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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#501

Post by wallacoloo »

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…

i started self-hosting a bunch of stuff last month: Pleroma (like Mastodon/Twitter), Matrix (chat), Gitea (like Github) and Jellyfin (like Plex, a media server). AFTER i set up the hardware/OS, these each took about 1-2 hours to setup, and it gets faster each time as i get more accustomed to the common parts (nginx, systemd, Lets Encrypt, and whatever containerization you use).

today i accidentally nuked everything by not flushing the disk before rebooting and then naively letting fsck try to ‘fix’ it (which just makes things worse since it unlinks every inode it thinks is wrong instead of helping you recover data). now i’m manually dumping blocks and re-linking them in, supplementing whatever’s not recoverable with a 3-day old backup. that’s probably gonna take an entire day to fix up.

after this i have to figure out a better backup solution, because it costs me $5 of API requests every time i rclone the system to Backblaze, making frequent backups too expensive.

after that, i have to figure out the email part of things. AFAICT it’s pretty much impossible to 100% self-host email because of blacklisting. you have to at least proxy it through a VPS, or something.

and in between that i may spin up a DNS server to overcome the part where it takes 60min for any new service to be accessible because of the negative caching common in DNS.

no, this stuff is just way too involved for anyone who hasn’t already spent a decade in the CLI. i’m only doing this because i’m a nerd with time on his hands between jobs. self-hosting isn’t gonna catch on this decade. but maybe we can federate, so that you just need to have one friend who cares about this stuff manage the infra and provide it to their peers as a social good.

also, i don’t think privacy is the right angle for promoting self-hosting. a good deal of the things that people self-host have a public-facing component (websites; public chatrooms; etc). if privacy is what you seek, then you should strive to live life offline. the larger differentiator for self-housing is control.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#502

Post by wallacoloo »

hosteur wrote: post #275
rsync wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Flip the wrong switch and you expose something to the world." One strategy for dealing with accidental misconfigurations is to employ a "network slug"[1]: "A Network Slug, or "Slug", is a transparent layer 2 firewall running on a device with only two interfaces. ... The purpose of a Slug is to reinforce a security policy or to block uninentional leaks of information." [1] https://john.kozubik.com/pub/NetworkSlug/tip…

I have never head this idea described in text before. However, I have made firewalls this way for decades. They were typically for stuff that ran in a datacenter so it would be a 1U server with three NICs. I would really like to make such devices for home or office use. What would be a good device to use for this? Unfortunately, RaspberryPIs do not come with 2 or 3 NICs. Any recommended alternatives?

use VMs. qemu/kvm. the Tor-based Whonix OS takes the approach of one VM running a Tor proxy and another VM running your application software. the latter VM only has access to that proxy, and no other network interface. it’s effectively the same approach as i understand a slug to be, but with the hardware virtualized instead of physical (or course you don’t have to use Tor — you can define whatever interface you want: a VPN, a firewall, etc).

Re: Start Self Hosting

#503

Post by fantasticshower »

I haven't seen it mentioned but there is Start9 [0] which is a privacy focused plug and play server. I own one but haven't had the time to set it and and use it properly.

It's a Raspberry Pi running their own OS and can host a variety of apps from their marketplace. But they seem to make it easy enough to add services that users develop.

[0] https://start9.com/latest/

Re: Start Self Hosting

#504

Post by southerntofu »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #92
pkulak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to host our own software. It was called an application and it ran on your personal computer. We just need that, but running on some appliance instead, like a NAS. Package the service up in something like docker-compose, have a way to sell it, install it, update it and support it. Synology is pretty close with their Docker support, but still pretty far.

You also need stuff like networking, TLS/certs, and DNS which aren't easily packaged, at least not in a way that doesn't require you to make sketchy changes on every client device.

> You also need stuff like networking, TLS/certs, and DNS which aren't easily packaged

The only thing that cannot be packaged is changing your home network settings. For this you need to click buttons on your modem/router. Fortunately, many selfhosted programs (eg. prosody for XMPP chat) and distros (eg. yunohost) have check commands or panels to figure out what's not configured well on your network and guide you through the process.

Also worth pointing out, Yunohost distro is also intended to be used over a VPN precisely so you don't have to deal with networking setup. Yunohost was bred in the non-profit ISP scene here in France and so your local ISP will provide you with an "internet cube" (SBC) and a VPN access giving you real public IPv4/IPv6 so that:

- you don't have to configure the network

- you don't have to change DNS settings when you change connection (your server works if you take it with you over 3G/4G/whateverG)

- your ISP doesn't get to filter the network (unless it filters VPN access but that's rather uncommon)

See also https://internetcu.be/

Re: Start Self Hosting

#505

Post by southerntofu »

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…

You should check out internetcu.be or or freedombox.org, both very successful at bundling a selfhosting distro with some consumer-oriented hardware!

