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Self-Hosting like it's 2025

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Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#91

Post by Aachen »

aborsy wrote: post #75

I can self host many applications, but their security must be outsourced to a company. I don’t have time to keep on top of vulnerabilities. Cloudflare Tunnels is a step in the right direction, but it’s not end to end encrypted. The question is then, how to secure self hosted apps with minimal configuration, in a way that is almost bulletproof?

> security must be outsourced to a company. I don’t have time to keep on top of vulnerabilities.

If the software you host constantly has vulnerabilities and something like apt install unattended-upgrades doesn't resolve them, maybe the software simply isn't fit for hosting no matter what team you put on it. That hired team might as well just spend some time making it secure rather than "keeping on top of vulnerabilities"

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#92

Post by fm2606 »

_mitterpach wrote: post #80
fm2606 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm right there with you, except at times I have thrown caution to the wind and made my sites available. My current setup is to rent a cheap $5/month VPS running nginx. I then reverse ssh from my home to the vps, with each app on a different port. It works great until my electric goes out and comes back on the apps become unavailable. I haven't gotten the restart script to work 100% of the time. But, I'd love to hear…

Maybe try running your services in docker, I don't know how difficult that would be to implement for you, but if you run it in containers you can get it to start up after an outage pretty reliably.

Yeah, that is a good idea and as I have been doing a little bit of studying Kubernetes I thought about that too (overkill for sure).

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#93

Post by thenthenthen »

pjc50 wrote: post #24
TrayKnots wrote: post #20

I am actually worried about the self-hosting pandemic. We self-hosters will stop flying under the radar. Wonder how long it will take until our matrix instances require to be backdoored, our immich are scanning our pictures with AI. On an unrelated note, an article of how to rent a VPS in China would be interesting :)

> an article of how to rent a VPS in China would be interesting Given that apparently it's quite difficult to even get a WeChat account without a national ID, I suspect that step 1 is "learn mandarin" and step 2 is "get a Chinese national ID".

Also your home modem/router is often tied to your ID and then there is ofc the firewall. IIRC You can get vos hosting and ICP code through Ali Cloud somewhat automagically. Agree it would be nice to give it a try some time.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#94

Post by Aachen »

kuon wrote: post #60

If you self host, do not use containers and all those things. Just use a static site generator like zola or hugo and rsync to a small VPS running caddy or nginx. If you need dynamic thing, there are many frameworks you can just rsync too with little dependencies. Or use PHP, it's not that bad. Just restrict all locations except public ones to your ip in nginx config if you use something like wordpress and you should…

What I'm reading is not to use containers for a web server, which makes sense because web servers have had vhosts since forever and you can host any number of sites on there independently already

But what about other services, like if you want a database server as well, a mail server, etc.?

I started using containers when I last upgraded hardware and while it's not as beneficial as I had hoped, it's still an improvement to be able to clone one, do a test upgrade, and only then upgrade the original one, as well as being able to upgrade services one by one rather than committing to a huge project where you upgrade the host OS and everything has to come with to the new major version

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#95

Post by ltr_ »

just want to say that, to self host feels like the 2000's, and that's a refreshing good thing, you feel in control, away for all the enshittification we are experiencing right know. I'm having a blast with a group of friends with netbird/tailscale, creating little projects in our forgejo instance with full CI/CD for the infra, and day by day we are adding more and more stuff, our own little internet. we learn things and talk about technical stuff while setting up and implementing them, its my favorite social network now. also f big tech.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#96

Post by Aachen »

MortyWaves wrote: post #59
megous wrote: post #11

My peace of mind comes from my self hosting in 2025 looking the same as my self-hosting in 2005 (except a move to systemd). I haven't even re-installed my workstation OS since 2006 or so.

2006 is impressive. I can’t even imagine that. I reinstall Windows every 18 months or so.

I don't think I've reinstalled since around 2014, when I switched to a different Linux distribution. It's just a pain and while it cleans up some unused packages, what's the point really? Why do you reinstall Windows every 18 months?

One change I made that may help with this, is to not install crap on the host that I don't plan to use for a long time. Trying out a new database server or want to set up an Android IDE for a temporary project? Use a VM, don't clutter up random files all over the host. Is this what is happening on your Windows perhaps?

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#97

Post by Gracana »

brulard wrote: post #25
jagermo wrote: post #18

i really like this software-centric approach, but I am a bit stuck when it comes to the hardware. Are there some sources around servers that don't suck up too much energy and are fairly quiet? What CPU is a good all-round solution?

Depends on your needs. For some Raspberry Pi (ideally with 8-16GB RAM) + SSD can be enough if you are after low power consumption. If you need more power: I had success with HP ProDesk Mini (or any other one-litre PC), you can get these second hand from like $150 and extend RAM and SSDs however you like. You can even pick processor / generation to fit your needs best. These can have consumption from like 30W if I'm n…

You can get Mini-ITX server motherboards with IPMI and ECC memory if you want something robust and remotely-manageable while staying small and low power. I have a SuperMicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F, which has a 16W intel atom C3558 and is quite old at this point, but it's fine for my little home network tasks.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#98

Post by megous »

MortyWaves wrote: post #59
megous wrote: post #11

My peace of mind comes from my self hosting in 2025 looking the same as my self-hosting in 2005 (except a move to systemd). I haven't even re-installed my workstation OS since 2006 or so.

2006 is impressive. I can’t even imagine that. I reinstall Windows every 18 months or so.

Yeah, it's basically an Arch Linux install. I just rsync it to a new workstation every 5-7 years (or move the disk) and go on. :)

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#100

Post by the_snooze »

fm2606 wrote: post #72
0xEF wrote: post #51

I love the idea of self-hosting, especially since I keep a number of very tiny websites/projects going at any given time, so resources would not really be too much of an issue for me. What stops me is security. I simply do not know enough about securing a self-hosted site on real hardware in my home and despite actively continuing to learn, it seems like the more I learn about it, the more questions I have. My identi…

I'm right there with you, except at times I have thrown caution to the wind and made my sites available. My current setup is to rent a cheap $5/month VPS running nginx. I then reverse ssh from my home to the vps, with each app on a different port. It works great until my electric goes out and comes back on the apps become unavailable. I haven't gotten the restart script to work 100% of the time. But, I'd love to hear…

I do something similar with my home server, but with a WireGuard split tunnel. Much easier to set up and keep active all the time (i.e., on my phone).

Nginx handles proxying and TLSing all HTTP traffic. It also enforces access rules: my services can only be reached from my home subnet or VPN subnet. Everywhere else gets a 403.

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