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Sandstorm was (is?) way ahead of its time. Fortunately a lot of its ideas live on (a la capnproto). My understanding is the achilles heel is the amount of effor

Sandstorm was (is?) way ahead of its time. Fortunately a lot of its ideas live on (a la capnproto). My understanding is the achilles heel is the amount of effort required to integrate and update apps, since each app needs to be rather invasively modified to work with the centralized authorization framework. Also the general difficulty of managing a VPS or port forwarding. But once integrated it's really slick and secure. The overall UX is very similar to my vision of the future of selfhosting. It should be as easy as installing an app on your phone, then going through a quick OAuth2 flow to set up a tunnel on a domain, and you're up and running.

ocdtrekkie 3y ago
I think the answer is that packaging apps for Sandstorm is a bad hack, as ripping out the auth system and design granularity is all hard for an existing application. The best Sandstorm apps are written for Sandstorm, and in those cases, the granularity and built-in authentication make it way easier to write an app. I wrote a Sandstorm-native app in less than an hour. But if you built your entire application assuming you're shipping it via Docker, untangling the sheer amount of redundant garbage you need to pare down to a single-document app that accepts outside authentication and security, ends up being a ton of work to package and then maintain it long-term. Ideally, I think having apps not made for Sandstorm originally is mostly just a strategy to get enough people operating on Sandstorm's model for people to build Sandstorm-specific apps in earnest.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I think making apps that have a very clean separation between external security code (e.g. "the claims in the JWT") and internal security code (e.g. "the app's own internal understanding of security, regardless of provider") is always a fantastic idea.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Why not just make it be a docker launcher instead?
  - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
    Then it would be as poor of a user experience and have as many security problems as one of the literally dozens of self-hosting tools that are just Docker launchers.
    - anderspitman 3y ago
      Can you share links to the major ones (I'm aware of a couple like yunohost and cloudron)? What are the most important UX issues in your opinion? Disclaimer: I'm working on a docker launcher for selfhosting and want to solve some of the current problems.
      - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
        Umbrel is another relatively popular one, particularly with the crypto space. The biggest thing is the lack of integration. Some of them have patchy SSO integration options, but most won't tamper with the app in any meaningful way, so even if you have login integration, you have to log into each app on a server, and each app is subject to that app's capabilities for things like sharing. You end up hosting a bunch of disjointed and separate services. Sandstorm feels much more like hosting Google Docs and it's barely ever used support for third party apps/document types. Sandstorm requires aggressive app packaging work but the payoff is significant: Apps do not have independent authentication at all, logging into Sandstorm gets you into all of your applications, and every file can be shared using the same process with other users or the public trivially. In fact, because we break apps into "grains" or documents, we can do crazy things like allow you create Collections which comprise of documents made with different applications and then share that as a single unit with others. So I can take a couple specific Etherpad documents, a Wekan board, and a WordPress, put them into a project collection, and then share that with a collaborator with one link.
        ignoramous 3y ago
        > Umbrel is another relatively popular one, particularly with the crypto space. Impressive that Umbrel's popular because IIRC it doesn't take security as seriously as say Sandstrom. You'd think the crypto folks would at least care about that, if nothing else?
zenhack 3y ago
Is! We're not dead yet! (see my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193093). I don't think app packaging could be said to be the achilles heel -- how much work it involves depends a lot on the app (some things are very easy, others can be painful), but it is certainly not the case that Sandstorm didn't take off because packaging was too hard.
- bullen 3y ago
  Packaging should always just be zip. Security can just be a OTP: https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/blob/master/src/se/rupy/http/Deploy.java#L929 https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/blob/master/src/se/rupy/http...
- drapado 3y ago
  How do you compare to Yunohost? I find the app selection of Yunohost larger and broader
  - macrolime 3y ago
    Sandstorm is much more secure, that's the main difference.
    - the_common_man 3y ago
      One can choose something like cloudron which provides isolation via docker
      - goodpoint 3y ago
        docker was never meant as a security tool. Proper sandboxing needs to be done in the applications.
        _cenw 3y ago
        What would an application do that is more secure than namespaces+cgroups? Containers absolutely are a security tool (especially if you configure your capabilities and don't use PID 1), one with a security tradeoffs compared to real virtualization, sure, but you're not going to do that on a VPS. Docker (or Podman) is just a tool that sets up some linux primitives for you. One with a track record and volume of users that'd make me trust it over things that specifically advertise themselves as "security sandboxes" (i.e. firejail, who had some extremely funny basic exploits to get root from their SUID'd binary). You can even pair containers with user namespaces now and get the fakeroot equivalent of containers.
vmfunction 3y ago
I have tried for a client who wanted to install open source app in server with sandstorm about 3 or 4 years ago, it is just very slow at the time. Hope they improved that since.
closewith 3y ago
The issue for me with Sandstorm is that it's great until some service/app you need is missing or broken, and then you're back to manual self hosting. I always find that self hosting even one app is the pain, self-hosting more isn't that bad (once you have your box setup).
fractalnetworks 3y ago
Check out fractalnetworks.co if you are looking for something similar that is still under active (commercial) development.

