3 ms·

Sandstorm.io glued this all together in 2014 and it's still available today. https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io

by ocdtrekkie 4y ago

anderspitman 4y ago
Sandstorm is awesome, and still way too hard for my dad to use.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  We have some ideas where to go on that, in general and especially for setup, though I am generally in favor of small community hosts, such that your dad should be able to use your server, instead of having to run his own.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    I do like the federated approach for many services, but for many others I think it should be individual. Sandstorm needs to run on Windows and Android, and support tunneling for those behind CGNAT et al.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      CGNAT is definitely a scary thing I don't presently have to deal with, but yeah, ideally Sandstorm should get some sort of solution for it, yeah. I think it's important for self hosting solutions to not run Android or Windows: People tend to take those platforms out and about. But obviously the x86 server requirement is (currently) a big limitation for sure.
      - anderspitman 4y ago
        > I think it's important for self hosting solutions to not run Android or Windows Not sure I follow. Those are the two most widely deployed operating systems. If you want people to be able to upcycle their old devices for selfhosting, I think that's where efforts should be focused.
        ocdtrekkie 4y ago
        Mmmm, you're thinking upcycling. My concern was you wouldn't want someone running their self hosted cloud on say, their phone or laptop which they might take with them out of their home. I mean, technically we could probably eventually get Sandstorm and similar platforms on WSL? Android is radioactive garbage and nobody should go near it. Especially for an older device already abandoned driver-wise, you'd never manage to do anything secure or stable with it long-term.
        anderspitman 4y ago
        You don't even have to use WSL (which requires Windows Pro I believe). Accelerated QEMU already has experimental support on Windows hosts via WHPX, on both Home and Pro. Android doesn't currently support virtualization, but there's hope it will eventually, which should mitigate many security concerns.
- slenk 4y ago
  I am fairly technically savvy so I tried using it today and followed their installation guide. 1) I had to change their code to accept a release that is older than 30 days old. 2) It had me pick my domain, say it started, and gave me a sandcats URL to go to that doesn't work. Feel like something is missing from the installation instructions. I wouldn't say its too hard for your dad to use, it's just poorly documented
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    1) Fixed 2) This is kinda the hard part because it depends on where you are hosting it. If you ping your Sandcats address, does it return the IP of your server/location? Is there a firewall, router, etc. you may need to open a port or forward a port? Agreed that the parent posts suggest this should be easier. It really probably should, but it's hard to do that securely without depending on some outside service. Sandcats and Let's Encrypt removes a lot of difficulty but CGNAT and port forwarding and stuff might be best defeated by autoconfiguring something like Tailscale or Cloudflare Tunnel.
    - slenk 4y ago
      I would have expected the installation page to at least maybe mention that port forwarding was required. I assumed you were using something like ngrok. "The installer will offer you free dynamic DNS and valid HTTPS via sandcats.io, a service maintained by the Sandstorm development team. " https://sandstorm.io/install https://sandstorm.io/install
slenk 4y ago
Wish it still worked...on a BRAND new VM. GPG signature is valid. ** INSTALLATION FAILED ** The downloaded package seems to be more than a month old. Please verify that your computer's clock is correct and try again. It could also be that an attacker is trying to trick you into installing an old version. Please contact security@sandstorm.io if the problem persists. Hmm, installation failed. Would it be OK to send an anonymous error report to the sandstorm.io team so we know something is wrong? It would only contain this error code: E_PKG_STALE [yes] Sending problem report... Submitting error report failed. Maybe there is a connectivity problem. You can report bugs at: http://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm http://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Looks like we're a couple days late on a release. (The current release is 32 days old.) If you edit the install script about here: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/blob/master/install.sh#L1385 https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/blob/master/instal... to go for say, 45 days instead of 30, it'll work just fine.
- kentonv 4y ago
  My fault. The install script refuses to install a release more than 30 days old in order to prevent downgrade attacks, but I failed to push a new release in the last 30 days. Yeah, that provision of the install script is absurdly paranoid. No one will ever actually try to perform a downgrade attack on Sandstorm. OTOH the time limit has had the side effect of forcing me to push regular releases over the last 5.5 years (since the company shut down). So, I hesitate to juts remove the check, for fear it will make me lazy. I should have a release up in an hour or two, or you can edit the shell script as ocdtrekkie points out. EDIT: Done. Installer should work now.

