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How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

alice.bsky.sh

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Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#71

Post by diggan »

freedomben wrote: post #64
zzyzxd wrote: post #46

Selfhosting is my hobby but I am also an SRE. I am hesitant to do this because the instruction is "too easy" -- "Simply open your firewall, download and run this installer.sh with sudo on your server and that's it!"[1]. How do I secure the webserver and the data? Where is the data on my disk? How to backup and restore? High availability? There might be detailed documentation somewhere, or I can even read the code. Bu…

Same, exactly. I would so much rather be given a docker-compose or k8s yaml along with some other tidbits like how to run migrations and stuff, than get a bash script I can just run. I've been doing this long enough to know that it's not initial setup work that really matters, it's the upgrade and backup/restore story that really matters. If your bash script just pulls and runs a docker container or something then co…

Here:

- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/in... has all the expected outside docker-compose setup, you can read it through in like 5 minutes

- Heavy-duty part of the setup is running https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/co... which you should be familiar with

I guess the shellscript is for people who want a one-line install, which I wouldn't do myself either, but I guess some people prefer.

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#72

Post by zzyzxd »

diggan wrote: post #71
freedomben wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, exactly. I would so much rather be given a docker-compose or k8s yaml along with some other tidbits like how to run migrations and stuff, than get a bash script I can just run. I've been doing this long enough to know that it's not initial setup work that really matters, it's the upgrade and backup/restore story that really matters. If your bash script just pulls and runs a docker container or something then co…

Here: - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/in... has all the expected outside docker-compose setup, you can read it through in like 5 minutes - Heavy-duty part of the setup is running https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bluesky-social/pds/main/co... which you should be familiar with I guess the shellscript is for people who want a one-line install, which I wouldn't do myself either, but I guess s…

The script even installs docker with apt by itself (which, I think, is the only reason they require Ubuntu as the OS -- to not to deal with any other package manager variants)... I mean, why? Just let people install docker however they like! If you don't even trust your users to install a container runtime, who's your target audience really?

It's also over complicated, like, it even tries to handle race condition of multiple apt processes! What kind of environment do they expect the users have? As the project become more popular, the script will need to handle more edge cases. Let's see if it is still a 5 minutes read one year later.

> I guess the shellscript is for people who want a one-line install, which I wouldn't do myself either, but I guess some people prefer.

This is the problem in lots open source projects -- providing a one-liner installer and bragging about how easy the initial setup is, without an easy path for long term maintenance. Give it some time, many happy users of the one-liner will be unhappy when they encounter issues.

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#73

Post by jonstaab »

nightpool wrote: post #61
steveklabnik wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about the case where you wanted to run your own PDS and use all of the other infrastructure being run by Bluesky. If you fully want your own copy of everything, then you'd want to run a copy of everything. But you don't have to. It really depends on what your goals are. That's why the post is about the maximal scenario. "Just your own PDS" is the minimalist scenario. But I think it's the one that makes se…

Right, and I'm saying "surely there must be a middle ground between "using all of Bluesky's infrastructure" and "having a 4.5tb copy of every post ever made on the network""

consider the nostr protocol

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#74

Post by kiitos »

steveklabnik wrote: post #53
kiitos wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DIDs are stable only in the context of a specific 'verifiable data registry' as the spec puts it. https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/#dfn-verifiable-data-registry DIDs delegate trust and authority to a data registry, in exactly the same way that DNS delegates trust and authority to ~ICANN. The system model is exactly the same. The difference is only in the properties of the authoritative entity.

That's a good point: I was speaking in a more social manner. Because domains are human-readable, they tend to be used for humans. Bluesky could have chosen to just use domains, but I personally prefer that we have the additional layer of indirection. Plus like, you have the ability (at the low level, not really exposed in the UI in any meaningful way) to be multiple people: I can associate multiple domains with my DI…

Yeah, definitely not suggesting domains are a better form of identity!

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#75

Post by mitochondriaz »

pfraze wrote: post #17
__justplaying wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes it's a SPOF. not sure about the second question, but i do know there are plans to transfer its ownership to an independent foundation

Transferring to an independent org is what we're talking about now, yes. The backstory to PLC is that we picked up the DID standard and looked for an existing registry-method that would satisfy requirements¹. None of them really did. We then surveyed mechanisms for decentralized operation: DHTs, open blockchains, permissioned blockchains, and federated databases. Of them, the two blockchain variants seemed perhaps pr…

Can you say more on why DHTs are not a solution? Are you aware of https://github.com/pubky/pkarr, for example? It seems to be very good!

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#76

Post by fiatjaf »

nightpool wrote: post #40
half-kh-hacker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would "self-hosting all of Bluesky" mean other than a copy of the entire site? If you just want to participate in the network host a PDS, which only stores your own posts.

Surely there's some middle ground between only hosting your own data and being reliant on another site to keep track of your following / followers and hosting a duplicate copy of the entire network?

The middle ground you're looking for is impossible in the AT protocol, it is however what the Nostr protocol is aiming towards.

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#77

Post by apitman »

elashri wrote: post #59
sureglymop wrote: post #23

It's great that you wrote this up! One thing I have found with many open source/selfhostable projects is just how much running them yourself can vary. It can go from a simple compose file with everything included to having to dig for obscure services and piece together how they all form the whole. For example, I recently looked into self hosting Zotero. It is so under documented and complex that there is almost no wa…

> For example, I recently looked into self hosting Zotero. It is so under documented and complex that there is almost no way one could self host that (even for just one user) without that being ones job. So one needs to make a distinction between something being open source and being feasible to use/maintain Just for the benefit for anyone that want to go through this rabbit hole. You cannot selfhost Zotero. In theor…

This is why it's not enough for software to be open source. It also has to be forkable.

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#78

Post by apitman »

__justplaying wrote: post #30
heavensteeth wrote: post #28

This site is extremely snappy. Good work.

Thanks! Its code is available at https://github.com/aliceisjustplaying/whtwnd-blog , I intend to turn this into the template as the posts are stored on my PDS, on ATProto, using WhtWnd https://whtwnd.com/ (And all of this is a fork of my friend's Samuel's blog, https://mozzius.dev , see https://github.com/mozzius/mozzius.dev )

Your site is stored on your PDS and available on whtwnd, but also hosted directly on your domain. How are they connected exactly?

Re: How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

#79

Post by half-kh-hacker »

nightpool wrote: post #40
half-kh-hacker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would "self-hosting all of Bluesky" mean other than a copy of the entire site? If you just want to participate in the network host a PDS, which only stores your own posts.

Surely there's some middle ground between only hosting your own data and being reliant on another site to keep track of your following / followers and hosting a duplicate copy of the entire network?

Your following list is stored in your own repo, so it lives on your PDS. You can theoretically have partial replicas of the network but nobody has bothered yet; if you want to make software like that, a good start would be subscribing to the firehose and filtering down to DIDs you care about / supplying the watched DIDs parameter to a Jetstream instance
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