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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#161

Post by cmroanirgo »

mrmattyboy wrote: post #77
blenderdt wrote: post #35

Self hosting is hard. You need to take care of security, backups, software updates, software installation and so on. Even on something like a QNAP (which can be compared to managed hosting) this can be hard. Flip the wrong switch and you expose something to the world. Missed a security update: your device is now vulnerable. While I host a lot of things myself I can understand self hosting is not for everyone.

I'd love to see a blog post that says, this is how to setup X (I dunno.. mediawiki, owncloud, whatever).. and then go fully in-depth into _everything_ surrounding it.. security, backups, logging, alerting, monitoring, backup testing/restoration etc.. a blog post that really covers everything for a well-protected 21st century hosted application that won't leave the owner in tears after a year! There's honestly so many…

It should start with how to make your system upgradeable too. I've server that started on Ubuntu 16 and made a helluva mess upgrading to 18. Due to php changes i've had to use ondrej's packages for later php... but that will break on a (very overdue) upgrade to 20...

All these script kiddie tutorials are terrible at showing how to maintain a server for years.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#162

Post by cersa8 »

blenderdt wrote: post #35

Self hosting is hard. You need to take care of security, backups, software updates, software installation and so on. Even on something like a QNAP (which can be compared to managed hosting) this can be hard. Flip the wrong switch and you expose something to the world. Missed a security update: your device is now vulnerable. While I host a lot of things myself I can understand self hosting is not for everyone.

It has also gotten much easier. For instance running your own full blown email server with docker-mailcow. There's a great UI tool that helps to setup the required DNS records. I remember doing the lengthy postfix + dovecot + SASL + MySQL + Auth + this + that guides. No need for it anymore.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#163

Post by unforswearing »

edgyquant wrote: post #90
mrmattyboy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see a blog post that says, this is how to setup X (I dunno.. mediawiki, owncloud, whatever).. and then go fully in-depth into _everything_ surrounding it.. security, backups, logging, alerting, monitoring, backup testing/restoration etc.. a blog post that really covers everything for a well-protected 21st century hosted application that won't leave the owner in tears after a year! There's honestly so many…

These are called instruction manuals and no one likes to read them.

I am certain you have spent the time to ask everyone if they indeed do not like to read these, but I disagree.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#164

Post by BonoboIO »

mholt wrote: post #132

This is why I'm building Timelinize [1]. It's a follow-up to my open source Timeliner project [2], which has the potential to download all your digital life onto your own computer locally, and projects it all onto a single timeline, across all data sources (text messages, social media sites, photos, location history, and more). It's a little different from "self hosting" but it does have a similar effect of bringing…

Sounds nice.

Do you know some tool, to have all your feeds in one place. I hate having to use Instagram, but a few friends post nice things. Like timeline but with your own feed with only the things i want to see from the sources i want.

Like a daily "You missed this posts, images and ..."

Re: Start Self Hosting

#165

Post by api »

The main barrier is the difficulty of doing it, and there is currently an economic disincentive to fix this.

For software companies the cloud is DRM, and the only kind that works. Rent access to software and you can easily charge a recurring fee for it. This is incredible on the business side, especially because recurring revenue is valued higher by finance types than non-recurring revenue (due to perceived lower risk).

For makers of software you can self-host, money is often made through support. This creates a disincentive to make things too easy or you cut into support profits.

If you try to make a living making endpoint applications, life is hard. The FOSS movement has educated the market that software should always be free (as in beer, not freedom). People will pay $10 for a Starbucks drink but not $5 for an app they use every day.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#166

Post by GrayShade »

Hendrikto wrote: post #137
kodah wrote: post #98

Self-hosting is something that we should be constantly iterating on making easier; it's really the path forward for privacy centric folks. The main challenges are managing workload scheduling (SystemD is complicated for a layperson). Networking is another challenge; for instance, if you wanted all or part of these services to remain offline or on a Mesh VPN there's a lot of knowledge required. There's some projects t…

