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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

#101

Post by XorNot »

bombcar wrote: post #49
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…

https://kiwix.org/en/ and some jellyfin setups are a great offline resource. But yeah, things like NixOS and Gentoo get very unhappy when they don't have Internet for more things. And mirroring all the packages ain't usually an option.

You can reverse resolve Nix back down to just the source code links though, which should be enough to build everything if those URLs are available on your local network.

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

#102

Post by aucisson_masque »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #68
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…

Why do you need to update docker? I kept my box running for more than 1 year without upgrading docker. I upgrade my images but it hardly takes 15 minutes for me, in let's say a month. >>> if the company is respecting privacy It's very rare to see companies doing it, and moreover it is hard to trust them to even maintain a unique stance as years pass by.

> if the company is respecting privacy It's very rare to see companies doing it, and moreover it is hard to trust them to even maintain a unique stance as years pass by.

Indeed, no one can predict the future but there are companies with bigger and stronger reputation than other. I pay for instance for iCloud because it’s e2e in my country and pricing is fair, it’s been like that for years and so I don’t have to set up baikal server for calendar, something for file archieving, something else for photo and so on.

I’d be surprised apple did willingly something damaging to user privacy, for the simple reason that they paid so much ads on privacy, they would instantly loose a lot of credibility.

And even stuff you self host, yes you can let it be, not update it for a year but I wouldn’t do that because of security issue. Somethings like navidrome (music player), it’s accessible from the web, no one want to launch a vpn each time you listen to music and so it got to be updated or you may get hacked. And no one can say that the navidrome maintainer will still be there in the coming years, could stop the project, be sick, die… it’s not a guarantee that others take back on the project and provide security update.

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

#103

Post by aucisson_masque »

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.

I run Debian on my machine, so package are not really up to date and I would be stuck, not being able to update my self hosted software because some dependencies were too old.

And then, some software would require older one and break when you update the dependencies for another package.

Docker is a godsend when you are hosting multiple tools.

For the limited stuff I host, navidrome, firefly, nginx, .. I have yet to see single binary package. It doesn’t seem very common in my experience.

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

#104

Post by motorest »

kassner wrote: post #96
motorest wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My laptop from 2011 idles at 8W, with two SATA SSDs. some benchmarks show the Raspberry Pi 4 idling below 3W and consuming a tad over 6W under sustained high load. Power consumption is not an argument that's in favor of old laptops.

> tad over 6W That is the key. The RPi works for idling, but anything else gets throttled pretty bad. I used to self host on the RPi, but it was just not enough[1]. Laptops/mini-PCs will have a much better burstable-to-idle power ratio (6/3W vs 35/8W). 1: https://www.kassner.com.br/en/2022/03/16/update-to-my-zfs-ba...

> That is the key. The RPi works for idling, but anything else gets throttled pretty bad.

I don't have a dog in this race, but I recall that RPi's throttling issues when subjected to high loads were actually thermal throttling. Meaning, you picked up a naked board and started blasting benchmarks until it overheated.

You cannot make sweeping statements about RPi's throttling while leaving out the root cause.

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

#105

Post by mr_mitm »

buran77 wrote: post #97
princevegeta89 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to update docker? I kept my box running for more than 1 year without upgrading docker. I upgrade my images but it hardly takes 15 minutes for me, in let's say a month. >>> if the company is respecting privacy It's very rare to see companies doing it, and moreover it is hard to trust them to even maintain a unique stance as years pass by.

It doesn't matter if you upgrade Docker or not. All tech, self hosted or not, fails for three reasons: 1) You did something to it (changed a setting, upgraded software, etc.) 2) You didn't do something to it (change a setting, upgrade a software, etc.) 3) Just because. When it does you get the wonderful "work-like" experience, frantically trying to troubleshoot while the things around your house are failing and your…

And if you're security conscious like me and want to do things the "right way" just because you can (or should be able to), you now have to think about firewall rules, certificate authorities, DNS names, notifications, backup strategies, automating it in Ansible, managing configs with git, using that newfangled IPv6, ... the complexity piles up quickly.

