Live data from Hacker News

Self-Hosting like it's 2025

kiranet.org

101–110 of 240 posts

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#101
post #24

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".

I didn't have any problems creating wechat account. May be I was lucky, I don't know, I just typed my phone number and it went pretty smooth, like whatsapp. Also was able to connect my visa card. I did it in the Kazakhstan and then was able to pay in China, no problems. May be they got exception for Kazakhstan specifically, we recently got visa-free travels there.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#102
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Windows seems to insistent on crappifying itself. Even if you have a small set of installed applications, many of them behave poorly. Lots and lots of small paper cuts add up. A few dozen registry entries here, a few files there, seven or eight Explorer right click menu extensions (like eg “Edit with X” instead of just using the normal “Open With”) setup by installers.

The end result is right clicking has noticeable delay in some directories. Boot takes a few seconds longer than it did the first time it was installed. Some applications, even Task Manager inexplicably hang with a white window for a few seconds.

The shell (part of Explorer) no longer displaying anything when searching in the start menu (because it tries to connect to the internet to search bing and that sometimes stops working rendering half the start menu useless).

The “modern” settings app hanging with its blue window and icon for anywhere from seconds to indefinitely.

It’s just a lot of this bullshit that adds up. Reinstalling Windows makes it like it was day one.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#103
post #10

Last thing I need is Kubernetes at home

It is still my opinion that most businesses do not need Kubernetes, and neither should anyone self-hosting a service at home. I can see running something in a Docker container, and while I'd advise against containers what ships with EVERYTHING, I'd also advise against using Docker-compose to spin up an ungodly amount of containers for every service. You shouldn't be running multiple instances of Postgresql, or anythi…

I'd love to use Kubernetes for my self hosting. The only problem is it's too expensive.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#104
post #17
post #10

Last thing I need is Kubernetes at home

Exactly. I am hosting 30+ services using docker compose and very happy. I don’t want to troubleshoot k8s in the early morning because home assistant is down and light dimmers are not working for some random k8s reason.

Since I've migrated our company to Kubernetes, I almost stopped to worry about anything. It just works. Had much more troubles running it with spaghetti of docker containers and host-installed software on multiple servers, that setup definitely breaks like every week or every month. With Kubernetes I just press "update cluster" in some saturday evening once or twice a year and that's about it, pretty smooth sailing.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#105
post #24

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".

Did you try? It's a few years ago when I had to create one, but it was just as simple as WhatsApp (just a few more CAPTCHAs). And no VPNs or whatever, straight from a Swiss IP.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#106
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Windows is just less organized, with files appearing all over the place and without user having knowledge what's really needed.

On Arch Linux, all system files are listed, along with their content hashes and expected permissions/ownership, in the installed package database. So it's possible to just list changed files in /etc or unexpected files in the system, or files with unexpected permissions, and do a manual cleanup/checkup if needed. No idea how I'd even approach that on Windows.

I guess the only time I'd need to re-install would be if I messed the system so bad that manual fixup would be too laborious over fresh setup and reconfiguration. (And I'd have to lose system backups too)

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#107

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 :)

Isn't that the beauty of self hosting? How could anything be enforced on user-controlled servers? Practically everything self-hosted is open source and how would enforcing anything would even work?

> How could anything be enforced on user-controlled servers?

New laws comes to mind. If a government decides to try to outlaw encryption again, cloud/hosting companies located there wouldn't have a choice but to comply, or give up on the business. The laws could also be made in such way that individuals are responsible for avoiding it, even self-hosters, and if people are using it anyways, be legally held responsible for the potential harms of it.

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#108
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…

Don't expose anything to the Internet. Use a tunneling tool (Tailscale et al) or VPN

Re: Self-Hosting like it's 2025

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put it on a zfs dataset and back up data on the filesystem level (using sanoid/syncoid to manage snapshots, or any of their alternatives). It will be much more efficient compared to all other backup strategies with similar maintenance complexity.

Filesystem backups may not be consistent and may lose transactions that haven't made it to the WAL. You should always try to use database backup tools like pgdump.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN