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CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

fulghum.io

461–470 of 570 posts

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#461
post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who cares if I'm the CEO of an AI company? I didn't mention anything related to my company once in the post. Wrote about learning and fun here: https://fulghum.io/fun2

It's (at least) common courtesy to declare potential conflicts of interest.

I would have if there were potential conflicts.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#462
post #3

This posts lists inexpensive home servers, Tailscale and Claude Code as the big unlocks. I actually think Tailscale may be an even bigger deal here than sysadmin help from Claude Code at al. The biggest reason I had not to run a home server was security: I'm worried that I might fall behind on updates and end up compromised. Tailscale dramatically reduces this risk, because I can so easily configure it so my own devi…

Why not cloudflare tunnels ?

Even behind a tunnel, if you happen to be running an older version of a service (like Immich) with a known exploit, you are still vulnerable to attacks. Tailscale sidesteps this by keeping the service completely "invisible" to the outside world, so the two don't quite compare in my view.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah… I really could not disagree more with that statement. I know we don’t want to trust BigCorp and whatnot, but a single exposed port and an incomplete understanding of what you’re doing is really all it takes to be compromised.

Even if you understand what you are doing, you are still exposed to every single security bug in all of the services you host. Most of these self hosted tools have not been through 1% of the security testing big tech services have.

For every remote exploit and cloud-wide outage that has happened over the past 20 years my sshd that is exposed to the internet on port 22 has had zero of either. There were a couple of major OpenSSH bugs but my auto updater took care of that before I saw it on the news.

You can trust BugCorp all you want but there are more sshd processes out there than tailnets and the scrutiny is on OpenSSH. We are not comparing sshd to say WordPress here. Maybe when you don’t over engineer a solution you don’t need to spend 100x the resources auditing it…

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#466
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same applies to Tailscale. A Tailscale client, coordination plane vulnerability, or incomplete understanding of their trust model is also all it takes. You are adding attack surface, not removing it. If your threat model includes "OpenSSH might have an RCE" then "Tailscale might have an RCE" belongs there too. If you are exposing a handful of hardened services on infrastructure you control, Tailscale adds complexity…

There was a time when people were allowed to drive cars unlicensed. These days, that seems insane. As the traffic grew, as speeds increased, licensing became necessary. I think, these days, we're almost into that category. I don't say this happily. But having unrestricted access seems like an era coming to an end. I realise this seems unworkable. But so was the idea of a driver's license. Sometimes society and safety…

If I threw my license away tomorrow, what would be insane about me driving without a license?

Are you saying "unlicensed" where you mean "untrained?"

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#467
post #3

This posts lists inexpensive home servers, Tailscale and Claude Code as the big unlocks. I actually think Tailscale may be an even bigger deal here than sysadmin help from Claude Code at al. The biggest reason I had not to run a home server was security: I'm worried that I might fall behind on updates and end up compromised. Tailscale dramatically reduces this risk, because I can so easily configure it so my own devi…

People are way too worried about security imo. Statistically, no one is targeting you to be hacked. By the time you are important and valuable enough for your home equipment to be a target you would have hired someone else to manage this for you

Once, when I was young and inexperienced, I left a server exposed to the Internet by accident (I accidentally exposed a user with username postgres, password postgres). In hours the machine had been hacked to run a botnet. Was I stupid? Yes. But I absolutely wasn't a high-profile enough person to "be a target" - clearly someone was just scanning IP addresses.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#468
post #42

I would really like some kind of agnostic backup protocol, so I can simply configure my backup endpoint using an environment variable (e.g. `-e BACKUP_ENDPOINT= https://backup.example.com/backup -e BACKUP_IDENTIFIER=xxxxx`), then the application can push a backup on a regular schedule. If I need to restore a backup, I log onto the backup app, select a backup file and generate a one time code which I can enter into th…

[deleted]

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#469
Threads like this one make me feel at home. Last night I spent an hour trying to figure out a way to adjust tailscale to allow me access to containers on a MacVLAN on my NAS when I connect in away from home. Claude's an excellent tool to help me make informed decisions. I find the knowledge needs to be double checked more than some domains (I'm a big fan of requesting Claude search online for information before using its discourse as a basis for any decisions) but I still feel like I'm learning the WHY and HOW because I can still ask.

I share a lot of the same hesitations as others in the thread - using a giant US-based tech giant's tool for research as well as another US giant's tool to manage access, but it's really a game change and I'd be unable to find the time to do everything I want if I didn't have access to these otherwise.

I'm not even a software guy by engineering, my network is already complicated enough that learning and correctly securing things otherwise would simply just not be feasible with the time and energy I'd like to dedicate to it.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#470
post #26
post #3

This posts lists inexpensive home servers, Tailscale and Claude Code as the big unlocks. I actually think Tailscale may be an even bigger deal here than sysadmin help from Claude Code at al. The biggest reason I had not to run a home server was security: I'm worried that I might fall behind on updates and end up compromised. Tailscale dramatically reduces this risk, because I can so easily configure it so my own devi…

I'd rather expose a Wireguard port and control my keys than introduce a third party like Tailscale. I am not sure why people are so afraid of exposing ports. I have dozens of ports open on my server including SMTP, IMAP(S), HTTP(S), various game servers and don't see a problem with that. I can't rule out a vulnerability somewhere but services are containerized and/or run as separate UNIX users. It's the way the Inter…

"I'd rather expose a Wireguard port and control my keys than introduce a third party like Tailscale."

It's always perplexing to me how HN commenters replying to a comment with a statement like this, e.g., something like "I prefer [choice with some degree of DIY]", will try to "argue" against it

The "arguments" are rarely, "I think that is a poor choice because [list of valid reasons]"

Instead the responses are something like, "Most people...". In other words, a nonsensical reference to other computer users

It might make sense for a commercial third party to care about what other computer users do, but why should any individual computer user care what others do (besides genuine curiosity or commercial motive)

For example, telling family, friends, colleagues how you think they should use their computers usually isn't very effective. They usually do not care about your choices or preferences. They make their own

Would telling strangers how to use their computers be any more effective

Forum commenters often try to tell strangers what to do, or what not to do

But every computer user is free to make their own choices and pursue their own preferences

NB. I am not commenting on the open ports statement

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