions "Nextcloud office suites". How will he migrate that?

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