Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Start Self Hosting

rohanrd.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 625 posts

Re: Start Self Hosting

#171

Post by sylware »

Bringing self hosting to lambda users is _REALLY_ hard and Big Tech won't let you do it too easily.

Many corp email smtp servers will IP block your email server (big thanks to spamhaus), or won't support no-DNS email address and servers (which is RFC from the start) or won't have the decency to handle grey listing or will send all your emails to their spam boxes (gogol) even though ppl did remove your emails from their spambox.

IAPs won't provide a stable public IPv4 address or IPv6 prefix. UPNP NAT port redirection (IPv4) will have bugs on the IAP router/modem.

Buying a DNS and configuring a domain is a pain. So few DNS registrars support automatic domain configuration via the standard dynDNS protocol (is this even a thing?).

The self-hosting devices on user domestic LANs will be pown by very "smart" hackers pushing those very users towards big tech (I wonder who is pay... pushing such hackers to do that...).

The path of least resistance will win, always, even if it means giving way to much power to some corps:

Lambda users _will use_ comfy centralized services mostly, and those centralized services, once big, will try to zap away any alternatives or interop (which most used in the first place to get there).

Like lambda users _will use only_ the pre-installed OS on the computer (or mobile phone) they bought, same idea.

I am talking about nearly everybody else who is not "us", the 0.1% (ironical).

Re: Start Self Hosting

#173

Post by kesslern »

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.

Unraid can do something extremely similar to this. There's a plugin that provides a repository of Community Applications that are essentially docker configuration templates designed specifically for Unraid. You can search for say, HomeAssistant and install it with just a few clicks.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#174

Post by orblivion »

losvedir wrote: post #88
molsongolden wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The digitalocean marketplace is kind of like this. Also sandstorm.io.

I was so sad when sandstorm kind of fizzled out. I'm still hoping Kenton is on a secret mission to somehow bring it to life within Cloudflare. How cool would that be? One-click installs of docs, email hosting, photo sharing, etc apps from a server app marketplace, onto a cloud server you control. (Insofar as you "control" anything on a cloud host, but I feel like that's pretty far, still.)

It's still slowly but surely chugging along. A small number of people (myself included to a small extent) are working on it. There's even a budget:

https://opencollective.com/sandstormcommunity

We've discussed the one-click install thing at some point (not necessarily with Cloudflare), I imagine that's still of interest. There were some issues with the setup process that would need to be addressed first.

Kenton is in the loop and he still has the keys. But, he's busy with other things so he only does a few occasional but vital things.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#175

Post by gonehome »

I'm biased because I now work on it, but I think Urbit is the only way something like this will work for most people and at scale. "Only" is probably too strongly worded, but it's the one attempt I've seen where I think real success is among one of the possible outcomes (other attempts I've seen don't fix deeper issues and are DOA).

The issues that caused the decentralized web to fail (and incentivize centralization) are deeper and to get self-hosting to work beyond the tiniest of niches requires rethinking some of the computing constraints we find ourselves operating under from first principles.

People will never run their own servers if that means administering linux. Identity will never be solved by PGP key signing parties and spam will always be a problem on the current web. Federated systems in their current state that require everyone to run linux servers and keep them in sync/up to date will not work.

https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progr...

https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit

On the current web we're just serfs allowed account access on company servers. I think it's admirable to make it easier to run your own server, but I think decades have shown that it won't work (beyond a narrow hyper-technical niche) without fixing some of the larger issues: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook... - the most exciting part of the web was what people thought it would bring in the 90s. I think that isn't impossible, but we're currently trapped in a local max. We can't get out of that local max without acknowledging why we're in it - why the centralized services are currently so much better and why the dream of everyone self-hosting (even with decades of effort) has been a failure.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#176

Post by spiffytech »

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…

Technologists have a very skewed idea of what's complicated vs easy with computers. Things we think are absolutely trivial are often insurmountable hurdles for laypeople.

(This can, of course, happen if you put a technologist outside their element, too)

Re: Start Self Hosting

#177

Post by pixelN »

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.

https://www.cloudron.io/ or https://yunohost.org/ might be interesting.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#178

Post by Isthatablackgsd »

Yhippa wrote: post #116
ryandrake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole "self hosting isn't easy" meme gets repeated so much that people just take it as given now and default to managed software. Or, someone might argue "Well, my grandmother who knows nothing about tech cannot self-host, so it's not viable!" ignoring there is a huge spectrum of competence between grandma and a seasoned Linux sysadmin. People aren't morons, and there's enough info out there on how to do…

I'm skeptical that your layperson would be able to keep self-hosted applications secure constantly. Hell, huge corporations have a difficult time with it.

I have this issue too. When I tried to set up self-hosting, I assumed that there are steps that requires me to expose it to the internet. Turn out that it already exposed and didn't (or barely) provided the information of how to close it off securely and keep it private network only. When I tried to find information about it, there was always guides that are not consistent with it. Some will say I have to go in php.ini to do this, then go to SQlite to do that, then go to other files do there, then adding 20 steps to keep it secured. I'm just wondering why there are not any centralized options to do this. I just want a option that I can tick in the software and left it off as that.

I understand those documentations are not for laypeople for me. However it is annoying when people out there kept pushing the self-hosting for beginners narrative without providing the necessary tools for laypeople to keep themselves secured and reliable.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#179

Post by mceachen »

v-yadli wrote: post #125

PhotoPrism[1]+NextCloud is a potential solution to the Picasa problem. I run them on my personal NAS. The devops experience is fine -- I can wrap up PWAs for all the devices (PCs and phones) in the family. Need to set up a few systemd timers to synchronize data, build indices and check for PhotoPrism app updates but that's not too bad. Docker makes deployment super easy. The user experience, hmm, modern, minimalism,…

I'm writing PhotoStructure, which you might be interested in. It's self-hosted, but also runs on Windows and macOS without docker, libraries are portable, and photo and video deduplication is robust. Photoprism had a couple features I haven't built out yet, but I'm getting there. More details are here: https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/

Also, if nextcloud gives you attitude (I had scaling issues with it), know that there are several other alternatives to background phone syncing with your server: https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#...

Re: Start Self Hosting

#180

Post by moonbas3 »

BonoboIO wrote: post #167
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.

Most things offer a docker image, so maybe learn how to work with those.
Post reply on HN