this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Lemmy

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Selfhosting single person instance? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by hexagonwin@lemmy.world to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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Hello. I'm considering hosting a 1-person instance for my personal use. I'm trying to run on my own hardware, and I have used *nix for quite a long time and maintaining it wouldn't be much of a problem. However, I'm not quite sure what kind of hardware should I run it on.

How powerful should my hardware be? Say, would it be OK on a old PC with Northwood Celeron and 512mb of ram with 384GB HDD? Or maybe an android phone running postmarketOS (Alpine Linux) with MSM8916 and 2GB of ram with 32GB eMMC?

Also, my ISP does not allow opening common server hosting ports, and I'd also prefer not doing so due to security problems. Which ports do I need opened to operate a lemmy instance for my personal use (i'm only going to be connecting from home)? Can I use CloudFlare's cloudflared/Argo Tunnel to do this? (I do know CloudFlare is not great and has problems but I'm not aware of any other similar service, I'm not really able to pay for external servers but if there's an alternative service I'm open to suggestions)

Thanks for reading the post, and hopefully answering.

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[–] neptune@dmv.social 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

An anti social network. Nice.

[–] jsveiga@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

A single person instance, not federated, and isolated. I can post, comment and moderate. Nobody can downvote me, NOBODY! :-)

I do think OP intends to federate though.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Haha, that wasn't really the purpose, I intend to federate and communicate

[–] tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Lemmy is actually quite light.. My lemmy VM is currently using only 317MB of the 1GB I've allocated it, and about half of a 16GB disk.

Obviously I'm not subscribing to every possible group there.. only a dozen or so.. but I could go a lot bigger without it becoming a problem.

TBH I'd use the celeron and get a bigger RAM stick in there (cheap), and you'll be fine for a 1 person instance.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Sweet, seems like lemmy is pretty lightweight on resources overall. Thanks for the reply :)

[–] lemmy@endlesstalk.org 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How powerful should my hardware be?

I think 512mb ram is probably a bit too low. There is a risk for the pc to crash at some point. I think 1 GB+ should be fine.

Which ports do I need opened to operate a lemmy instance for my personal use (i’m only going to be connecting from home)?

To avoid opening ports you can use Cloudflare tunnel as you mentioned.

Only other option is probably renting a cheap vps. Here is a cheap vps options for 2.5$

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I see. I think I'll try finding a cheap second hand laptop and run it as a server. (Technically even includes a UPS lol)

The VPS also seems nice, I'll look into it. Thanks!

[–] Gallardo994@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Actually thinking about the same. Not too familiar with how Lemmy works generally (please don't kick me for the question), but won't there be problems with federating to/from other popular instances?

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I'm also quite unfamiliar with lemmy architecture haha. Well unless the instance I'm trying to federate with defederates/bans my instance, I guess I'll be ok but I don't know.. I'm currently searching for information :)