> SystemD is complicated for a layperson Is it? It has clean and logical abstractions, and consistency. Services depending in each other isn‘t complex or difficult to understand. I suspect that a nice GUI would make systemd quite usable for non-expert users. BTW: It‘s called ”systemd“: > Yes, it is written systemd, not system D or System D, or even SystemD. And it isn't system d either. [0] [0]: https://www.freedeskt…

I swear, writing it as SystemD isa shibboleth of systemd haters.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#167

Post by BonoboIO »

u2077 wrote: post #153

I don’t need a reason why to self host, I need nice, clear, up-to-date tutorials on how to self host various services. Self hosting should be easy enough for everyday people. Perhaps preconfigured servers that treat services just like apps. Once I have a server setup, I should be able to install (and uninstall) services in a single click. The OS can handle permissions and containers.

YES!

I think the single most important thing of any software is "how do i install this". Thats the first thing i search for on a github repo.

And please no outdated tutorials, that sucks so bad ... that i give up and don't use it.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#168

Post by sccxy »

yewenjie wrote: post #68

What are you all self-hosting? For me - - Gitea (git forge) - Maddy (email) - Calendso (scheduling) - Vaultwarden (password manager) - linx (filesharing) - Syncthing (file syncing) - Wireguard (VPN) - a couple of metasearch engines I am not mentioning all the tools and services for monitoring and management. Self hosting is easy for me cause I am managing all of this with NixOS.

- Wireguard (VPN)

- Pi-hole (Adblocking and works with VPN)

- Plex (Media collection)

- Plausible (Web analytics)

- Home assistant (Smart home)

- Uptime Kuma (Monitoring)

- Traccar (GPS tracking)

- 5 nodejs web apps

Wireguard and nginx ports are only opened to internet.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#169

Post by kodah »

GrayShade wrote: post #166
Hendrikto wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SystemD is complicated for a layperson Is it? It has clean and logical abstractions, and consistency. Services depending in each other isn‘t complex or difficult to understand. I suspect that a nice GUI would make systemd quite usable for non-expert users. BTW: It‘s called ”systemd“: > Yes, it is written systemd, not system D or System D, or even SystemD. And it isn't system d either. [0] [0]: https://www.freedeskt…

I swear, writing it as SystemD isa shibboleth of systemd haters.

For the record, I actually like and use it. I'm just at work and didn't put much thought on how to spell it. I also didn't really expect someone to care that much in a general, high-level discussion.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#170

Post by teekert »

I love selfhosting. Right now I have this in my personal docker-compose.yaml: NextCould (3 installs, each their own MariaDB instance), HomeAssistant, Mosquitto, Vaultwarden, an Nginx served static website, Unifi controller, nzbget, Samba, librespeed, Wireguard, 4 MineCraft servers, AdGuard home, FoundryVTT and Traefik as reverse proxy for https (it's all 1 yaml file, everything! At least, excluding the HA config etc). All on a 16 GB RAM, corei3 based server. Home Assistant tells me it is consuming about 30 W right now (and generally stays between 30-35W). That's about 70 eur a year for multi-terabyte personal cloud, and docker-compose makes managing it very easy (docker-compose pull, docker-compose up -d). Over the past 2 years I had only one issue (I had to pin Mariadb to 10.5 or NextCloud complains).

Oh, the initial costs are of course quite high, including all disks I'd say about 1000 eur, so it's quite the hobby (I have a nice Fujitsu motherboard (3 y/o) and Fractal Design case (12 y/o), it saw 3 builds now, I started with a super cheap atom based board, then a Pentium dual core, and now the corei3 system that can handle a lot more disks, the nvme root drive makes it so fast.) I wonder about my next system. I also have a corei3 based Nuc (as htpc) and that thing is also very fast, silent and energy efficient. And it has nice and fast external I/O. Not sure yet, but my current system will last at least another 5 years.

My father has a Synology NAS and for some time I thought that would be my next system because I'd get tired of the associated sys-admin tasks at some point (I started with a Gentoo system and there were no containers, meaning you have to set up php-fpm, then mariadb, then download Next(Own)Cloud, then update it regularly, pff and the migrations to other systems...). But docker-compose really changed that for me, I think the Synology would be more work.

Btw, a nice podcast on Selfhosting where I got a lot of inspiration from: [0]

[0]: https://selfhosted.show

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