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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#351

Post by hatware »

mholt wrote: post #132

This is why I'm building Timelinize [1]. It's a follow-up to my open source Timeliner project [2], which has the potential to download all your digital life onto your own computer locally, and projects it all onto a single timeline, across all data sources (text messages, social media sites, photos, location history, and more). It's a little different from "self hosting" but it does have a similar effect of bringing…

This is nice, I've always wanted to build something like this, but it would integrate life choices and can show you where one's timeline "dead-ends," because you made the other choice.

The idea is inspired by the movie Bandersnatch. There's something so powerful about reflection with clarity.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#352

Post by asoneth »

karmakaze wrote: post #302
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…

It's pretty easy to write a unit file for a service and install/use it. A layperson could easily follow a guide with just a few of the most common cases.

These may seem like very easy tasks for you.

If you truly believe that a layperson can "easily follow" a technical guide or that a guide with the most common cases is sufficient to maintain a webserver... then the only thing I can say is that your experience with both laypeople and webservers is worlds apart from mine.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#353

Post by yawnxyz »

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.

I thought I was a pretty good "tech person" until I read this thread... and now I'm more layperson than what this thread considers a "layperson" bc none of this makes sense to meh aha

Re: Start Self Hosting

#354

Post by gcommer »

ziml77 wrote: post #277
gcommer wrote: post #234

Lots of good points about the challenges of self-hosting throughout this thread, especially maintenance, security, and time-investment. Here's my solution to all of them: Invest in your common infra. Docker provides stable images configured primarily with env vars. I have a docker-compose host with logging/monitoring/alerting. All service-specific files are mounted from a NAS that has backups. All network access is c…

But then you're adding even more parties to trust as it's often the case that Docker images are not provided by the same people that are maintaining the project.

Fair point, but I haven't hit it in practice. Tons of services are embracing docker as a first-class output. I just checked and I run exactly 2 images that are from a third party.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#355

Post by asoneth »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #295
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?

As someone who used to have a server in my dorm room but switched to outsourcing it I stopped because the list of technologies I had to keep track of kept monotonically growing and I had no interest in making it my day job.

If it becomes simple again I would gladly self-host.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#356

Post by unethical_ban »

roydivision wrote: post #201
sylware wrote: post #171

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 the…

"lambda users"? I've not heard that term before.

AWS Lambda, "serverless compute". No servers to manage. No runtimes to deal with. You load functions into a cloud provider (AWS for example) and feed the function inputs from other AWS services like a queue or an API endpoint. Pay only for the execution of the function based on input.

It's really amazing conceptually, but like the parent said, there aren't many self-hosting options out there. IIRC there is some Apache project, but is there anything in the world for which there isn't?

edit - I just realized that isn't the context of the OP's statement. Heh.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#357

Post by itsjloh »

gcommer wrote: post #349
itsjloh wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How'd you go getting docker + IPv6 going? I spent hours trying to get docker containers to get native IPv6 IPs and eventually gave up because it was to painful.

I feel for you. I also wasted a lot of very painful hours trying to get it to work. I even had it working for a while before a docker update broke it -- turns out docker-compose's ipv6 support that many people relied on for years was a "bug" that they "fixed". Ultimately I also gave up and now have a combination of port forwarding, nat64, and 10+ socat proxies in my docker-compose file. (Specifically, intranet->conta…

Damn, that sucks. How painful.

Honestly tempted to ditch docker-compose in favour of just a bunch of LXC/LCD containers in place. Sure, I mightn't have all the nice networking but damn each container getting internet-routable IPv6 address is just damn nice.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#358

Post by rattray »

One problem with "self-hosting" is you're usually still hosting in the cloud – say, on a DigitalOcean droplet or something. That means you're spending $5-10 every month or whatever, plus you're still vulnerable to some amount of cloud-provider fickleness (though much less than a SaaS provider).

Much better would be a physical device in your own home.

Lately I've been dreaming about a home wifi router that doubles as a personal server, with a few TB of storage, with tailscale-type networking for remote administration and a nice App store for self-hosted apps (FOSS or otherwise).

Not a company I am going to start, just one that I hope someone does.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#359

Post by kbuck »

rattray wrote: post #358

One problem with "self-hosting" is you're usually still hosting in the cloud – say, on a DigitalOcean droplet or something. That means you're spending $5-10 every month or whatever, plus you're still vulnerable to some amount of cloud-provider fickleness (though much less than a SaaS provider). Much better would be a physical device in your own home. Lately I've been dreaming about a home wifi router that doubles as…

Check out Synology NASes (and now they make a router too). Basically exactly what you describe.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#360

Post by bavila »

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…

> It has clean and logical abstractions, and consistency.

Sorry, but an actual layperson would already be lost upon reaching the word "abstraction".

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