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

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

#531

Post by mycall »

lmm wrote: post #122
buran77 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather expose a Wireguard port and control my keys than introduce a third party like Tailscale. Ideal if you have the resources (time, money, expertise). There are different levels of qualifications, convenience, and trust that shape what people can and will deploy. This defines where you draw the line - at owning every binary of every service you use, at compiling the binaries yourself, at checking the code th…

> It's simple, you increase your attack surface, and the effort and expertise needed to mitigate that. Sure, but opening up one port is a much smaller surface than exposing yourself to a whole cloud hosting company.

You could also use ZeroTier and get similar capabilities without a third-party being a blocker.

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

#532

Post by lmm »

sejje wrote: post #488
b112 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of massive fines, and in some cases jailtime for driving without a license is control. If someone breaks regs, you want to be able to levy fines or jail. If they do it a lot, you want an inability to drive at all. It's about regulating poor drivers. And yes, initially vetting a driver too.

I don't really know any adults who don't drive, and nobody ever told me they weren't capable. I don't think it's about driving ability, besides the initial vetting.

Most inadequate drivers don't think they're inadequate, which is part of the problem. Unless your acquaintances are exclusively PMC you most likely know several adults who've lost their licenses because they are not adequately safe drivers, and if your acquaintances are exclusively PMC you most likely know several adults who are not adequately safe drivers and should've lost their licenses but knew the legal tricks to avoid it.

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

#533

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #470
drnick1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someth…

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

#534

Post by woleium »

mycall wrote: post #531
lmm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simple, you increase your attack surface, and the effort and expertise needed to mitigate that. Sure, but opening up one port is a much smaller surface than exposing yourself to a whole cloud hosting company.

You could also use ZeroTier and get similar capabilities without a third-party being a blocker.

or netbird

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

#535

Post by theshrike79 »

johnisgood wrote: post #366
duckmysick wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that no, managing your own VPN is not a basic skill - certainly not in the realms of software engineering (more like network engineering).

WireGuard is ~10 lines of config and wg genkey. Calling that "network engineering" is a stretch. The siloing of basic infrastructure knowledge into "not my discipline" is part of the problem. Software gets deployed somewhere: understanding ports, keys, and routing at a basic level is not specialized knowledge. Honestly, if 10 lines of config is "network engineering", then the bar for software engineering has dropped…

Can you talk a computer illiterate relative over the phone to install Wireguard on their device (laptop, tablet, phone) so that they can connect to your network?

I have done that with Tailscale, most of the time was spent waiting for it to download.

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

#536

Post by eqvinox »

bjt12345 wrote: post #420
eqvinox wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory. In the same theory, someone would need your EC SSH key to do anything with an exposed SSH port. Practice is a separate question.

SSH is TCP though and the outside world can initiate a handshake, the point being that wireguard silently discards unauthenticated traffic - there's no way they can know the port is open for listening.

Uh, you know you can scan UDP ports just fine, right? Hosts reply with an ICMP destination unreachable / port unreachable (3/3 in IPv4, 1/4 in IPv6) if the port is closed. Discarding packets won't send that ICMP error.

It's slow to scan due to ICMP ratelimiting, but you can parallelize.

(Sure, you can disable / firewall drop that ICMP error… but then you can do the same thing with TCP RSTs.)

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

#537

Post by eqvinox »

JasonADrury wrote: post #425
eqvinox wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory. In the same theory, someone would need your EC SSH key to do anything with an exposed SSH port. Practice is a separate question.

Not even remotely comparable. Wireguard is explicitly designed to not allow unauthenticated users to do anything, whereas SSH is explicitly designed to allow unauthenticated users to do a whole lot of things.

> SSH is explicitly designed to allow unauthenticated users to do a whole lot of things

I'm sorry, what?

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

#538

Post by cirelli94 »

drnick1 wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: 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 did it and I was just hacked because of a CVE on my pangolin reverse proxy! Sadly, I didn't knew of the CVE soon enough and I only noticed when a crypto malware took my fan 100% all day long...

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

#539

Post by mlrtime »

johnisgood wrote: post #271
Jtsummers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you answered the question. Sugar. It's easier than managing your own Wireguard connections. Adding a device just means logging into the Tailscale client, no need to distribute information to or from other devices. Get a new phone while traveling because yours was stolen? You can set up Tailscale and be back on your private network in a couple minutes. Why did people use Dropbox instead of setting up their own…

Yeah, but "people" here are alleged software engieners. It is quite disheartening.

Oh boy... If you've been an Infra Engineer you would know pretty quickly that the average software engineer can be great at writing code but not so good about managing a complex environment Reliably.

Full stack is for start ups and small projects.

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

#540

Post by mlrtime »

rootusrootus wrote: post #194
zrail wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My spouse and I work at home and after the first couple multi-day power outages we invested in good UPSs and a whole house standby generator. Now when the power goes out it's down for at most 30 seconds. This also makes self-hosting more viable, since our availability is constrained by internet provider rather than power.

Yeah we did a similar thing. Same situation, spouse and I both work from home, and we got hit by a multiple day power outage due to a rare severe ice storm. So now I have an EV and a transfer switch so I can go for a week without power, and I have a Starlink upstream connection in standby mode that can be activated in minutes. Of course that means we’ll not have another ice storm in my lifetime. My neighbors should t…

Same! Texas?
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