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Why Self-Host?

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Re: Why Self-Host?

#231

Post by jesterson »

oxalorg wrote: post #137
mikepurvis wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing that gives me anxiety about this is the security surface area associated with "managing" a whole OS— kernel, userland, all of it. Like did I get the firewall configured correctly, am I staying on top of the latest CVEs, etc. For that reason alone I'd be tempted to do GHA workflow -> build container image and push to private registry -> trivial k8s config that deploys that container with the proper port…

I left my VPS open to password logins for over 3 years, no security updates, no firewalls, no kernel updates, no apt upgrades; only fail2ban and I survived: https://oxal.org/blog/my-vps-security-mess/ Don't be me, but even if you royally mess up things won't be as bad as you think.

Security is way more nuanced than "hey look I left my door open and nothing happened!". You are suggesting, perhaps inadvertently, a very dangerous thing.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#232

Post by velocity3230 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #27

20 years ago grandpa could go to limewire.com, download setup.exe and click next->next->next to install a fully functional file hosting server+client. It was so easy that 1/3rd of world's computers had limewire installed in 2007 [1]. ONE FUCKING THIRD! Today, to install even the simplest self-hosted software, one has to be effectively a professional software engineer. Use SSH, Use Docker, use tailscale, understand TL…

That's because Limewire is a client and not a server. If you wanted decent share ratios you needed to update your firewall to allow the correct inbound ports (or leave UPnP on (bad idea)).

A self-hosted server is an entirely different beast. You're right, it's not easy to setup and run -- but that's the world we live in. Malicious actors have ruined something that could have been relatively easy and automated to setup and run; even the most experienced of us wouldn't stand against professional penetration testers or nation states.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#233

Post by aborsy »

esseph wrote: post #223
aborsy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CF terminated TLS and scans the traffic. It makes sense if you host your services on a VPS. If I run my services at home, I don’t want to provide Cloudflare with access to my data.

It also makes sense if you run public services at home

Public in the sense that the actual content is public (like a blog), sure, anyone can access it, so does the reverse proxy). Since it’s public, I Would still take the trouble entirely out to a provider.

Public in the sense that the front page is public, and the client still need to authenticate to the service at home, in this case, that does not make sense (the user authenticates to reverse proxy, which authenticates to the service), for the reason I mentioned.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#235

Post by waynesonfire »

mikepurvis wrote: post #103
codegeek wrote: post #21

"start self-hosting more of your personal services." I would make the case that you should also self host more as a small Software/SAAS business and it is not quite the boogeyman that a lot of cloud vendors want you to think. Here is why. Most software projects/businesses don't require the scale and complexity for which you truly need the cloud vendors and their expertise. For example, you don't need Vercel to deploy…

The main thing that gives me anxiety about this is the security surface area associated with "managing" a whole OS— kernel, userland, all of it. Like did I get the firewall configured correctly, am I staying on top of the latest CVEs, etc. For that reason alone I'd be tempted to do GHA workflow -> build container image and push to private registry -> trivial k8s config that deploys that container with the proper port…

> gives me anxiety about this is the security surface

I hate how dev-ops has adopted and deploys the fine-grained RBAC permissions on clouds. Every little damn thing is a ticket for a permissions request. Many times it's not even clear which permission sets are needed. It takes many iterations to wade through the various arbitrary permission gates that clouds have invented.

They orgs are pretending like they're operating a bank, in staging.

This gives me anxiety.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#236

Post by daitangio »

Self-hosting is becoming a freedom factor in my humble opinion. I have an hard time hosting my email server, it was not so diffcult 10 years ago and was trivial 20 years ago.

The reason is the anti-spam rules and the fact that Google, Microsoft and so on are creating a iron trust to each other, and the little server outside are marked spam by default.

Lets encrypt avoided a similar destiny to https connections, but the risk is always out of the window. I mean, https was becoming "pay-us-to-publish a web server, or our browser will mark you as unsafe and do not display it".

I think it is time also to self-host private free chats and possibly other services lik DDoS services.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#237

Post by manmal »

moehm wrote: post #213
manmal wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A static site does run on a web server.

Yes, but the web server is just reading files from disk and not invoking an application server. So if you keep your web server up to date, you are at a much lesser risk than if you would also have to keep your application + programming environment secure.

That really depends on the web server, and the web app you'd otherwise be writing. If it's a shitty static web server, than a JVM or BEAM based web app might be safer actually.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#239

Post by breakingcups »

oxalorg wrote: post #140

I left my Hetzner VPS open to password logins for over 3 years, no security updates, no firewalls, no kernel updates, no apt upgrades; only fail2ban and I survived: https://oxal.org/blog/my-vps-security-mess/ Don't be me, but have some solace in the fact that even if you royally mess up things won't be as bad as you think. I self host a lot of things on a VPS and have recently started self hosting on a raspberry pi 5…

You have no idea whether your server is currently actively compromised and participating in a botnet.

Re: Why Self-Host?

#240

Post by pengfeituan »

Excellent topic, I can offer a perspective from my own experience. The biggest benefit of running a homelab isn't cost savings or even data privacy, though those are great side effects. The primary benefit is the deep, practical knowledge you gain. It's one thing to read about Docker, networking, and Linux administration; it's another thing entirely to be the sole sysadmin for services your family actually uses. When the DNS stops working or a Docker container fails to restart after a power outage, you're the one who has to fix it. That's where the real learning happens. However, there's a flip side that many articles don't emphasize enough: the transition from a fun "project" to a "production" service. The moment you start hosting something critical (like a password manager or a file-syncing service), you've implicitly signed up for a 24/7 on-call shift. You become responsible for backups, security patching, and uptime. It stops being a casual tinker-toy and becomes a responsibility. This is the core trade-off: self-hosting is an incredibly rewarding way to learn and maintain control over your data, but it's not a free lunch. You're trading the monetary cost of SaaS for the time and mental overhead of being your own IT department. For many on HN, that's a trade worth making.
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