Sandstorm.io glued this all together in 2014 and it's still available today. https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io

anderspitman 4y ago

Sandstorm is awesome, and still way too hard for my dad to use.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
We have some ideas where to go on that, in general and especially for setup, though I am generally in favor of small community hosts, such that your dad should be able to use your server, instead of having to run his own.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  I do like the federated approach for many services, but for many others I think it should be individual. Sandstorm needs to run on Windows and Android, and support tunneling for those behind CGNAT et al.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    CGNAT is definitely a scary thing I don't presently have to deal with, but yeah, ideally Sandstorm should get some sort of solution for it, yeah. I think it's important for self hosting solutions to not run Android or Windows: People tend to take those platforms out and about. But obviously the x86 server requirement is (currently) a big limitation for sure.
    - anderspitman 4y ago
      > I think it's important for self hosting solutions to not run Android or Windows Not sure I follow. Those are the two most widely deployed operating systems. If you want people to be able to upcycle their old devices for selfhosting, I think that's where efforts should be focused.
      - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
        Mmmm, you're thinking upcycling. My concern was you wouldn't want someone running their self hosted cloud on say, their phone or laptop which they might take with them out of their home. I mean, technically we could probably eventually get Sandstorm and similar platforms on WSL? Android is radioactive garbage and nobody should go near it. Especially for an older device already abandoned driver-wise, you'd never manage to do anything secure or stable with it long-term.
        anderspitman 4y ago
        You don't even have to use WSL (which requires Windows Pro I believe). Accelerated QEMU already has experimental support on Windows hosts via WHPX, on both Home and Pro. Android doesn't currently support virtualization, but there's hope it will eventually, which should mitigate many security concerns.
slenk 4y ago
I am fairly technically savvy so I tried using it today and followed their installation guide. 1) I had to change their code to accept a release that is older than 30 days old. 2) It had me pick my domain, say it started, and gave me a sandcats URL to go to that doesn't work. Feel like something is missing from the installation instructions. I wouldn't say its too hard for your dad to use, it's just poorly documented
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  1) Fixed 2) This is kinda the hard part because it depends on where you are hosting it. If you ping your Sandcats address, does it return the IP of your server/location? Is there a firewall, router, etc. you may need to open a port or forward a port? Agreed that the parent posts suggest this should be easier. It really probably should, but it's hard to do that securely without depending on some outside service. Sandcats and Let's Encrypt removes a lot of difficulty but CGNAT and port forwarding and stuff might be best defeated by autoconfiguring something like Tailscale or Cloudflare Tunnel.
  - slenk 4y ago
    I would have expected the installation page to at least maybe mention that port forwarding was required. I assumed you were using something like ngrok. "The installer will offer you free dynamic DNS and valid HTTPS via sandcats.io, a service maintained by the Sandstorm development team. " https://sandstorm.io/install https://sandstorm.io/install

slenk 4y ago

Wish it still worked...on a BRAND new VM. GPG signature is valid. ** INSTALLATION FAILED ** The downloaded package seems to be more than a month old. Please verify that your computer's clock is correct and try again. It could also be that an attacker is trying to trick you into installing an old version. Please contact security@sandstorm.io if the problem persists. Hmm, installation failed. Would it be OK to send an anonymous error report to the sandstorm.io team so we know something is wrong? It would only contain this error code: E_PKG_STALE [yes] Sending problem report... Submitting error report failed. Maybe there is a connectivity problem. You can report bugs at: http://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm http://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
Looks like we're a couple days late on a release. (The current release is 32 days old.) If you edit the install script about here: https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/blob/master/install.sh#L1385 https://github.com/sandstorm-io/sandstorm/blob/master/instal... to go for say, 45 days instead of 30, it'll work just fine.
kentonv 4y ago
My fault. The install script refuses to install a release more than 30 days old in order to prevent downgrade attacks, but I failed to push a new release in the last 30 days. Yeah, that provision of the install script is absurdly paranoid. No one will ever actually try to perform a downgrade attack on Sandstorm. OTOH the time limit has had the side effect of forcing me to push regular releases over the last 5.5 years (since the company shut down). So, I hesitate to juts remove the check, for fear it will make me lazy. I should have a release up in an hour or two, or you can edit the shell script as ocdtrekkie points out. EDIT: Done. Installer should work now.