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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#411

Post by unexistential »

pj_mukh wrote: post #386

Speaking of which. Is there a good self-hosted version of Google photos and by which I mean the critical features that make Google Photos so attractive: a) very good mobile sync b) creepily good contextual search (search by people, places etc.) c) family sync and family albums based on b) I would gladly pay more than what I pay for Google photos for a local version AND a setup fee to help me transfer.

Seemingly there isn't, which is a shame because a lot of people would benefit from it. Practically everyone has a smartphone and people's photo libraries keep growing and growing. When I was young and still naïve about the big G, Google photos was awesome but now it doesn't make sense to hand over all of my photos for them to mine and have to pay for storage too.

Right now my setup involves using Syncthing to get photos from my phone to my RPi-based NAS, where I'm running a Photoprism instance. On paper it looked great but Photoprism lacks polish and some important features. On the app side I planned to use PhotoSync to sync with Photoprism but didn't bother downloading it when I found out it wasn't open source and the Android version was ad-supported. A solid Android app that uses Photoprism as a backend and is as smooth and fast as Google Photos would be great to have.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#412

Post by AnonC »

evantahler wrote: post #183

The world of Synology products is fascinating in this regard. Take photos - They’ve got iOS and android apps that replace your photo app; a truly self-hosted server you run in your home with pretty easy to use DNS support tools. Even shared albums work without much fuss. I think they’ve invested in the UX in recent versions, and it shows. https://www.synology.com/en-global/DSM70/SynologyPhotos

I personally don’t trust the Synology media apps to be around for a long time. I don’t remember the exact names, but IIRC, the photo management/sharing app did change from DSM 6 to DSM 7, and there seem to be multiple apps from Synology just for photos. Hyperbackup seems to have issues that haven’t been fixed for years. I’m not that confident on using Synology’s apps for anything long term.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#413

Post by klodolph »

hsn915 wrote: post #407
klodolph wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemd is easy compared to init scripts. Maybe that’s the comparison point. I know that’s my comparison point, since I wrangled init scripts for a couple decades before systemd, and when systemd came out, suddenly it felt a million times easier to run services. > A system where editing text files can make or break the system, is not a reliable system. It's easy to make mistakes in text files. Specially for users wit…

Here's why this matters: some systems require you to edit text files in order to work at all. But at the same time, they are extremely sensitive to the content of the text file. Editing text file to make advanced configuration may be acceptable if the casual end user never needs to do it. When I say never, I mean never ever ever. If you need to edit it once every few months, you better have really really good "lintin…

Ah, I thought you had a complaint about systemd & text files. It sounds like you are okay with it, unless I misunderstand your comment.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#414

Post by hsn915 »

klodolph wrote: post #413
hsn915 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's why this matters: some systems require you to edit text files in order to work at all. But at the same time, they are extremely sensitive to the content of the text file. Editing text file to make advanced configuration may be acceptable if the casual end user never needs to do it. When I say never, I mean never ever ever. If you need to edit it once every few months, you better have really really good "lintin…

Ah, I thought you had a complaint about systemd & text files. It sounds like you are okay with it, unless I misunderstand your comment.

I don't know anything about systemd, nor do I want to.

I absolutely have problems with configuration via text files.

A lot of things on linux desktops that a typical user wants to do require editing text files to work. For example, try searching for information about how to enable Japanese input in Gnome or XFCE desktops. Invariably, the steps involve installing and configuring some specific packages, and editing several text files to let the system know about the fact that you want to use an IME for text input.

This is unacceptable.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#415

Post by melenaos »

mikewarot wrote: post #406

I am not aware of any OS which will stand up to the internet without management for months at a time. Until that problem is solved, self hosting remains a dream. Ideally you should be able to set up a machine, and just have it work for at least a year, on average, with no need to intervein, do updates, patches, etc. Like the old Novell systems we keep hearing about, serving files from rooms since closed off to humans…

How about commercial nas? I have a Synology and thus it gets updates, it keep working without internet for months.

I bring it with me at the vacation house and it's like i am moving my personal cloud

Re: Start Self Hosting

#416

Post by chaxor »

lumost wrote: post #264
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…

Having started my career in hosting, I would suggest that this world is unlikely to come back except for exceptionally small applications with minimal business impact. What does self-hosting provide which end-end encryption does not? Self-hosting means: - Needing to know how to configure your linux host across firewalls, upgrades, backups. - Negotiating contracts with network service providers. While verifying that y…

I think the point is that most of this, other than buying extra hard drives, is solved by having a decent FOSS project.

For example, an OS that has a nextcloud-like suite of services, and a very easy to use GUI to enable a VPN / mesh network for all of your devices pretty much removes much of the concerns you mentioned regarding networking/firewalls/etc.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#417

Post by hsn915 »

egberts1 wrote: post #343

The hardest part is drafting a series of questions for the end-user to understand and answer before we get that “MAGIC-PRESTO-CHANGO” get those configuration files that just works. I blame the program providers. Some Debian maintainers are trying to do this simple querying of complex configurations (dpkg-reconfigure `). And I applaud their limited inroad efforts there because no else one has seem to bother. I have ma…

The problem is configuration itself. Things should not need configuration.

Configuration is for builders, not users.

When you buy a car, do you "configure" the gearbox? The engine?

Imagine yourself buying a car, and the car dealer starts to ask you "where would you like to place the gas tank?" or "How many pipes do you want going from the engine to the gas tank?". Oh and by the way, if you place the gas tank in the wrong place or choose the wrong number or placement for pipes, the car won't start at all; it might even blow up!

This is basically what debian is asking the user to do.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#418

Post by chaxor »

fknorangesite wrote: post #240
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…

> Self-hosting is something that we should be constantly iterating on making easier I'm pretty sure that's exactly what we did and ended up where we are today. Any sufficiently-advanced self-hosting is indistinguishable from AWS? I'm not sure how joking I am.

You don't really have control of any of the hardware on AWS, and therefore they can track everything you do. (If they say they don't, you just have to trust them - there's never a real way to verify) If you're fine with that, then OK - but the public has been shown time and again this doesn't always end happily. So if they leak all of your life's passwords in plaintext, you have to be ok with that.

Which is exactly why OP pointed out this is where we should be headed if we care about privacy.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#419

Post by hsn915 »

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…

Docker will not solve the problem. It's just another layer in the pile of garbage. It's just another confusing system that the user must learn and become an expert in to even get started. Totally the wrong solution.

You want something that just works without the user having to know anything.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#420

Post by pishpash »

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…

What about the hardware side of this? All this talk about software...
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