Coincidentally, I just decided to tackle this issue again on my Sunday afternoon: https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-firewall/pull/11...

Sometimes it's not fun anymore.

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

#106

Post by geraldhh »

cherryteastain wrote: post #83
kassner wrote: post #73

Warning: shameless plug ahead Self-hosting doesn’t mean you have to buy hardware. After a few years, low-end machines are borderline unusable with Windows, but they are still plenty strong for a Linux server. It’s quite likely you or a friend has an old laptop laying around, which can be repurposed. I’ve done this with an i3 from 2011 [1] for two users, and in 2025 I have no signs that I need an upgrade. Laptops are…

Yes but arguably anything below the equivalent of RAID6/RAIDZ2 puts you at a not inconsiderable risk of data loss. Most laptops cannot do parity of any sort because of a lack of SATA/M.2 ports so you will need new hardware if you want the resilience offered by RAID. Ideally you will want that twice on different machines if you go by the "backups in at least 2 different physical locations" rule.

> Most laptops cannot do parity of any sort because of a lack of SATA/M.2 ports

raid is NOT media or connection dependent and will happily do parity over mixed media and even remote blockdevs

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

#107

Post by movedx »

motorest wrote: post #90
zdw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. None of your points make any sense. Docker works beautifully well as an abstraction layer. It makes trivially simple to upgrade anything and everything running on it, to the point you do not even consi…

Absolutely everything they said makes sense.

Everything you're saying is complete overkill, even in most Enterprise environments. We're talking about a home server here for hosting eBooks and paperless documents, and you're implying Kubernetes clusters are easy enough to run and so are a good solution here. Madness.

> I have news for you.

I have news for _you_: using Docker to run anything that doesn't need it (i.e. it's the only officially supported deployment mechanism) is like putting your groceries into the boot of your car, then driving your car onto the tray of a truck, then driving the truck home because "it abstracts the manual transmission of the car with the automatic transmission of the truck". Good job, you're really showing us who's boss there.

Operating systems are easy. You've just fallen for the Kool Aid.

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

#108

Post by HPsquared »

imrejonk wrote: post #95
anotherpaul wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad I am not alone in this. Old laptops are much better than Raspberry pies and often free and power efficient.

And: they have a crash cart (keyboard, mouse and display) and battery backup built-in. An old laptop is perfect for starting a homelab. The only major downside I can think of, and as another commenter already mentioned, is the limited storage (RAID) options.

A lot of older 17" laptops had dual HDD slots.

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

#109

Post by HPsquared »

kassner wrote: post #86
Onavo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free and power efficient Free yes. Power efficient no. Unless you switch your laptops every two years, it's unlikely to be more efficient.

My laptop from 2011 idles at 8W, with two SATA SSDs. I have an Intel 10th-gen mini PC that idles at 5W with one SSD. 3W is not groundbreaking, but for a computer you paid $0, it would take many years to offset the $180 paid on a mini PC.

Say power costs 25¢/kWh. That's $2 per year per watt of standby power. Adjust to your local prices.

So that'd take 30 years to pay back. Or, with discounted cash flow applied... Probably never.

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

#110

Post by m-localhost »

kassner wrote: post #73

Warning: shameless plug ahead Self-hosting doesn’t mean you have to buy hardware. After a few years, low-end machines are borderline unusable with Windows, but they are still plenty strong for a Linux server. It’s quite likely you or a friend has an old laptop laying around, which can be repurposed. I’ve done this with an i3 from 2011 [1] for two users, and in 2025 I have no signs that I need an upgrade. Laptops are…

I've got an old Mac-Mini 2012 laying around. It was a gift. I never wanted to switch to Mac on this solid, but not very powerful machine. Over xmas last year I booted the thing, and it was unbearable slow, even with the original version of the OS on it. After an macOS update, it was unusable. I put an SSD in (thanks YouTube for the guidance) and booted it with Debian and on top of that installed CasaOS (web-based home server OS/UI). Now I can access my music (thanks Navidrome) from on the road (thanks Wireguard). Docker is still a mystery to me, but I already learned a lot (mapping paths)
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