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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

#111

Post by PhilipRoman »

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.

To be honest I never understood the purpose of RAID for personal use cases. RAID is not a backup, so you need frequent, incremental backups anyway. It only makes sense for things where you need that 99.99% uptime. OK, maybe if you're hosting a service that many people depend on then I could see it (although I suspect downtime would still be dominated by other causes) but then I go over to r/DataHoarder and I see people using RAID for their media vaults which just blows my mind.

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

#112

Post by kassner »

m-localhost wrote: post #110
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 hom…

I have a 2009 MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo) which I wanted to give a similar fate, but unfortunately it idles at 18W on Debian.

I hope Asahi for Mac Mini M4 becomes a thing. That machine will be an amazing little server 10 years from now.

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

#113

Post by kassner »

HPsquared wrote: post #108
imrejonk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or DVD drives in which you could add a disk caddy.

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

#114

Post by kassner »

motorest wrote: post #104
kassner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

amd64 processors will have lots of hardware acceleration built in. I couldn’t get past 20MB/s over SSH on the Pi4, vs 80MB/s on my i3. So while they can show similar geekbench results, the experience of using the Pi is a bit more frustrating than on paper.

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

#115

Post by glitchcrab »

huuhee3 wrote: post #79
mkayokay wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also recommend Lenovo ThinkCentre MiniPCs or similar brands. Those can often be found cheap when companies upgrade their Hardware. These machines are also power efficient when idling, use even less space than a laptop and the case fan is very quiet (which can be annoying with laptops under load). I'm currently running Syncthing, Forgejo, Pihole, Grafana, a DB, Jellyfin, etc... on a M910 with an i5 (6th or 7th G…

Yeah I would recommend this too. I've only used Dell Optiplex Micro series, no issues so far. They use external PSU similar to those in laptops, which helps with power efficiency. Something with 8th gen i5 can be had for about 100-150 USD from ebay, and that's more than powerful enough for nearly all self-hosting needs. Supports 32-64gb of RAM and two SSD.

I second this, I have a 4 node Proxmox cluster running on MFF Optiplexes and it's been great. 32gb of RAM in each and a second USB NIC (bonded with the built-in NIC) makes for a powerful little machine with low power draw in a convenient package.

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

#117

Post by kassner »

dantodor wrote: post #38
boplicity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel you. I had my email on OVH for a while, but they handle abuse so bad that Apple just blanketed banned the /17 my IP was in. And I was lucky that Apple actually answered my emails and explained why I was banned. I doubt Microsoft and Google would give you any useful information.

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

#118

Post by nntwozz »

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…

old comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41150483

Where I live (250 apartment complex in Sweden) people throw old computers in the electronics trash room, I scavenge the room every day multiple times when I take my dog out for a walk like some character out of Mad Max. I mix and match components from various computers and drop debian on them then run docker containers for various purposes. I've given my parents, cousins and friends Frankenstein servers like this. You'd be amazed at what people throw away, not uncommon to find working laptops with no passwords that log straight into Windows filled with all kinds of family photos. Sometimes unlocked iPhones from 5 years ago. It's a sick world we live in. We deserve everything that's coming for us.

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

#119

Post by shawabawa3 »

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…

Why do you recommend removing the battery? Risk of fire?

I would have thought any reasonably recent laptop would be fine to leave plugged in indefinitely. Not to mention many won't have an easily removable battery anyway

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

#120

Post by larodi »

itsafarqueue wrote: post #93
larodi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having a .zip of the world, also helps, even though being a lossy one. i mean - always have one of the latest models around, ready for spin. we can easily argue llms are killing the IT sphere, but they also are a reasonable insurance against doomsday.

If by doomsday you mean “power out for a few hours”, sure.

Or few days. But I can also imagine being power independent with your own robotry to sustain even longer power offs. But you’ll also need be very well hidden as society likely collapses in matter of days if this ever happens.
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