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Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

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Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#31

Post by noAnswer »

doubled112 wrote: post #13
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Own your own domain, point it to the email hosting provider of your choice, and if something went horribly wrong, switch providers. Domains are cheap; never use an email address that's email-provider-specific. That's orthogonal to whether you host your own email or use a professional service to do it for you.

This is my plan. I will lose some email history, but at least I don’t lose my email future. However, you can’t own a domain, you are just borrowing it. There is still a risk that gets shut down too, but I don’t think it is super common.

Why should you lose some email history? Just move the mails to a differente folder.

I self host my mails but still use a freemail for the contact address for my providers. No chicken and egg problem for me.

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#32

Post by BLKNSLVR »

sunshine-o wrote: post #7

I self-host most of what I need but I recently faced the ultimate test when my Internet went down intermittently. It raised some interesting questions: - How long can I be productive without the Internet? - What am I missing? The answer for me was I should archive more documentation and NixOS is unusable offline if you do not host a cache (so that is pretty bad). Ultimately I also found out self-hosting most of what…

Each downtime is an opportunity to learn the weaknesses of your own system.

There are certain scenarios you have no control over (upstream problems), but others have contingencies. I enjoy working out these contingencies and determining whether the costs are worth the likelihoods - and even if they're not, that doesn't necessarily mean I won't cater for it.

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#33

Post by BLKNSLVR »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #15

I get why you want to self host, although I also get why you don’t want. Selfhosting is a pain in the ass, it needs updating docker, things break sometimes, sometimes it’s only you and not anyone else so you’re left alone searching the solution, and even when it works it’s often a bit clunky. I have a extremely limited list of self hosted tool that just work and are saving me time (first one on that list would be fir…

> if the company is respecting privacy and has descent pricing.

Also an extremely limited list.

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#34

Post by weikju »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #11
ryandrake wrote: post #3

> The premise is that by learning some of the fundamentals, in this case Linux, you can host most things yourself. Not because you need to, but because you want to, and the feeling of using your own services just gives you pleasure. And you learn from it. Not only that, but it helps to eliminate the very real risk that you get kicked off of a platform that you depend on without recourse. Imagine if you lost your Gmai…

Own your own domain, point it to the email hosting provider of your choice, and if something went horribly wrong, switch providers. Domains are cheap; never use an email address that's email-provider-specific. That's orthogonal to whether you host your own email or use a professional service to do it for you.

If doing so id also recommend not using the same email or domain for the registrar and for your email host…. If you are locked out of one you’d want to be able to access the other to change things.

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#35

Post by kilroy123 »

AstroBen wrote: post #30
sunshine-o wrote: post #7

I self-host most of what I need but I recently faced the ultimate test when my Internet went down intermittently. It raised some interesting questions: - How long can I be productive without the Internet? - What am I missing? The answer for me was I should archive more documentation and NixOS is unusable offline if you do not host a cache (so that is pretty bad). Ultimately I also found out self-hosting most of what…

I've taken this as far as I can. I love being disconnected from the internet for extended periods - they're my most productive times I have a bash alias to use wget to recursively save full websites yt-dlp will download videos you want to watch Kiwix will give you a full offline copy of Wikipedia My email is saved locally. I can queue up drafts offline SingleFile extension will allow you to save single pages really e…

Could you share the bash alias? I would love this too.

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#36

Post by bluGill »

zdw wrote: post #26
aucisson_masque wrote: post #15

I get why you want to self host, although I also get why you don’t want. Selfhosting is a pain in the ass, it needs updating docker, things break sometimes, sometimes it’s only you and not anyone else so you’re left alone searching the solution, and even when it works it’s often a bit clunky. I have a extremely limited list of self hosted tool that just work and are saving me time (first one on that list would be fir…

> docker There's your problem. Docker adds indirection on storage, networking, etc., and also makes upgrades difficult as you have to either rebuild the container, or rely on others to do so to get security and other updates. If you stick to things that can be deployed as an upstream OS vendor package, or as a single binary (go-based projects frequently do this), you'll likely have a better time in the long run.

Maybe. There are pros and cons. Docker means you can run two+ different things on the same machine and update them separately. This is sometimes important when one project releases a feature you really want, while a different one just did a major update that broke something you care about. Running on the OS often means you have to update both.

Single binary sometimes works, but means you need more memory and disk space. (granted much less a concern today than it was back in 1996 when I first started self hosting, but it still can be an issue)

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#37

Post by bluGill »

boplicity wrote: post #28
whartung wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My singular issue with self hosting specifically with email is not setting it up. Lots of documentation on setting up an email server. But running it is different issue. Notably, I have no idea, and have not seen a resource talking about troubleshooting and problem solving for a self hosted service. Particularly in regards with interoperability with other providers. As a contrived example, if Google blackballs your s…

Most services, including email providers, spam databases, and "ip-ban sites" have clear documentation, in terms of how to get on their good side, if needed, and it is often surprisingly straightforward to do so. Often it's as simple as filling out a relatively form.

They claim that, but everyone small I know who self hosted email has discovered that forms don't do anything. I switched to fastmail 15 years ago and my email got a lot better because they are big enough that nobody dares ignore them. (maybe the forms work better today than 15 years ago, but enough people keep complaining about this issue that I doubt it)

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#38

Post by dantodor »

boplicity wrote: post #28
whartung wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My singular issue with self hosting specifically with email is not setting it up. Lots of documentation on setting up an email server. But running it is different issue. Notably, I have no idea, and have not seen a resource talking about troubleshooting and problem solving for a self hosted service. Particularly in regards with interoperability with other providers. As a contrived example, if Google blackballs your s…

Most services, including email providers, spam databases, and "ip-ban sites" have clear documentation, in terms of how to get on their good side, if needed, and it is often surprisingly straightforward to do so. Often it's as simple as filling out a relatively form.

Have you ever tried to use it? Because I fought for about 2 months with both Google and Microsoft, trying to self-host my mail server, to no success. The only answer was amongst the lines 'your server has not enough reputation'. Even though perfectly configured, DKIM, DMARC, etc. Now imagine a business not being able to send a message to anyone hosted on Gmail or Outlook, probably 80-90 percents of the companies out there.

Re: Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

#39

Post by AstroBen »

kilroy123 wrote: post #35
AstroBen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken this as far as I can. I love being disconnected from the internet for extended periods - they're my most productive times I have a bash alias to use wget to recursively save full websites yt-dlp will download videos you want to watch Kiwix will give you a full offline copy of Wikipedia My email is saved locally. I can queue up drafts offline SingleFile extension will allow you to save single pages really e…

Could you share the bash alias? I would love this too.

https://srcb.in/nPU2jIU5Ca

Unfortunately it doesn't work well on single page apps. Let me know if anyone has a good way of saving those

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