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CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

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Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#71

Post by SchemaLoad »

simonw wrote: post #3

This posts lists inexpensive home servers, Tailscale and Claude Code as the big unlocks. I actually think Tailscale may be an even bigger deal here than sysadmin help from Claude Code at al. The biggest reason I had not to run a home server was security: I'm worried that I might fall behind on updates and end up compromised. Tailscale dramatically reduces this risk, because I can so easily configure it so my own devi…

Yeah same story for me. I did not trust my sensitive data on random self hosting apps with no real security team. But now I can put the entire server on the local network only and split tunnel VPN from my devices and it just works.

LLMs are also a huge upgrade here since they are actually quite competent at helping you set up servers.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#72

Post by SchemaLoad »

drnick1 wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #3

This posts lists inexpensive home servers, Tailscale and Claude Code as the big unlocks. I actually think Tailscale may be an even bigger deal here than sysadmin help from Claude Code at al. The biggest reason I had not to run a home server was security: I'm worried that I might fall behind on updates and end up compromised. Tailscale dramatically reduces this risk, because I can so easily configure it so my own devi…

I'd rather expose a Wireguard port and control my keys than introduce a third party like Tailscale. I am not sure why people are so afraid of exposing ports. I have dozens of ports open on my server including SMTP, IMAP(S), HTTP(S), various game servers and don't see a problem with that. I can't rule out a vulnerability somewhere but services are containerized and/or run as separate UNIX users. It's the way the Inter…

If you expose ports, literally everything you are hosting and every plugin is an attack surface. Most of this stuff is built by single hobbiest devs on the weekend. You are also exposed to any security issues you make in your configuration. My first attempt self hosting I had redis compromised because I didn't realise I had exposed it to the internet with no password.

Behind a VPN your only attack surface is the VPN which is generally very well secured.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#73

Post by MrDarcy »

dwd wrote: post #70

Been self-hosting for last 20 years and I would have to say LLMs were good for generating suggestions when debugging an issue I hadn't seen before, or for one I had seen before but was looking for a quicker fix. I've used it to generate bash scripts, firewall regex. On self-hosting: be aware that it is a warzone out there. Your IP address will be probed constantly for vulnerabilities, and even those will need to deal…

The best solution I’ve found for probes is to put all eggs into the basket listening on 443.

Haproxy with SNI routing was simple and worked well for many years for me.

Istio installed on a single node Talos VM currently works very well for me.

Both have sophisticated circuit breaking and ddos protection.

For users I put admin interfaces behind wireguard and block TCP by source ip at the 443 listener.

I expose one or two things to the public behind an oauth2-proxy for authnz.

Edit: This has been set and forget since the start of the pandemic on a fiber IPv4 address.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#74

Post by syndacks »

Can the same thing be said for using docker compose etc on a VPS to host a web app? Ie you can get the ergonomic / ease of using Fly, Renderer?

Historically, managed platforms like Fly.io, Render, and DigitalOcean App Platform existed to solve three pain points: 1. Fear of misconfiguring Linux 2. Fear of Docker / Compose complexity 3. Fear of “what if it breaks at 2am?”

CLI agents (Claude Code, etc.) dramatically reduce (1) and (2), and partially reduce (3).

So the tradeoff has changed from:

“Pay $50–150/month to avoid yak-shaving” → “Pay $5–12/month and let an agent do the yak-shaving”

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#75

Post by SchemaLoad »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
philips wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! Before Tailscale I was completely skeptical of self hosting. Now I have tailscale on an old Kindle downloading epubs from a server running Copyparty. Its great!

Maybe I'm dumb, but I still don't quite understand the value-add of Tailscale over what Wireguard or some other VPN already provides. HN has tried to explain it to me but it just seems like sugar on top of a plain old VPN. Kind of like how "pi-hole" is just sugar on top of dnsmasq, and Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing.

Tailscale is Wireguard but it automatically sets everything up for you, handles DDNS, can punch through NAT and CGNAT, etc. It's also running a Wireguard server on every device so rather than having a hub server in the LAN, it directly connects to every device. Particularly helpful if it's not just one LAN you are trying to connect to, but you have lots of devices in different areas.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#76

Post by noname120 »

Gualdrapo wrote: post #8

One day when I have some extra bucks I'd try to get a home server running, but the idea of having something eating grid electricity 24/7 doesn't seem to play along well with this 3rd world budget. Are there some foolproof and not so costly off-grid/solar setups to look at (like a Raspberry-based thingy or similar)?

Mac Mini (M1 and later) under Asahi Linux just uses 5 W for a normal workload. If you push it to 100% of CPU it reaches 20 W. That’s very little.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#77

Post by aaronax »

MrDarcy wrote: post #73
dwd wrote: post #70

Been self-hosting for last 20 years and I would have to say LLMs were good for generating suggestions when debugging an issue I hadn't seen before, or for one I had seen before but was looking for a quicker fix. I've used it to generate bash scripts, firewall regex. On self-hosting: be aware that it is a warzone out there. Your IP address will be probed constantly for vulnerabilities, and even those will need to deal…

The best solution I’ve found for probes is to put all eggs into the basket listening on 443. Haproxy with SNI routing was simple and worked well for many years for me. Istio installed on a single node Talos VM currently works very well for me. Both have sophisticated circuit breaking and ddos protection. For users I put admin interfaces behind wireguard and block TCP by source ip at the 443 listener. I expose one or…

And use a wildcard cert so that all your services don't get proved due to cert transparency logs.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#78

Post by recvonline »

I started the same project end of last year and it’s true - having an LLM guide you through the setup and writing docs is a real game changer!

I just wish this post wasn’t written by an LLM! I miss the days where you can feel the nerdy joy through words across the internet.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#79

Post by chasd00 »

What I do at home is ubuntu on a cheap small computer I found on ebay. ufw blocks everything except 80, 443, and 22. Setup ssh to not use passwords and ensure nginx+letsencrypt doesn’t run as root. Then, forward 80 and 443 from my home router to the server so it’s reachable from the internet. That’s about it, now I have an internet accessible reverse proxy to surface anything running on that server. The computers on the same LAN (just my laptop basically) have host file entries for the server. My registrar handles DNS for the external side (routers public ip). Ssh’ing to the server requires a lan IP but that’s no big deal I’m at home whenever I’m working on it anyway.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#80

Post by asciii »

tezza wrote: post #54

Wait… tailscale connection to your own network, and unsupervised sysadmin from an oracle that hallucinates and bases its decisions on blog post aggregates? p0wnland. this will have script kiddies rubbing their hands

Hope OP has nice neighbors because sharing that password is basically keys to this kingdom
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