A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
Yea between the enshitificaiton of the internet and how far selfhost software has come it is a great time to selfhost and will just keep getting better.
Selfhosting, reddit drama, kbin, all this just makes it seem like the internet is having a sort of grassroots, back to basics movement which I'm all for lol.
Saw this post on “All”. Last I checked (sometime in 2019), self-hosting was a fairly involved process.
Has the process simplified enough for a complete beginner like me to begin self-hosting services on, say, a raspberry pi?
If yes, can you please point me to a good resource/wiki?
Thanks for the steps!
I remember steps 4 & 5 were the ones that made me drop the idea. It involved a lot of configuration.
I will take a look once again, hopefully these have become simple enough.
Np, I would say dm me if you have any questions but I dunno if you can message between lemmy and kbin haha
Actually, I would argue the simplest way to self host today is TrueCharts.
The problem is when it breaks, you are SOL because you didn't build it yourself so you got no clue how it works
Absolutely! I've been enjoying it a lot too. Hosting Mastodon, Matrix, kbin, and a couple of game servers now from my basement 🙂
If you want to host things and be accessible from outside your home then I'd start with getting a domain and static IP, point the DNS at your IP, make sure your DNS provider is supported by Let's Encrypt DNS authentication.
Then setup nginx as a reverse proxy and get Let's Encrypt setup with auto renewal. That way you can have secure https connections to your home.
Then install docker compose, fire up a service and configure nginx to proxy to it
I usually cut down on domain/DNS cost by using a free dynamic DNS service called duckdns. It works super well, provides Let's Encrypt support and sub-sub-domains. (for example your could have https://git.$username.duckdns.org)
I've found as a IT noob that Caddy 2 provides as much "batteries inside" and "boiler-plate free" to support me, because I have no Idea what I'm doing. So I just let caddy handle my encryption and reverse proxy to my actual server.
I'm an embedded software dev, who only discovers ethernet protocols on a surface level, because we hadn't need it yet in previous projects, so I'm a bit lost on how to do cloud stuff. So having all these great tools for free for me to try out and connect from outside to my media servers and stuff is awesome!
Glasfiber home internet has also really improved the available upload speed, which is great for self-hosters.
Docker is hurting my progress. I just can't seem to wrap my head around it. Is there a Docker for Dummies?
I learned the basics of docker by using synology and unraid. They make it really easy setting up docker apps.
Is there a specific part that you’re having trouble with? Is it more how it works under the hood, or more about using it to spin up containers? I can try to answer any questions and post some how tos for you.
I think I just need a general overview. Something about the concept isn't clicking for me, and it makes it hard for me to learn how to use it when I fundamentally don't get it. Is there a really good "Introduction to Docker and the tools people use with it" that I haven't found?
Say you install with apt, and the app needs a dependency that breaks your setup. You use docker to utilize your os, but containerize dependencies. You can also better organize which containers use your computer's network, and which use a virtual network where you can redirect an incoming port to avoid conflicts.
Containers are like VMs, but for an application instead of a whole OS, though you can put multiple apps in one container. Good for if they need to share files.
For a more visual approach, look into Portainer. It gives you an admin page you can open in your browser to manage docker containers.
I actually have Portainer set up and running, and I even spun up a few simple containers in it. Unfortunately I did so by following a guide to complete a specific task. I completed the task successfully, but now I have a Portainer install that I don't understand in the slightest, and don't know how to update it or any of the containers in it, or really do anything that wasn't covered in the guide I followed (which I now cannot find). I found a YouTube video that tries to explain Portainer, but I don't know the terminology of Docker enough to understand what they are saying, and I haven't found a Docker video simple enough to bring me up to speed.
Most of what I learn comes from watching videos, and when I don't understand a term I pull up the docs and search for it. Super useful in expanding your understanding of a tool.
Docker docs in case you're feeling lazy.