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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#561

Post by klodolph »

jethro_tell wrote: post #524
input_sh wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

systemd → does a lot of things on modern Linux systems, amongst which is dealing with services that should autostart (think: both low-level stuff like Bluetooth or user-level stuff like a Dropbox client or a VPN or whatever). Unit files → fairly simple text files that are used to define such stuff for systemd (usually in /etc/systemd/system and /usr/lib/systemd/system). Package manager → essentially the same as an ap…

It's a bit crazy that it even matters. Or that systemd comes up at all in a selfhosting convo. I have friends that selfhost stuff on mac, windows, and linux. They are probably above average as far as tech goes but they are all 30 somethings in non-tech jobs, real-estate, finance, advertising, sales. I field questions from time to time, but it's pretty rare. Never once got a question about an init system. On any os or…

To be honest, I think the reason systemd comes up in a self-hosting conversation at all is because

- Some people want to talk about how difficult things are, and come up with reasons to make things sound difficult,

- Some people have an axe to grind, regarding systemd.

The original poster brought up "workload scheduling" and while I've done plenty of that at work, I'm at a complete loss trying to guess why you would need workload scheduling for any self-hosting project.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#562

Post by egberts1 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #540
hsn915 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

If you're comparing configuration to a car, the builders would be the people hosting the software and the users would be the people logging in from the web interface. Software drivers are the people that use Gmail, iCloud, Fastmail, you name it. Self hosting means building your own alternative, for better or for worse. For comparison, I can order a gearbox but I've never been under a car, let alone worked on one. If…

That!

There is still no default setting for a properly run email server.

Gotta configure some 5 different packages worth of 600 settings.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#563

Post by klodolph »

hsn915 wrote: post #445
klodolph wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know anything about systemd, nor do I want to. Well, that’s fine. We’re mostly talking about self-hosting web servers, and you don’t need to know anything about systemd in order to run a web server on Linux, any more than you need to know about fuel injection computers because you drive a car. The reason I’m familiar with systemd is for other reasons besides hosting a web site. I don’t know how problems wit…

The conversation is about why it takes for something to be usable by end users.

I think in order for it to be a "conversation about X", more than one person has to talk about X.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#564

Post by jethro_tell »

klodolph wrote: post #561
jethro_tell wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit crazy that it even matters. Or that systemd comes up at all in a selfhosting convo. I have friends that selfhost stuff on mac, windows, and linux. They are probably above average as far as tech goes but they are all 30 somethings in non-tech jobs, real-estate, finance, advertising, sales. I field questions from time to time, but it's pretty rare. Never once got a question about an init system. On any os or…

To be honest, I think the reason systemd comes up in a self-hosting conversation at all is because - Some people want to talk about how difficult things are, and come up with reasons to make things sound difficult, - Some people have an axe to grind, regarding systemd. The original poster brought up "workload scheduling" and while I've done plenty of that at work, I'm at a complete loss trying to guess why you would…

I defiantly agree with you. I've never heard mac people sit around and talk about which init system it's running it's a complete non issue. It just doesn't matter to self-hosters and end users in any way shape or form.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#565

Post by bentcorner »

vorpalhex wrote: post #291
edgyquant wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love running my own servers with all the services etc. I’d manually write beautiful bash scripts to keep it all nice and easy to rebuild on the fly. My first job had 10 Ubuntu servers (on site) and I was the only guy who used Linux at home and had experience with sql. I have never volunteered to maintain servers since, it was horrible and everything was always my fault (it kinda was, I was a hobbyist at bes…

For home hosting the trick is KISS. I used to backup to external drives. Now I use bare ones since finding big externals got difficult. I use (and probably abuse) docker compose. K8s is great but compose is easier. I use a single makefile. Kinda ugly but it's fine. Bunch of friends and family use my "services". They usually chip in for hard drives and stuff. I have a few central points of failure but it keeps things…

I've recently started running unraid at home on an old desktop PC and it's really nice. I've also migrated my unifi controller, plex server and pihole to it and it's very easy. Way nicer than the previous setup where I had random dedicated devices each needing their own type of maintenance (unifi controller on my gaming pc needed me to download/install updates manually, plex server hardly received any updates running on old windows laptop and I was always worried about breaking it, and I almost never looked at the pihole running on a rpi).

Now I have a single dashboard and can upgrade each container with a single click, and everything stays on the happy path.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#566

Post by klodolph »

jethro_tell wrote: post #564
klodolph wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I think the reason systemd comes up in a self-hosting conversation at all is because - Some people want to talk about how difficult things are, and come up with reasons to make things sound difficult, - Some people have an axe to grind, regarding systemd. The original poster brought up "workload scheduling" and while I've done plenty of that at work, I'm at a complete loss trying to guess why you would…

I defiantly agree with you. I've never heard mac people sit around and talk about which init system it's running it's a complete non issue. It just doesn't matter to self-hosters and end users in any way shape or form.

