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Self hosting in 2023

grifel.dev

281–290 of 307 posts

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't do http challenges because my ISP blocks port 80 inbound.

> Can't do http challenges because my ISP blocks port 80 inbound. My ISP also put me behind CGNAT, which effectively meant that all of the inbound traffic got dropped. I worked around that by getting the cheapest VPSes that I could find and then setting up WireGuard and simply forwarding the traffic to my homelab servers. So I got all of the compute that I have available locally, all of the RAM and all of the cheap H…

I don't need port 80 now that DNS challenges are easily automated. Port 443 is open, so that's fine.

Also, if I have a VPS, why not just serve from the VPS?

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#282
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think it's perfectly fine if my site is down for a day or so because I'm away on travel and it's gone offline. 89.9999% has five nines as well. I think this is the key takeaway: host at home unless you want good uptime. I don't host from home when I want the page to be available even if: 1. There's a power outage at my home 2. I need to e.g. change a lightbulb, so I have to turn off the power (and therefore…

You turn off the power to change a lightbulb? It never occurred to me before that that could be a dangerous activity. You hold it by the glass and unscrew it, then do the reverse for the new one. Your hand should never goes near the socket, right?

I feel like there's a joke about sysadmins and lightbulb changes hiding in here somewhere

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#283
post #24

I self host and use a RPi 3B+. Actually I have a total of 3B+ but only one is actually doing anything for the website. I have my database running on a RPi 4b with 4gb. I could easily consolidate to a single Pi but early on I had different plans for each one but just keep 'em running for no good reason. I'm fortunate in that I have a static IP. Initially I was using NOIP and it worked great but then noticed my IP addr…

I do similar with the VPS and reverse proxy, but use a wireguard tunnel from my home device to the VPS to allow nginx to hit my local device instead of forwarding a port. Avoids punching a hole in your local network, avoids issues when your home IP changes, and ensures nothing ends up going over the internet in the clear.

aye, is also what I do - tunnel to VPS. then I hit the VPS from wherever, which is nice if I get sent out of state for work (and sometimes out of country).

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What setup is immune to zero days?

S3, Github, Netlify etc are going to be infinitely more secure than your home setup. And are basically free.

theyre not immune to 0-days tho.

they just have more staff on hand to respond, run updates, and do the due diligence of checking and implementing patches.

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get perma-banned from your ISP for getting malware. That’s pure FUD. Far more people (at least 2 orders of magnitude) end up infected with malware and become members of botnets from just clicking dumb shit. They don’t get banned from the ISP either.

I had my cable ISP call me a couple times about a business account a few times. I run my own mail server. A POP3/SMTP account got hacked and started sending out spam. They're very polite, professional, ask you to fix the problem and move on.

running your own mail server is an exercise in pain. not sure if you're brave or dumb, but props to giving it a go.

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#286
I also selfhost a lot. For me it's mainly a hobby. I have a fiber connection and an old laptop that now functions as a Ubuntu server. Laptops are nice because it means it can easily endure brief power outages.

I run everything in Docker images with a single docker-compose.yml. For 99% of the folks more than sufficient and way less complex than Kubernetes. I use Caddy as a reverse proxy. Configuration is dead simple and it has auto SSL certificate renewal. Certificates are just there, you don't even need to think about it. I run it together with Authelia so that I can shield web services behind a 2FA SSO login portal. Now I can securely access my personal web services without the need for VPN.

Some things I selfhost: Nextcloud, Adguard, Gitea, Drone (local CI/CD runner, love it), VPN, Samba server, Jellyfin, a few websites, etc.

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#287
post #77

Not sure why you'd self-host a public site from home when you can get a VM from https://www.hetzner.com/cloud for € 4.81 /mo (1vCPU / 2GB RAM / 20 TB bandwidth) with much better internet access. Residential internet connections are more unreliable, have poor upload speeds and requires running a server 24/7 with ongoing electricity running costs. Or if it's a static rendered website you can publish on GitHub Pages for…

I want to self-host a public site because I can be fully in control of the stack. It gives satisfaction to distribute a website to the entire world without depending on third parties other than your utilities company and internet connection. It's fun and I learn a lot from it. But from a business perspective, your solution is ofcourse better, just not as fun.

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#288
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hetzner is a good provider, but you can get some resources for free as well. https://paul.totterman.name/posts/free-clouds/

These free tier offers will kill you on the bandwidth costs.

Two alternatives: cloudflare in front or oracle (which has ridiculous free traffic)

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had my cable ISP call me a couple times about a business account a few times. I run my own mail server. A POP3/SMTP account got hacked and started sending out spam. They're very polite, professional, ask you to fix the problem and move on.

running your own mail server is an exercise in pain. not sure if you're brave or dumb, but props to giving it a go.

Heh. I've been running my own since the mid 90's. Originally I worked for some early ISPs, and continued it as a hobby of sorts. (My main personal email is on gmail.)

Re: Self hosting in 2023

#290
I have an older house and cold cellars are common here. It's a room outside of the foundation in the basement and the roof is the floor of my porch. It was originally intended to keep preserved food cold passively.

So I threw a 32 core xeon server in there. It's isolated enough that the fan noise doesn't carry, and nothing I can do will make the core temps go over 28C. Free cooling during the summer, and in the winter, waste heat from the server helps keep the cold from leeching into the rest of the basement. It's really a beautiful solution.

The server itself runs proxmox, and I've got four or five services exposed to the internet behind an nginx proxy. Most of the time I don't ever have to touch it.

The -only- thing I don't host at home is my email server. Mostly because it's very old and I don't want to upset it, but also email behind a residential IP can be painful.

Everything I host is just for my personal use, and it's been a pretty worthwhile experience. It doesn't take too much of my time, I get to learn new skills, and at the end of it, I get a service I was going to use anyway, but I have absolute certainty that my data is under my control and no one else need be involved. It's nice.

I still need to figure out long term backups, but for now I periodically dump to an external drive and store it in a fireproof safe in the same room. That's as secure as I can get in this environment and I think it's good enough.

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