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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#291

Post by vorpalhex »

edgyquant wrote: post #142
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 used to love running my own servers with all the services etc. I’d manually write beautiful bash scripts to keep it all nice and easy to rebuild on the fly. My first job had 10 Ubuntu servers (on site) and I was the only guy who used Linux at home and had experience with sql. I have never volunteered to maintain servers since, it was horrible and everything was always my fault (it kinda was, I was a hobbyist at bes…

For home hosting the trick is KISS.

I used to backup to external drives. Now I use bare ones since finding big externals got difficult.

I use (and probably abuse) docker compose. K8s is great but compose is easier.

I use a single makefile. Kinda ugly but it's fine.

Bunch of friends and family use my "services". They usually chip in for hard drives and stuff.

I have a few central points of failure but it keeps things easy. My uptime still beats most big clouds - though I have it easier.

I accidentally took down my server for a few days from a botched hardware install. It's a bit funny because now we realize how critical the home server has become to us.. on the other hand, already got the spouses blessing to build a backup standby server.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#292

Post by lnxg33k1 »

prox wrote: post #282
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has come the time where the society starts to advance without caring about laypeople, if some folks can learn it, if there is documentation, then we can just go on without caring about who doesn't know how to use it, because that's fixable. And I speak considering the German government who had to pull back from Linux because employee didn't know how to use it Let's start treating tech as the world treats e…

It is about expendable time. I mean it might take you a few hours or so do it, or even less. People working in other sectors, maybe with a family when they come home, do not have that skill or luxury. And speaking from experience, documentation is often greatly lacking. For example just today I had to thumb down a couple of google docs because it was riddled with inconsistencies and lacking crucial information. And t…

I don't agree with you, only for the fact that right now, in this age computers are everywhere, everything is digital, it is not luxury to learn how things work, it's survival, it's not expendable time, it's professional time

Re: Start Self Hosting

#293

Post by superkuh »

louison11 wrote: post #191

This article is a bit delusional and oblivious to market dynamics. 1. Privacy: Self hosting is not necessarily more private than cloud services. The security of self hosted services is only as good as the effort put into maintaining it. Who do you think invests more in security: the giant corporation or a free open source project? Even if the project is well maintained, there are many ways your server can be compromi…

Your response to this post is a bit oblivious to motivations other than profit and metaphors other than markets.

Additionally, re: (1), static sites are more secure with no maintanence than using a browser with Javascript enabled. (2) HTML and files lasts forever. There is nothing to update. (3) You keep assuming the needs and complexity of a for-profit business and the risks associated with that. But human persons don't have those complex needs or the associated risk of complex, dynamic setups that enable entire teams of people to work on something and constantly move it around.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#294

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Raspberrypi is solving self-hosting issues for most people (size, power usage, simplicity). It's also bringing the price down, because for 2 years of a paid dropbox plan, you can set up your own nextcloud instance + another backup drive if needed... plus all the bonus features (privacy, fast access at home, no ToSs to break, etc.).

Re: Start Self Hosting

#295

Post by LAC-Tech »

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.

Self hosting is hard. You need to take care of security, backups, software updates, software installation and so on.

I'm pretty sure we all used to that and it was mostly fine.

I get that the mainstream computer user has been lost to techno-infantilism. But why should we?

Re: Start Self Hosting

#296

Post by hotpotamus »

ndiddy wrote: post #254
kodah wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it? It has clean and logical abstractions, and consistency. Services depending in each other isn‘t complex or difficult to understand. For a technologist or engineer, yes. For a layperson , no. The average consumer who desires privacy is probably neither a technologist or engineer, so the longterm target is something that just works . Laypeople also aren't going to entertain the kind of pedantry that is systemd…

Laypeople don't know that systemd exists. They will install a webserver or something and the package manager will automatically install and enable its unit file.

You know, nothing is really ever that simple and this comment makes me realize that. You actually hit on a philosophical difference in package managers lol. Ubuntu (not sure about Debian) will install, enable, and start a package, But Red Hat only installs it, because they expect you to configure the service first.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#297

Post by zepearl »

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…

> Services depending in each other isn‘t complex or difficult to understand.

It is for me with Systemd - I had to spend hours (on two different occasions, if I remember correctly on Debian & Linux Mint) trying to understand how to set a dependency against an NFS filesystem mount so that a DB would not be started before that, and to make that work reliably => Systemd's docs & behaviour (& special distro settings related to systemD?) weren't that great for me.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#298

Post by Moru »

core-utility wrote: post #101
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…

I think the hard part is that would be largely dependent on specific implementation, which itself is very opinionated. I could write a post on how I run, maintain, and secure Docker Container X on Ubuntu Y using vSphere with Synology and get 100 comments on why CentOS is better and I'm wasting time/money with vSphere over Proxmox, etc. Cloud doesn't have quite this problem. Once you've chosen a cloud provider, you ha…

Write your howto on your private blog and disable comments. Problem solved. You can thank me later :-)

Re: Start Self Hosting

#299

Post by icedchai »

dragonwriter wrote: post #74
disqard wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! This is what experience has taught me too. We tend to underappreciate the importance of time in everything. A button click can instantiate something powerful (and useful (and easy-to-use...)), but it will degrade over time, and eventually flat-out stop working. I had a stack that worked just fine for my own needs, but it ran on shudder Python 2.7 -- everyone knows how that worked out (I chose to rebuild my stack…

> A button click can instantiate something powerful (and useful (and easy-to-use...)), but it will degrade over time, and eventually flat-out stop working Software doesn't degrade over time (other than, you know things like cosmic ray bit flips, but in most realistic situations that should be fully mitigatable.) The needs of the software user (including hardware and software they want the piece of software to interac…

If your software is not publicly accessible, it may be possible for you to continue running on 10+ year old dependencies indefinitely. For anyone else, other than a hobbyist, it is just not practical.

Otherwise, you are going to be influenced by external factors (security vulnerabilities, wanting to use a feature only available on a newer language version or OS, etc.) If you are a business, you'll also run into more practical concerns, like engineers not wanting to work on a mountain of technical debt.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#300

Post by Moru »

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 realy hate the part when they say "But this is outside of the scope of this manual."
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