Ah, well, back in 2005 or so, Mac people were talking about launchd. Things have settled down since then.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#567

Post by neop1x »

I used to host company stuff on a single physical server I built and put in the datacenter. After some time (and traffic overload) I redid and migrated the company stuff into the Kubernetes and cloud but I still kept the server for personal services and it is still running as we speak. I just had to switch one RAID drive on-line during all those years.. It is a bit costly, but hosts NextCloud photos, files, contacts, calendars, tasks there. Dovecot and Exim for native email, Roundcube webmail, LDAP and even authoritative Bind for couple of domains with a secondary replica on a VPS. Also gitolite git repo hosting, wireguard. I use those self-hosted services daily from android, my laptop and desktop. It is the real bare metal thing. It has some AppArmor policies, fail2ban, some docker containers too. Yes, it took a lot of time, configuration, constant small improvements, adding stuff one by one, DKIM, DMARC, DNSSEC, etc, it needs upgrades now and then but the hard part was mainly done at the beginning! Huge upfront cost and probably not for an ordinary hobbyist, true. But now the maintanence is quite ok. I can even SSH into it any time from Termux android terminal if I need to do something quick on the go or download something fast for backup via the server optical datalink. Most people were lazy, they decided to go clouds and cloud hosted services fast, they took shortcuts and now we have what we see today. There used to be a funny Microsoft tale ad [1] where a family was proud to have a server in the house. :xD While I am not a fan of Microsoft, this also inspired me to go this self-hosting (pain) way and learn a lot along the way. :)

[1] http://www.jimhaven.com/microsoft-stay-at-home-server

Re: Start Self Hosting

#568

Post by XCSme »

I do believe self-hosting is the future, this is why I changed the business model for my web analytics platform[0] from self-hosted + cloud to self-hosted only. By focusing purely on self-hosting, I can touch on many aspects that companies that promote their cloud offerings don't (server maintenance, monitoring, backups, alerting, etc.). This also forces the clients to give self-hosting a try if they want to use the app.

[0]: https://www.uxwizz.com/

Re: Start Self Hosting

#569

Post by ayushnix »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #551
ayushnix wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to edit a service to harden it for example. Oh, wait I shouldn't edit it directly with vi? Because it gets overwritten by package updates. I don't think you're supposed to edit anything inside /usr, except perhaps /usr/local, but even that has a better alternative in the form of $HOME/.local, which is a well defined standard at this point. Maybe I'm unaware or mistaken but if you're editing anything inside /…

> Maybe I'm unaware or mistaken but if you're editing anything inside /usr as a normal user, I'm not doing any of this as a normal user. I'm doing all of this as root

Even in that case, if you're manually editing anything inside /usr either by being root or by using sudo, you're doing something wrong or unexpected.

Anything inside /usr should only ever be modified by the package manager, not by the root user, or any other user for that matter.

If you want to make system wide changes, make them in /etc. If you want to make user specific changes, make them in $HOME/.config, $HOME/.local. Your package manager should never overwrite anything in /etc or $HOME. If it does, it's a bug.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#570

Post by jeroenhd »

egberts1 wrote: post #562
jeroenhd wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're comparing configuration to a car, the builders would be the people hosting the software and the users would be the people logging in from the web interface. Software drivers are the people that use Gmail, iCloud, Fastmail, you name it. Self hosting means building your own alternative, for better or for worse. For comparison, I can order a gearbox but I've never been under a car, let alone worked on one. If…

That! There is still no default setting for a properly run email server. Gotta configure some 5 different packages worth of 600 settings.

I'm a big fan of Mailcow (https://mailcow.email/). You can get it running with just docker-compose up, updating is a breeze, and it brings you a fully fledged mail server with tons of good defaults (and tons of other settings you can manage via the web interface). The web mail UI (SoGo) is clearly directed at organisations but it's very pleasant to work with. Their admin interface makes it possible for mere mortals to have a mail server with spam filtering, antivirus scanning, multiple domains, (temporary) mail aliases, catch-alls, batched IMAP-sync from external mail servers, mandatory TLS for incoming and outgoing emails per mailbox, you name it. They even give you all that control if you buy a managed service from them, which is frankly stunning for a small, independent mail service.

You still need to copy the necessary DNS records like MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC records, but the web UI generates them for you and also checks if they're set correctly. It also does some autoconfig for clients like Thunderbird and Outlook and supports ActiveSync. Contacts and calendar are synced through a cut-down version of Nextcloud (not very usable for much else, though) so you can have the necessary *dav sync for IMAP/POP3 clients, but you'd need to set that up manually if ActiveSync isn't available on your client.

If you also host other stuff on your server, you may need to add the necessary reverse proxy config and disable the built-in Let's Encrypt support, but if you only use that server for mail then you're fine without.

Honestly, Mailcow on a cheap server is good enough that I think most people with some Linux skills can run their own mail server now.

Hell, the server even comes with stuff like basic office resource management (like reserving a conference room for a meeting). If you're willing to take the risk of being responsible for backups and such, you could quite comfortably get your family or a small business on Mailcow.

Alternatively, mail-in-a-box provides a full setup, including the necessary OS stuff, for a dedicated mail server. I've found that to be using a lot of deprecated technology though, and there's no way to use it if you also host other stuff on your server. They solve the DNS issue by making your servers an authoritative DNS server, which I'm also not too big of a fan of. Nothing too bad, just a different take on the same concept that didn't work well for me.

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