PS: No i'm not mentioning the many hardware-first solutions which are usually just a scam.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#506

Post by [deleted] »

xanaxagoras wrote: post #327
olah_1 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you. I think the future is something like Umbrel[1]. Because frankly, I would rather have the server running on a little device in my home than having to mess around with things like SSH and a VPS. An app that is running on a little computer in my house is both more understandable and easier for me to maintain. [1]: https://getumbrel.com/

Umbrel looks really cool. Is it possible to deploy without maintaing your own copy of the bitcoin blockchain yet?

[deleted]

Re: Start Self Hosting

#507

Post by edjw »

xanaxagoras wrote: post #327
olah_1 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you. I think the future is something like Umbrel[1]. Because frankly, I would rather have the server running on a little device in my home than having to mess around with things like SSH and a VPS. An app that is running on a little computer in my house is both more understandable and easier for me to maintain. [1]: https://getumbrel.com/

Umbrel looks really cool. Is it possible to deploy without maintaing your own copy of the bitcoin blockchain yet?

> How can I uninstall the Bitcoin and Lightning node?

> Currently, Umbrel installs a Bitcoin and Lightning node by default and it is not possible to remove it. Over the coming weeks, we’ll migrate the Bitcoin and Lightning node to the Umbrel App Store and your Umbrel would then start from a clean slate.

From the FAQs on their website.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#508

Post by southerntofu »

hsn915 wrote: post #421
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…

The internet is a network. You are on the edge of the network. There's a gateway between you and the network. This is impossible to eliminate. It's a feature of the network. The only mitigation you can do is own your data and programs, so that you can change your gateway if they don't serve you faithfully. From this point of view, hosting on a provider is not any worse than on your home network, as long as you regula…

> The internet is a network. You are on the edge of the network. There's a gateway between you and the network.

Everything you have said above is wrong, and sounds like propaganda from Silicon Valley cloud computing cults:

- the Internet is a network of networks, not a single unified network

- you are not "on the edge" (this is only valid from a cloud vendor perspective): if the target audience for your services is in your neighborhood and your ISP is user-friendly, you are in fact "in the center" right where it matters and you can provide much better services to end-users than from a remote continent

- there's routers on your path on the network, but there's no gateway between you and the network: you may have a LAN with local addresses but that doesn't even have to be the case (you can have public IPv6 for everyone on your LAN), and if Google just happens to be next door to your house you can take your own cable to them (assuming they would let you) and do BGP with them directly from your home router (assuming you can configure it, and you get an AS number)

So i agree with you what you describe is typical in the centralized setups that Silicon Valley has pushed to (successfully) render our lives miserable, but there's no reason this has to be. People from non-profit ISPs such as NYCMesh or the FFDN federation certainly make sure we don't have to live in this perpetual nightmare.

> Switching ISP takes on the order of days instead of minutes.

Good point, but this is only because public-serving infrastructure have been cannibalized by corporations. It doesn't have to be this way, in the great scheme of things. Moreover, once you have a decent neutral ISP you usually never need to switch.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#509

Post by spacemanmatt »

sjmm1989 wrote: post #437
mdavis6890 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What “lay person” is going to install a web server??? That’s insane. Maybe a lay faang-er would. Lay people work in a factory or shoe store or accounting firm. They have 1 or more kids. They hear what their friends are doing, and as long as it only requires signing up on a web page, they will consider it. They will use the same password as they do for their bank. And that’s FINE! There is life outside technology, and…

> What “lay person” is going to install a web server??? That’s insane. You ... might be surprised.

I've come to recognize my view that "anyone could install this web server" is a view most commonly shared among fellow techies, and not one shared by the greater population.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#510

Post by southerntofu »

cube2222 wrote: post #16

No thank you. I'll have to take care of backups, security, availability, updates, etc. I prefer to use a managed solution. If you don't want to lose data on being banned, just do your own backups, which are by themselves much less time consuming to handle than full-blown self-hosting. I'm fine with the occasional service being axed, I'll just migrate to another one. Often, somebody writes a migration script and open…

> I'll have to take care of backups, security, availability, updates, etc. I prefer to use a managed solution.

A hosting cooperative is often a good compromise. You get to mutualize services and maintenance with other people who have the same needs.

On a spectrum from selfhosting to cloud computing, hosting cooperatives lie in the middle when users have agency but don't have to take care of everything by themselves.

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