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Screw it, I’ll host it myself

markozivanovic.com

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Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#341

Post by skynet-9000 »

blabitty wrote: post #316
dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

>back up every single configuration file. This right here. I recently lost my home server of 10 years courtesy of the Texas power issues during the winter storm. I rebuilt and started with fresh Linux install. Having a recent backup of /etc made it so much easier than it could have been. I had more trouble with the network driver on the new mb then with all my services, customizations and data.

Yikes, did you have it on UPS? How did a power issue kill your server? A big spike? Most filesystems like XFS should be able to fsck even after a power drop, especially with RAID. (I prefer RAID-10 for speed of rebuilds.)

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#342

Post by reasonabl_human »

Daho0n wrote: post #340
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author focuses the entire blog post on remote third party services that are alternatives to popular third party services financed by data collection as a "business model". IMO, the single most important component of a home network is not any piece of the hardware/software outside the home that the third parties may control, it is the internet gateway in the home. Routers were the most important computers at the d…

Sadly many who want to control the gateway with something safe and open fall in the trap that is pfsense.

What about it is a trap? Do you feel the same way about opnsense?

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#343

Post by jrm4 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #294
dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

The author focuses the entire blog post on remote third party services that are alternatives to popular third party services financed by data collection as a "business model". IMO, the single most important component of a home network is not any piece of the hardware/software outside the home that the third parties may control, it is the internet gateway in the home. Routers were the most important computers at the d…

Okay. How can we fix this? I'm dealing with it right now and this space is so hard -- likely somewhat deliberately so. I'm a 20+ year Linux user trying to get a single home network with multiple ISPs going and it just seems way harder than it ought to be; i.e. -- not that every bit of software needs to be idiot-proof, but this iptables/pfSense/netplan etc etc universe just feels downright hostile to the aspiring home user.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#344

Post by Daho0n »

dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

I have been through this too way too many times. Every method I found either were as bad or added more problems (like docker, configs in git, etc.). Now I have removed almost all customisation/configuration from services I need and exchanged them with what are basically default setups of containers in proxmox. Everything is backed up and the amount of configuration needed if something did somehow go away is measured in minutes instead of hours. Luckily I don't need remote access which makes this easy.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#346

Post by simmonmt »

koyote wrote: post #315
dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

I encounter this every 6-12 months when I go back to an old project that is 'working' and want to add something/update something and it all just looks foreign to me. The worst thing is that I have often gone through a lot of effort around making it easy to set up and deploy (docker and whatnot) but even that I have forgotten about. (I came across a docker file in an old project and couldn't get it to work properly un…

I don’t try to put the documentation next to the thing being described because then I’ll lose track of it. I set up a simple Gollum wiki and put everything there. That way I get md for useful formatting, version control on the docs without having to create a zillion git repos, and I never have to wonder where the docs are.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#347

Post by jiux »

dr-smooth wrote: post #189

The problem I have always had when building elaborate home server setups is the "set it and forget it" nature of the systems I've installed bites me in the ass. Since it's not my full-time job to manage these systems, I'm really not familiar with them the way I might be with the systems I manage at work. These systems cruise along for years, and when something finally does go belly-up, I can't remember how I set it u…

To compliment this:

1. Code is only as good as its documentation

2. Write code in a way where you’d understand it one year from now

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#348

Post by Daho0n »

reasonabl_human wrote: post #342
Daho0n wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly many who want to control the gateway with something safe and open fall in the trap that is pfsense.

What about it is a trap? Do you feel the same way about opnsense?

No, I'm in the process of moving to OPNsense. Unlike pfsense it's actually open source, not controlled by a company that tries to drive competition out with dirty tricks and they aren't trying to move their customers to a DRM solution.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#349

Post by blondin »

api wrote: post #85
mattowen_uk wrote: post #79

Y'know what, Although I'm currently self hosting my email, my websites, my storage, my SQL, my Active Directory etc., I'm also in the process of migrating the whole lot to Azure and/or independent hosting. Why? It's just too much hassle these days; I want my down-time to be no longer dictated by my infrastructure. I don't want to have to spend off-work hours making sure my boxes are patched, my disks are raided, my o…

The author of this post cites $55/month as his cost. This is wrong. If it takes him, say, two hours a month to maintain (probably conservative) then if you value those hours at $100/hour the actual cost is $255/month. The reality is probably in excess of $1000/month. This only makes sense for people who have an abundance of spare time, and that's pretty rare these days. Free software for DIY hosting like this is "fre…

i understand what you were trying to say. you are right that people underestimate the work that goes into handling everything themselves.

Re: Screw it, I’ll host it myself

#350

Post by blabitty »

skynet-9000 wrote: post #341
blabitty wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>back up every single configuration file. This right here. I recently lost my home server of 10 years courtesy of the Texas power issues during the winter storm. I rebuilt and started with fresh Linux install. Having a recent backup of /etc made it so much easier than it could have been. I had more trouble with the network driver on the new mb then with all my services, customizations and data.

Yikes, did you have it on UPS? How did a power issue kill your server? A big spike? Most filesystems like XFS should be able to fsck even after a power drop, especially with RAID. (I prefer RAID-10 for speed of rebuilds.)

Surge protector but the spikes were huge. My drives we're actually fine what got killed was the PSU and it was a case integrated PSU, in a system I had been meaning to upgrade for a while anyway. So this gave me the kick in the butt to finally do it. I also went to NVMe for the root drive wow what a difference. The system that died was not out of date software wise it had been dutifully upgraded with every major Debian release so starting on a fresh install, adding packages and copying conf files from my backups, and adding my data drives really wasn't bad. Couple of days after work to do the hw build and restore. Because of shortages / cryptomining / covid I couldn't get the HW I really wanted, that was frustrating.
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