All of these types are articles always leave out the calculations of what your time is worth to you and the maintenance costs of spare hard drives and other equipment. The TCO is not just the initial investment in hardware/software alone. Unless you plan to host something unreliably and value your time at nothing. In which case I hope you don’t get friends or family hooked on your stuff or everyone will have a bad time and be back to Google Drive/Docs and Netflix within 5 years.
The reason they leave it out I feel is because once you factor all of that stuff in the $10/month your paying for Google Drive storage or the ~$25 your paying Netflix starts to make a lot more sense when pared with a decent local backup from a Synology NAS for the “I can’t lose this” stuff like baby pictures of your kids. Which blows their entire premise out of the water.
Unfortunately he is not talking about security?
I do self-host some services but it bugs me that a lot of articles that talk about costs do not factor in a lot of additional costs. Drives for NAS need replacement. Running NUCs means quite an energy draw compared to most ARM based SBCs.
And it dismisses the time component of self hosting. It’s not going to be zero.
I’d agree but you can expand this quite widely then. You think they don’t need their pictures anymore, in case you host something like Immich/Photoprism? If you host movies, series, games, they may not need them anymore but it would still be noticeable that they are not accessible anymore.
Not that I am saying you are wrong or what a good way of doing that would be. I don’t know myself.
Ideally you want something that gracefully degrades.
So, my media library is hosted by Plex/Jellyfin and a bunch of complex firewall and reverse proxy stuff… And it’s replicated using Syncthing. But at the end of the day it’s on an external HDD that they can plug into a regular old laptop and browse on pretty much any OS.
Same story for old family photos (Photoprism, indexing a directory tree on a Synology NAS) and regular files (mostly just direct SMB mounts on the same NAS).
Backups are a bit more complex, but I also have fairly detailed disaster recovery plans that explain how to decrypt/restore backups and access admin functions, if I’m not available (in the grim scenario, dead - but also maybe just overseas or otherwise indisposed) when something bad happens.
Aside from that, I always make sure that all of all the selfhosting stuff in my family home is entirely separate from the network infra. No DNS, DHCP or anything else ever runs on my hosting infra.
I agree, and I think there’s some reliability arguments for certain services, too.
I’ve been using self-hosted Bitwarden. That’s something I really want to be reliable anywhere I happen to be. I don’t want to rely on my home Internet connection always being up and dyn DNS always matching. An AWS instance or something like that which can handle Bitwarden would be around $20/month (it’s kinda heavy on RAM). Bitwarden’s own hosting is only $3.33/month for a family plan.
Yes, Bitwarden can work with its local cache only, but I don’t like not being able to sync everything. It’s potentially too important to leave to a residential-level Internet connection.
Is your home connection down that much? I’d think that even syncing once every day or so would populate everything fine, and if you’re at home it should update over wifi.
I might just be spoiled because I’m the only one using mine and only for a handful of devices.
Not really, I just have trust issues with my ISP, and I’m willing to spend three bucks a month to work around them.
…Happy cake day?
I wasn’t aware it was on Lemmy too.
I recently decided to get more serious about self hosting and gotta say,
use TrueNAS scale, just do it, literally everything is 1 click… While it can be complicated, it is most definitely worth it, not just to stick it to big tech, but because some of the selfhosted apps genuinely provide a better experience than centralized alternatives. NextCloud surprised me especially with how genuinely nice it is. Installed it, got an SSL certificate and replaced google services almost entirely in a few hours of work.I’ve still got a few things I wanna do which look very complicated… Stuff like a mail server and pfsense (the stuff of nightmares) are among the 1st on my list…
OPNSense is generally pretty easy, more powerful, and more open than pfsense. I started with pf but went to OPNSense and have loved it!
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I am very much into the nitty gritty of Linux (I use Alpine fyi) the problem is, pf/opnsense aren’t based on Linux…
And I also don’t really know how to set them up… Yk as routers, mainly because my internet comes through PPPoE and I just cannot for the life of me figure out how to pass that through to a VM. I bound the VM to its own NIC, did everything, did not work…
Honestly, I found it really easy. I don’t have a background in IT or anything either.
What did you find difficult? Setting custom firewall rules is harder to understand, but the general functionality of setting up a NAT and even installing and configuring ZenArmor were super super easy.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network DNS Domain Name Service/System Git Popular version control system, primarily for code HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage Plex Brand of media server package RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer SMB Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (‘Jabber’) for open instant messaging nginx Popular HTTP server
17 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 3 acronyms.
[Thread #773 for this sub, first seen 30th May 2024, 10:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
IIRC, it’s nearly impossible to self-host email anymore, unless you have a long established domain already. Gmail will tend to mark you as spam if you’re sending from a new domain. Since they dominate email, you’re stuck with their rules. The only way to get on the good boy list is to host on Google Workspace or another established service like Protonmail.
