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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

#161
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…

These days I just wouldn't put my homeserver exposed to the internet only. LAN only with a VPN. Does mean you can't share links and such with other people, but your server is now very secure and most of the stuff you do on it doesn't need public access anyway.

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

#162

I went down the self host route some years ago but once critical problems hit I realized that beyond a simple NAS it can be a very demanding hobby. I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off thin…

Yea I think my own preference for self-hosting boils down to a distrust of a continuous dependency on a service in control of a company and a desire to minimize such dependencies. While there are FOSS and self-hostable alternatives to tailscale or indeed claude code, using those services themselves simply replaces old dependencies on externally-controlled cloud-based services on new ones

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

#163

I went down the self host route some years ago but once critical problems hit I realized that beyond a simple NAS it can be a very demanding hobby. I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off thin…

My spouse and I work at home and after the first couple multi-day power outages we invested in good UPSs and a whole house standby generator. Now when the power goes out it's down for at most 30 seconds.

This also makes self-hosting more viable, since our availability is constrained by internet provider rather than power.

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

#164
post #108
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Speaking of Wireguard, my current topology has all peers talking to a single peer that forwards traffic between peers (for hole punching / peers with dynamic ips). But some peers are sometimes on the same LAN (eg phone is sometimes on same LAN as pc). Is there a way to avoid forwarding traffic through the server peer in this case?

Have your network managing software setup a default route with a lower metric than wireguard default route based on wifi SSID. Can be done easily with systemd-networkd, because you can match .network file configurations on SSID. You're probably out of luck with this approach on network-setup-challenged devices like so called smart phones.

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

#165
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…

Just use subpath routing and fail2ban and Im very comfortable with exposing my home setup to the world.

The only thing served on / is a hello world nginx page. Everything else you need to know the randomly generated subpath route.

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

#166

I went down the self host route some years ago but once critical problems hit I realized that beyond a simple NAS it can be a very demanding hobby. I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off thin…

Hey, if tailscale is something you are worried about. There are open source alternatives to it as well but I think if your purpose is to just port forward a simple server port, wouldn't ssh in general itself be okay with you.

You can even self host tailscale via headscale but I don't know how the experience goes but there are some genuine open source software like netbird,zerotier etc. as well

You could also if interested just go the normal wireguard route. It really depends on your use case but for you in this case, ssh use case seems normal.

You could even use this with termux in android + ssh access via dropbear I think if you want. Tailscale is mainly for convenience tho and not having to deal with nats and everything

But I feel like your home server might be behind a nat and in that case, what I recommend you to do is probably A) run it in tor or https://gitlab.com/CGamesPlay/qtm which uses iroh's instance but you can self host it too or B (recommended): Get a unlimited traffic cheap vps (I recommend Upcloud,OVH,hetzner) which would cost around 3-4$ per month and then install something like remotemoe https://github.com/fasmide/remotemoe or anything similar to it effectively like a proxy.

Sorry if I went a little overkill tho lol. I have played too much on these things so I may be overarchitecting stuff but if you genuinely want self hosting to the extreme self, tor.onion's or i2p might benefit ya but even buying a vps can be a good step up

> I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off things but nothing more than that. So I couldn't reach my Nextcloud instance and other stuff. Maybe an uninterruptible power supply could have helped but the more I was thinking about it after just didn't really worth the hassle anymore. Add a UPS okay. But why not add a dual WAN failover router for extra security if the internet goes down again? etc. It's a bottomless pit (like most hobbies tbh)

Laptops have in built ups and are cheap, Laptops and refurbished servers are good entry point imo and I feel like sure its a bottomless pit but the benefits are well worth it and at a point you have to look at trade offs and everything and personally laptops/refurbished or resale servers are that for me. In fact, I used to run a git server on an android tab for some time but been too lazy to figure out if I want it to charge permanently or what

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

#168

not with these hardware prices...

Hardware that is considered e-waste (like a Core 2 Duo) makes a wonderful home server.

You can go much newer than that and get semi modern intel chips second hand. For something that runs 24/7, the power cost will exceed the savings from using long obsolete chips.

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

#169

I went down the self host route some years ago but once critical problems hit I realized that beyond a simple NAS it can be a very demanding hobby. I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off thin…

I really enjoy self-hosting on rented compute. It's theoretically easy to migrate to an on-prem setup, but I don't have to deal with the physical responsibilities while it's in the cloud.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink backup sounds fun now!

Way too expensive for that imo (but then again might as well just go all in). Probably a 5G connection is more than enough

Honestly I think that there must be adapters which can use unlimited 5g sim's data plans as fallback network or perhaps (even primary?)

They would be cheaper than starlink fwiw and most connections can be robust usually.

That being said, one can use tailscale or cloudflare tunnels to expose the server even if its behind nat which you mention in your original comment that you might be against at for paranoid reasons and thats completely fine but there are ways to go do that if you want as well which I have talked about it on the other comment I have written here in-depth.

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