A guide for getting started with self hosting

by wagslaneon 10/24/22, 2:21 AMwith 72 comments
by readingnewson 10/24/22, 10:49 AM

Maybe I missed it, but this just looks like a giant list of open source tools. Docker, Containers, virtualization, password management, etc.

Not knocking OP, but a "guide for getting started" seems like it would be a howto for self hosting. This seems like a giant list of tools.

I only note this as I work at a place that self-hosts everything as we already have an on-prem data center. For example, we use openstack for our users to spin up VMs. If I did a guide to self hosting, I would talk briefly about the design choices that led me to openstack, and then about how to prepare for and install openstack. It seems like this guide is more like "you can use openstack for cloud". Needs more "guide".

by superkuhon 10/24/22, 3:03 PM

Containers and deployment and all that jazz. This is the exact kind of cargo cult nonsense that drives people away from self hosting due to the apparent complexity. NONE of that is needed to self host a website.

Just install nginx from your repos and <html><head><title>My first website</title></head><body><H1>Wow! Hi.</H1></body></html> into a index.html and put in in your www directory. Done. And done in a far more secure, far longer lasting, far less fragile way than anything involving containers or "deployment".

by netfortiuson 10/24/22, 11:40 AM

Selfhosted subreddit [1] and its wiki [2] (which happens to be truer to a "getting started" concept, rather than the HN link), is all you'll ever need for the "self" approach.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/

[2] https://wiki.r-selfhosted.com/

by TDiblikon 10/24/22, 12:15 PM

Hi, just asking around, I'm trying to self host on a basic Ubuntu server, I'll run some websites (behind nginx), databases (docker), cron jobs and other things on there. Normally, I don't really care about ddos, however since this is going to run on my home network (on it's own vlan separate from my vlan) and I have static IP, I'm kinda scared? I usually hosted my stuff on cloud with ddos protection included. What are some security precautions I can take to prevent this from happening?

by wrycoderon 10/24/22, 2:30 AM

Maybe I missed it, but I don't see anything about discoverability.

That's a big problem for servers on residential IP ranges.

by intullon 10/24/22, 5:45 PM

I dislike how mean and critical HN can get sometimes. The article is clearly titled "A guide", not "The guide"! The OP link builds on top of using containerization / docker. Some find it useful, some would benefit from it. Doesn't mean that embrace is "silly", "nonsense", "cult", and whatnot. If you don't prefer something, make that known, that's fine. If there's something to add or alternatives to suggest, do so. One doesn't have to shitpile on a fairly well written, referenced and organized article.

by psychphysicon 10/24/22, 9:56 PM

This is just one of those "awesome" lists.

Recently I've been looking through them including the self hosted one and I suspect about 10-20% are in fact ads basically paid product placement. Usually can't even be self hosted just a paid service for an instance. That's not self hosting.

A decent chunk are not practically selfhostable. I mean not for a mere mortal. Like those guys who seem to run synapse on a rpi3. Everyone else needs dual core with 6gb RAM. Again I wonder if those people actually even used the self hosted version?

Am I still ranting? Guess I had more to say than I realised.

by Test0129on 10/24/22, 3:46 PM

Silly. I've been self hosting since I degoogled. Never have I regretted not using docker. To imply that you should do this is the kind of hilariously out of touch I expect from developers :).

This guide lacks the most important tools: fail2ban and tripwire. I block on the order of 5,000 malicious requests a day (mostly recon bots) from Russian and China.

by boxedon 10/24/22, 3:24 PM

A better guide would be to just link to the dokku docs.

by dopidopHNon 10/24/22, 10:41 AM

No yunohost ?