4 ms·

From reading this I get the sense the problems are lower level and there is no impetus to fix them. I'm embarrassed to say, having programmed for over a decade

by geokon 5y ago

From reading this I get the sense the problems are lower level and there is no impetus to fix them. I'm embarrassed to say, having programmed for over a decade, and running Linux for half of that, I still have no idea how to setup my computer to serve a webpage (or even a file) I probably need to `apt-get install apache` and then deal with some magic config files and incantations and hope I don't mess something up and expose my whole computer to the open web. Then there is the whole mess of NAT (wasn't IPv6 supposed to kill off NATs?). I need to then figure out the endless (and impenetrable) configurations in my OpenWRT/LuCI router to open a port and have it forwarded to my computer. Or maybe that needs to be done "upstream" in my landlords internet cabinet..? I'd have no idea how to even figure that one out b/c my router doesn't make it obvious in any way. Then I need to find some DDNS service and figure out how to get that to route traffic from a URL to my IP (and then it's somehow supposed to reconfigure when my IP dynamically changes? Is that some cron job I need to write?) Hosting webpages from home is still complicated and no progress has been made. And if you do it wrong someone will hack you and steal all your files :) The incumbents are probably happy it's so painful and you still need to do technical gymnastics to punch through NATs and whatnot. This text further confirms it by just telling people to host int he cloud. And understandably.. you'd have to be a total nut to serve a file from your home instead of dropping it on Google Drive. When I was studying this stuff in college I just figured tech is in an awkward teenage phase and this will all get worked out and streamlined - but I think it's not going anywhere This isn't the tech future of 80s scifi I don't mean to be wholly negative, I'd actually appreciate if someone pointed me to a good step by step to set everything up. At the moment I'm a sellout :) and I just use Github Pages and git push HTML/CSS files there. Ideally it really should be just as easy to git pushing to your own home computer but till then I guess I'll do that..

dvdkon 5y ago
Most of the things you've mentioned are caused by the delayed IPv6 rollout, self-hosting just isn't a priority for residential ISPs. I'm sure that there are plenty of good tutorials on setting up Apache or some other web server, those tutorials can't exist for actually exposing it to the Internet, there's just too many routers and ISPs.
alin23 5y ago
If opening the 80/443 port is such a nuissance in your setup, I would not bother with hosting from home and I'd just drop the website folder in Netlify Drop (https://app.netlify.com/drop https://app.netlify.com/drop) That's what I did for the first few iterations of https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi and it really helped with giving people the right information fast while I could keep spending time on the real work (developing the Lunar app) But if hosting from home is what matters the most, there is an easier way nowadays using Caddy (https://caddyserver.com https://caddyserver.com) and ngrok (https://ngrok.com https://ngrok.com). For example, I just hosted this website (https://af62-2a02-2f0e-d00f-e100-f513-b43-fbc1-cf5d.ngrok.io https://af62-2a02-2f0e-d00f-e100-f513-b43-fbc1-cf5d.ngrok.io) using the following commands: caddy file-server -listen 0.0.0.0:6001 ngrok http localhost:6001 If you want to go the extra mile and have a nice custom domain, Freenom provides you with a 1-year free domain for the following TLDs: .gq .tk .ml .cf. ga For example, I just registered geokon.gq for 1 month and forwarded it to the ngrok endpoint: http://geokon.gq/ http://geokon.gq/
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  Hey - awesome work on that lunar page, i know it's a landing page and the goal is conversion but it was genuinely enjoyable to read, fun even. Fantastic.
  - alin23 5y ago
    Well thanks! Lately I’ve been afraid of the page becoming too information-dense because there are so many features and edge-cases I need to let people know about. I’m really glad to hear that from you!
- geokon 5y ago
  Thanks you for all that! It does look like it simplifies stuff in that there are no more config files! So that's really cool. I will need to read the docs a bit later b/c from the landing page it's all still confusing. This is probably a function of the tech "debt". It has example commands like caddy file-server --domain example.com - If it's a file server.. shouldn't it be something like FTP/FTPS? Everything on the webpage keeps saying HTTPS .. which is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.. ie HTML webpages. So is it serving files or webpages? (I guess webpages are a type of file.. but in practice the two aren't the same) - Do I need to stick this into my .profile? Or I need to configure a systemd service? - What is it even serving out..? Is it just serving out everything in the immediate directory I'm in where I run the command? - How is it "hooking into" example.com? How does the registrar know to point at my IP after I run this command? (or if that's done separately - say on the registrar website, why do you need to specify the URL locally at all?) In any case, these are just immediate questions that come up. It's all stuff that probably makes sense if you know it already :) And again.. i need to rtfm - so I'm not complaining or shooting the messenger here haha. Thanks for the info
stopcraeting 5y ago
> Hosting webpages from home is still complicated and no progress has been made. Now this would be a real improvement, not some new framework of the week.
- willis936 5y ago
  Glad to see it isn't just me. I've been doing networking tasks on and off for over a decade and I still fear the nginx config file.
sprkwd 5y ago
I found yunohost.org really simple to set up for all my homeserver needs.
jabroni_salad 5y ago
If you have python here is a 1liner: python3 -m http.server The home networking / dynamic IP stuff will probably not go away until ipv6 becomes more commonplace, but honestly that is for the better. Ask any business whose upnp-enabled receipt printer started outputting antiwork propaganda the past few weeks how it is going.
anderspitman 5y ago
Spot on. Some of us are working on it. IMO the best solution currently (ie until ipv6 takes over and assuming we get rid of NATs when that happens) is tunneling. I maintain a list of options here: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling If you wanted to self-host a website from your home computer today I would recommend buying a domain from Cloudflare, and using Cloudflare Tunnel. 6 months from now I hope to be suggesting some variation of my open source alternative, https://boringproxy.io https://boringproxy.io. It's not quite ready yet.

