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Start Self Hosting

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Re: Start Self Hosting

#61

Post by lbriner »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #7

Self-hosting is not always the answer for a lot of people. Self-hosting are not easy for laypeople (someone who are not familiar with it) to try to get their feet wet with it. For myself, I am on the level of beginner and I do struggle to stay on self-hosting path. When I set it up, I learn there is more steps that I have to do because the documentations and guides did not bother to explain those step and expect me t…

I think the whole "self hosting isn't easy" meme gets repeated so much that people just take it as given now and default to managed software. Or, someone might argue "Well, my grandmother who knows nothing about tech cannot self-host, so it's not viable!" ignoring there is a huge spectrum of competence between grandma and a seasoned Linux sysadmin. People aren't morons, and there's enough info out there on how to do…

The complaint is fair though. Trying to find a complete or the "correct" guide to something is very difficult even when you already know roughly what you are doing.

I took me ages to work out how to setup postfix properly from about 10 slightly different "guides". The Postfix book wasn't even that helpful. There are also lots of very out-of-date guides that might have been OK for 2015 but not anymore. They don't get deleted because "link juice"

It is sad but true but you get one little bit wrong and you potentially leave a door wide-open.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#62

Post by marc_io »

kerblang wrote: post #39

You know what would be kind of neat? Like, a web site you'd go to called makemeoneofthose.com, and you'd click some buttons, and then sometime later you'd have a hosting setup that you own with some software, web server(s) and database(s) on it, and then you can go hack on it yourself, add some features, whatever. Like they send you some AWS keys and say "It's all yours. Good luck and don't forget to pay your hosting…

But then you have to know how to maintain it all yourself. This is hard. If you already have the knowledge to maintain such a tech stack, that allegedly neat tool would only be marginally useful.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#63

Post by disqard »

kevincox wrote: post #54
kerblang wrote: post #39

You know what would be kind of neat? Like, a web site you'd go to called makemeoneofthose.com, and you'd click some buttons, and then sometime later you'd have a hosting setup that you own with some software, web server(s) and database(s) on it, and then you can go hack on it yourself, add some features, whatever. Like they send you some AWS keys and say "It's all yours. Good luck and don't forget to pay your hosting…

But the hardest part of hosting anything is the maintenance over time.

Yes! This is what experience has taught me too.

We tend to underappreciate the importance of time in everything. A button click can instantiate something powerful (and useful (and easy-to-use...)), but it will degrade over time, and eventually flat-out stop working.

I had a stack that worked just fine for my own needs, but it ran on shudder Python 2.7 -- everyone knows how that worked out (I chose to rebuild my stack on a different platform).

Re: Start Self Hosting

#64

Post by fareesh »

Anyone know of a good YouTube channel that reviews self-hosted programs? I don't mind self-hosting but I don't have the time to install, configure and deploy 50 different video library products and then decide which one works for me. I'd rather watch a video and listen to someone who has done that exercise, because it saves me a lot of time.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#65

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Philosophizing on your blog seems to be the new way to tilt at windmills. If you're actually interested in self-hosting, https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted is a great resource for self-hosted apps. Roll up your sleeves, get prepared to get lost in documentation, and have some fun! You'll realize the tradeoffs of what to self-host and what not-to quickly as you start playing around with actual technologies. Just remember that your life is production and if you're self-hosting XMPP for your family, you may want to be confident you know how to run XMPP before pushing everyone onto it, so maybe setup a lab or staging environment. But that's fine, it's part of the process! Stop writing screeds and start actually self-hosting.

EDIT: Since I'm mostly just reposting the link that OP links in their post, I'll add a couple fun things that I use a lot with self-hosting.

https://hoppy.network/ lets you setup a Wireguard tunnel to have your own static IPv4 /32 and /128 IPv6.

https://freerangecloud.com/ gives you similar products but also lets you do things like colocating a Raspberry Pi or getting a VPS at an IX

https://www.zerotier.com/ can effortlessly setup a private network between hosts

There's more I'm sure, but I like these.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#66

Post by benedikt »

rank0 wrote: post #30

I run a few services from my home but still have to rely on aws/fly.io for some portions of my infrastructure. I really want is to learn how to rent rack space from a colocation. The documentation available does not make it easy to learn. Can I just buy an old 1U blade, throw xen on it and show up at my nearest colo? What do I need to preconfigure to ensure I have remote access without giving remote access to the col…

you’re not all that far off

* you’d have to sign up with a colo provider first. since data centers in physical buildings, this just depends on where you live

* when you sign up with them they provide you with info like ip addresses or how to connect to their network (they might have dhcp, or you might have to configure static ips). usually there is a initial setup fee, around 1 month of rent.

* if you just rent a a 1U space you usually can get physical access to it while accompanied by someone working for the data center. usually this is during business hours, but each data center will have its own rules. if you rent larger units, such as a full rack (42U) or half a rack you usually get a key card and can access it 24/7 (this usually involves a phone call for them to remotely open a lock)

Re: Start Self Hosting

#67

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

kerblang wrote: post #39

You know what would be kind of neat? Like, a web site you'd go to called makemeoneofthose.com, and you'd click some buttons, and then sometime later you'd have a hosting setup that you own with some software, web server(s) and database(s) on it, and then you can go hack on it yourself, add some features, whatever. Like they send you some AWS keys and say "It's all yours. Good luck and don't forget to pay your hosting…

A lot of cloud providers offer this. Cloud ocean for example, you search for the application you're interested in, click lauch and you've got it deployed in a docker container on a remote machine.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#68

Post by yewenjie »

What are you all self-hosting? For me -

- Gitea (git forge)

- Maddy (email)

- Calendso (scheduling)

- Vaultwarden (password manager)

- linx (filesharing)

- Syncthing (file syncing)

- Wireguard (VPN)

- a couple of metasearch engines

I am not mentioning all the tools and services for monitoring and management.

Self hosting is easy for me cause I am managing all of this with NixOS.

Re: Start Self Hosting

#69

Post by [deleted] »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #65

Philosophizing on your blog seems to be the new way to tilt at windmills. If you're actually interested in self-hosting, https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted is a great resource for self-hosted apps. Roll up your sleeves, get prepared to get lost in documentation, and have some fun! You'll realize the tradeoffs of what to self-host and what not-to quickly as you start playing around with actual te…

[deleted]
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