That’s on top of the fact that correctly configuring an email server has always been a PITA. More so if you want to avoid being a spam gateway.
We need something better than email.
Well, there’s always, you know, mail.
Aah, the good ol‘ wooden variety
I self-host mine using Mailcow, but I use an outbound SMTP relay for sending email so I don’t have to deal with IP reputation. L
On top of that, most ISPs block port 25 on residential IP addresses to combat spam, making it impossible to go full ”DIY”
We need something better than email.
Say everyone agrees and the entire world swaps to some alternative. Email 3.0 or whatever.
Wouldn’t we just have the same issue? Any form of communication protocol (that can be self host able) will get abused by spam. Requiring a lot of extra work to manage.
Setting up a web of trust could cut out almost all spam. Of course, getting most people to manage their trust in a network is difficult, to say the least. The only other solution has been walled gardens like Facebook or Discord, and I don’t have to tell anyone around here about the problems with those.
Isn’t the current email system kind of a web of trust. Microsoft, Google etc… trust each other. But little me and my home server is not part of that web of trust making my email server get blocked.
Yeah, that’s kinda what my GP post was getting at. But it’s all managed by corporations, not individuals.
Realistically I don’t see how it would ever not be managed by a corporation. Your average person doesn’t know how and doesn’t want to manage their own messaging system. They are just going to offload that responsibility to a corporation to do it for them. We are just going to have exactly the same system we have now. Just called some else besides email.
I wish there was a better solution but I am not seeing a way that doesn’t just end up the same as email.
If you’re not paying for a service, you’re likely being monetized by watching ads or providing personal data to companies that don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart.
This is a bit out of date. Nowadays, you pay for the service and are monetized by watching ads and providing personal data to companies that definitely don’t have your best interests at heart.
People said it back then too. The ad and tracking industry will always invade more and more of our privacy. When will there be enough tracking to make them stop and be happy? Never. Never is the only answer.
Username checks out .
An article telling people to self host read only by those who already self host. Okay.
Welcome to the internet, where people try their best to find people with the same opinions so they can feel good and get pissed when they can’t.
I think it’s so people here can give themselves a pat on the pack for self hosting lol.
Like how the Linux Lemmy community has so many “Windows is bad, Linux is good” posts. Practically everyone in there already knows that Linux is good.
Someday I hope we have a server technology that’s platform-agnostic and you can just add things like “Minecraft Server” or “Email Server” to a list and it’ll install, configure, and host everything in the list with a sensible default config. I imagine you could make the technology fairly easily, although keeping up with new services, versions, security updates, etc. would be quite the hassle. But that’s what collaboration is for!
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Neat!
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Docker is in theory nice, if it works. Docker doesn’t run on my computer(i have no fucking clue why). Every time I try to do anything I get the Error “Unknown Server: OS” also there is literally nothing you can find online about how to Fux this problem.
I use EndeavourOS, but had the same problem on Arch.
Hardware wise I have an 75800x, a RX 6700XT and 32GB 3200mhz Ram.
The weird thing is, that some time ago I was actually able to use docker, but now I’m not.
That doesn’t make any sense to me. It can be installed directly from pacman. It may be something silly like adding docker to your user group. Have you done something like below for docker?
- Update the package index:
sudo pacman -Syu- Install required dependencies:
sudo pacman -S docker- Enable and start the Docker service:
sudo systemctl enable docker.service sudo systemctl start docker.service- Add your user to the docker group to run Docker commands without sudo:
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER-
Log out and log back in for the group changes to take effect.
Verify that Docker CE is installed correctly by running:
docker --versionIf you get the above working docker compose is just
sudo pacman -S docker-composeI didnt start docker and didn’t add it to my user group. Maybe this will fix it.
sudo pacman -S docker-compose
I did all the steps you mentioned and now it works(at least if use sudo to run the commands).
I thought it would. If it still requires sudo to run it is probably just docker wanting your user account added to the docker group. If the “docker” group doesn’t exist you can safely create it.
You will likely need to log out and log back in for the system to recognize the new group permissions.
Unraid does this via docker. It’s amazing. You can do this live and on the fly.
Cloudron does that,not for free, though. But cheap
As someone who has had a career in hosting: good luck.
Don’t forget backups, logging, monitoring, alerting on top of security updates, hardware failure, power outages, OS updates, app updates, and tech being deprecated and obsolete at a rapid pace.
I’m in favor of a decentralized net with more self-hosting, but that requires more education and skill. You can’t automate away all the unpleasant and technical bits.
You can’t automate away all the unpleasant and technical bits.
But it’s our job to try
But if we hide the complexity, surely we won’t ever have to deal with it! /s
Sounds kinda like NixOS, although that’s not platform-agnostic.
Funnily enough I do use NixOS for my server! It’s not quite what I was describing but it does allow me to host easily.