by geokon 5y ago

dvdkon 5y ago

Most of the things you've mentioned are caused by the delayed IPv6 rollout, self-hosting just isn't a priority for residential ISPs. I'm sure that there are plenty of good tutorials on setting up Apache or some other web server, those tutorials can't exist for actually exposing it to the Internet, there's just too many routers and ISPs.

alin23 5y ago

If opening the 80/443 port is such a nuissance in your setup, I would not bother with hosting from home and I'd just drop the website folder in Netlify Drop (https://app.netlify.com/drop https://app.netlify.com/drop) That's what I did for the first few iterations of https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi and it really helped with giving people the right information fast while I could keep spending time on the real work (developing the Lunar app) But if hosting from home is what matters the most, there is an easier way nowadays using Caddy (https://caddyserver.com https://caddyserver.com) and ngrok (https://ngrok.com https://ngrok.com). For example, I just hosted this website (https://af62-2a02-2f0e-d00f-e100-f513-b43-fbc1-cf5d.ngrok.io https://af62-2a02-2f0e-d00f-e100-f513-b43-fbc1-cf5d.ngrok.io) using the following commands: caddy file-server -listen 0.0.0.0:6001 ngrok http localhost:6001 If you want to go the extra mile and have a nice custom domain, Freenom provides you with a 1-year free domain for the following TLDs: .gq .tk .ml .cf. ga For example, I just registered geokon.gq for 1 month and forwarded it to the ngrok endpoint: http://geokon.gq/ http://geokon.gq/

CraigJPerry 5y ago
Hey - awesome work on that lunar page, i know it's a landing page and the goal is conversion but it was genuinely enjoyable to read, fun even. Fantastic.
- alin23 5y ago
  Well thanks! Lately I’ve been afraid of the page becoming too information-dense because there are so many features and edge-cases I need to let people know about. I’m really glad to hear that from you!
geokon 5y ago
Thanks you for all that! It does look like it simplifies stuff in that there are no more config files! So that's really cool. I will need to read the docs a bit later b/c from the landing page it's all still confusing. This is probably a function of the tech "debt". It has example commands like caddy file-server --domain example.com - If it's a file server.. shouldn't it be something like FTP/FTPS? Everything on the webpage keeps saying HTTPS .. which is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.. ie HTML webpages. So is it serving files or webpages? (I guess webpages are a type of file.. but in practice the two aren't the same) - Do I need to stick this into my .profile? Or I need to configure a systemd service? - What is it even serving out..? Is it just serving out everything in the immediate directory I'm in where I run the command? - How is it "hooking into" example.com? How does the registrar know to point at my IP after I run this command? (or if that's done separately - say on the registrar website, why do you need to specify the URL locally at all?) In any case, these are just immediate questions that come up. It's all stuff that probably makes sense if you know it already :) And again.. i need to rtfm - so I'm not complaining or shooting the messenger here haha. Thanks for the info

stopcraeting 5y ago

> Hosting webpages from home is still complicated and no progress has been made. Now this would be a real improvement, not some new framework of the week.

willis936 5y ago
Glad to see it isn't just me. I've been doing networking tasks on and off for over a decade and I still fear the nginx config file.

sprkwd 5y ago

I found yunohost.org really simple to set up for all my homeserver needs.

jabroni_salad 5y ago

If you have python here is a 1liner: python3 -m http.server The home networking / dynamic IP stuff will probably not go away until ipv6 becomes more commonplace, but honestly that is for the better. Ask any business whose upnp-enabled receipt printer started outputting antiwork propaganda the past few weeks how it is going.

anderspitman 5y ago

Spot on. Some of us are working on it. IMO the best solution currently (ie until ipv6 takes over and assuming we get rid of NATs when that happens) is tunneling. I maintain a list of options here: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling If you wanted to self-host a website from your home computer today I would recommend buying a domain from Cloudflare, and using Cloudflare Tunnel. 6 months from now I hope to be suggesting some variation of my open source alternative, https://boringproxy.io https://boringproxy.io. It's not quite ready yet.