Self-Hosting like it's 2025

I am very interested. I tried to migrate to Swarm, got annoyed at incompatibility with tons of small Docker Compose things, and decided against that. I'd love to read about your setup.

This seems overkill. You only need a Pi. I have a Pi4 fanless running:

1. lighttpd exposing a website, using letsencrypt and a cron job to run certbot and restart lighttpd.

2. mox (https://www.xmox.nl) to run a mail server, with PTR records set up by my ISP. I am not with a CG-NAT ISP else none of this would be possible. mox makes it easy enough to set up DMARC and SPF etc. with appropriate output given that you can add to your DNS records.

3. I grab the list of IPs from https://github.com/herrbischoff/country-ip-blocks and add them to an iptables list (using ipset) every week so that I can block certain countries that have no legitimate reason to be connecting, with iptables just dropping the connection. I think I also use https://github.com/jhassine/server-ip-addresses to drop certain ranges from cloud servers to make annoying script kiddies go away.

4. peer-calls (https://github.com/peer-calls/peer-calls/) to be able to video call with my family and friends (with a small STUN server running locally for NAT traversal as I recall).

5. linx (https://github.com/andreimarcu/linx-server) to share single links to files (you can get an Android app to upload from your phone)

6. filebrowser for sharing blocks of files for users (https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser).

7. pihole runs on it so blocks adverts.

8. Wireguard runs on the Pi and I open the VPN ports on my router. I use the VPN on my phone so adverts are blocked when I am out and about (traffic gets routed through the Pi).

9. navidrome runs on it and I use subtracks on Android to stream (or just download albums for when I have spotty connection).

10. mpd runs on the Pi and it plays music to some speakers in the house, so I can control it with M.A.L.P on Android.

11. I use goaccess (https://goaccess.io) to look at my server logs and see what is hitting me.

12. I use maxmind geoip data so I know which countries are hitting me.

13. minidlna runs on the Pi so I can stream films to my TV.

14. I run CUPs on it too so that my rubbish wireless Samsung printer can be printed to from Android and my wife's Apple devices without having to buy an AirPlay-compatible printer.

15. xrdp running so I can log into a visual desktop on the Pi if required.

My router doesn't expose SSH ports, just appropriate ports for these web services and the VPN. SSH keys are useful. SSH is not open to the world anyway and you have to VPN into the network first.

This all sits happily and quietly in a cupboard and uses a feeble amount of power.

I'm not the person you asked, but if some security researcher such as yourself needs a million-dollar service to sell, I'll offer that I would pay decent money for a webapp or something where I can list all the things in my stack or project and it spits out a list of known and possible vulnerabilities that I should check default configs for, update, patch, etc.

My thinking is this; if I'm willing to fork over dollars to a VPS hosting service for peace-of-mind, then paying for a service that helps me understand what I'm doing when it comes to self-hosting should also be on the table as an alternative.

That said, I have no idea how viable of a business model that would be, or if it would even be able to be developed and upkept with reliable info. Or, maybe it already exists, but on an enterprise level that I cannot afford for some dumb little blogs.

Same here. I've had the same setup for decades: A "homelab" server on my LAN for internal hobby projects and a $5 VPS for anything that requires public access. On either of these, I just install the software I need through the OS's package manager. If I need a web server, I install it. If I need ssh, I install it. If I need nfs, I install it. I've never seen any reason to jump into containers or orchestration or any of that complex infrastructure. I know there are a lot of people very excited about adding all of that stuff into the mix, but I've never had a use case that prompted me to even consider it!

K3s installs super fast.

Writing your first yaml or two is scary & seems intimidating at first .

But after that, everything is cut from the same cloth. Its an escape from the long dark age of every sysadmin forever cooking up whatever whimsy sort of served them at the time, escape from each service having very different management practices around it.

And there's no other community anywhere like Kubernetes. Unbelievably many very good quality very smart helm charts out there, such as https://github.com/bitnami/charts/tree/main/bitnami just ready to go. Really sweet home-ops setups like https://github.com/onedr0p/home-ops that show that once you have a platform under foot, adding more services is really easy, showing an amazing range of home-ops things you might be interested in.

> Last thing I need is Kubernetes at home

Last thing we need is incredibly shitty attitude. Fuck around and find out is the hacker spirit. Its actually not hard if you try, and actually having a base platform where things follow common patterns & practices & you can reuse existing skills & services is kind of great. Everything is amazing but the snivelling shitty whining without even making the tiniest little case for your unkind low-effort hating will surely continue. Low signal people will remain low signal, best avoid.