I’m tired of the argument that the solution to fight tracking/ads/subscription/gafam is self hosting.
It’s a solution for some nice people that have knowledge, time and money for.
But it’s not a solution for everyone.
We need more small nice open source association and company that provide services for people that don’t know the difference between a web search engine and a navigator or just a server and a client. I think that initiatives like “les chatons” in France are amazing for that!!! ( https://www.chatons.org/en )And just to be clear, I think that self-hosted services are a part of the solution. :)
Agreed. Most people online think having a personal website on their own domain is too much of a hassle, they won’t have the knowledge or time to setup a homelab server.
We need more of the nice people you mention — with the tech knowhow and surplus of time — to maintain community services as alternatives to corporate platforms. I see a few co-op services around where member-owners pay a fee to have access to cloud storage and social platforms; that is one way to ensure the basic upkeep of such a community. I’m not sure how Chatons is financed but they certainly have a wide range of libre and private offerings!
I’m hoping my makerspace will be able to do something like that in the future. We’d need funding for a much bigger internet connection, at least three full time systems people paid market wages and benefits (three because they deserve to go on vacation while we maintain a reasonable level of reliability), and also space for a couple of server racks. Equipment itself is pretty cheap–tons of used servers on eBay are out there–but monthly costs are not.
It’s a lot, but I think we could pull it off a few years from now if we can find the right funding sources. Hopefully can be self-funding in the long run with reasonable monthly fees.
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Let’s start with the basics: is dev.to self hosted? 😁
touché
No, dev.to points to 151.101.194.217 which is an IPv4 that belongs to Fastly Inc
Fastly is also a CDN. The fact that a website is behind Fastly doesn’t imply that it isn’t selfhosted at all.
So you mean Fastly is providing CDN servers which cache the content of dev.to and then serve them to the visitor on their servers?
Well yeah that’s not self hosting.
Of course it would be self hosting. If the website isn’t hosted on fastly, and is hosted by an individual, that would be the definition of self hosting. You’re also assuming that Fastly is caching responses, do you know that for certain?
Literally all you’ve done so far is resolve the host name to a DNS record. You think you’ve done something, but you haven’t.
lol what the fuck is your problem? How about you do something and explain to me how you self host a CDN hosted by fastly???
When did I resolve the Hostname to a DNS record? Are you fucking stupid you obviously don’t know what you are talking about. I resolved it’s domain to an IPv4 address which points entirely to a fastly server. It’s not a resource that get’s delivered by CDN, it’s the whole fucking website they are serving, which is a service they sell and that’s not self hosting.
God damn why am I even spending my time arguing with someone that didn’t understand the basics yet. If you think a domain is a hostname and an IPv4 address is a DNS record, just back off and return to the books. You probably feel so cool and think you have done something, which you did, you ridiculed yourself.
You clearly don’t understand a single thing about how the internet works and are very confused. Let me help you out.
how you self host a CDN hosted by fastly???
You don’t? The website is what would be self hosted. Not Fastly.
When did I resolve the Hostname to a DNS record? … I resolved it’s domain to an IPv4 address which points entirely to a fastly server
Right there. You resolved the host record, probably an A record or ANAME for the website (dev.to) into an IPv4 address, using DNS.
It’s not a resource that get’s delivered by CDN, it’s the whole fucking website they are serving, which is a service they sell and that’s not self hosting.
Here’s what you’re critically misunderstanding about this. Just because you resolve the record for a website and the IP that’s returned belongs to fastly does not mean fastly is hosting the content. You literally haven’t done anything to prove that the website isn’t self-hosted on a computer in some guys garage. You’re making assumptions based on ignorance and using those assumptions to gatekeep self hosting because you don’t even know what you don’t know. It’s very possible that site isn’t self hosted, but so far you haven’t actually found any proof of that like you think you have.
If you think a domain is a hostname and an IPv4 address is a DNS record
A domain can have several host records of different types including one at the root of the domain. What you’re resolving isn’t “a domain” it’s a single record for that domain, and its associated IP address is contained in the DNS record. If you’d like to familiarize yourself with this system, try this: https://www.dummies.com/book/technology/information-technology/networking/general-networking/dns-for-dummies-292922/
It’s clear that you’re a hobbyist with very little understanding of how the internet and self hosting works on a fundamental level and that’s ok. But I recommend instead of wasting your energy being confidently wrong very publicly for the purpose of gatekeeping, you use that energy to learn how these things actually work instead.
Delicious irony
Old ThinkPad with Win 10 Pro, Plex, Plexamp, and several 14TB drives so I can stream my home media library on the go.
Why Win 10?
It’s the OS I know how to use. The Thinkpad is a P50 with a Xeon processor and lots of RAM so it runs it easily.
Former professional email host here. Email is like 90% spam.
If want to spend your free time battling the ever evolving landscape of spam, enjoy.
Otherwise, work with a pro mail provider you trust.