ocdtrekkie 3y ago

I think the answer is that packaging apps for Sandstorm is a bad hack, as ripping out the auth system and design granularity is all hard for an existing application. The best Sandstorm apps are written for Sandstorm, and in those cases, the granularity and built-in authentication make it way easier to write an app. I wrote a Sandstorm-native app in less than an hour. But if you built your entire application assuming you're shipping it via Docker, untangling the sheer amount of redundant garbage you need to pare down to a single-document app that accepts outside authentication and security, ends up being a ton of work to package and then maintain it long-term. Ideally, I think having apps not made for Sandstorm originally is mostly just a strategy to get enough people operating on Sandstorm's model for people to build Sandstorm-specific apps in earnest.

robertlagrant 3y ago
I think making apps that have a very clean separation between external security code (e.g. "the claims in the JWT") and internal security code (e.g. "the app's own internal understanding of security, regardless of provider") is always a fantastic idea.
hanniabu 3y ago
Why not just make it be a docker launcher instead?
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  Then it would be as poor of a user experience and have as many security problems as one of the literally dozens of self-hosting tools that are just Docker launchers.
  - anderspitman 3y ago
    Can you share links to the major ones (I'm aware of a couple like yunohost and cloudron)? What are the most important UX issues in your opinion? Disclaimer: I'm working on a docker launcher for selfhosting and want to solve some of the current problems.
    - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
      Umbrel is another relatively popular one, particularly with the crypto space. The biggest thing is the lack of integration. Some of them have patchy SSO integration options, but most won't tamper with the app in any meaningful way, so even if you have login integration, you have to log into each app on a server, and each app is subject to that app's capabilities for things like sharing. You end up hosting a bunch of disjointed and separate services. Sandstorm feels much more like hosting Google Docs and it's barely ever used support for third party apps/document types. Sandstorm requires aggressive app packaging work but the payoff is significant: Apps do not have independent authentication at all, logging into Sandstorm gets you into all of your applications, and every file can be shared using the same process with other users or the public trivially. In fact, because we break apps into "grains" or documents, we can do crazy things like allow you create Collections which comprise of documents made with different applications and then share that as a single unit with others. So I can take a couple specific Etherpad documents, a Wekan board, and a WordPress, put them into a project collection, and then share that with a collaborator with one link.
      - ignoramous 3y ago
        > Umbrel is another relatively popular one, particularly with the crypto space. Impressive that Umbrel's popular because IIRC it doesn't take security as seriously as say Sandstrom. You'd think the crypto folks would at least care about that, if nothing else?

zenhack 3y ago

Is! We're not dead yet! (see my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36193093). I don't think app packaging could be said to be the achilles heel -- how much work it involves depends a lot on the app (some things are very easy, others can be painful), but it is certainly not the case that Sandstorm didn't take off because packaging was too hard.

bullen 3y ago
Packaging should always just be zip. Security can just be a OTP: https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/blob/master/src/se/rupy/http/Deploy.java#L929 https://github.com/tinspin/rupy/blob/master/src/se/rupy/http...
drapado 3y ago
How do you compare to Yunohost? I find the app selection of Yunohost larger and broader
- macrolime 3y ago
  Sandstorm is much more secure, that's the main difference.
  - the_common_man 3y ago
    One can choose something like cloudron which provides isolation via docker
    - goodpoint 3y ago
      docker was never meant as a security tool. Proper sandboxing needs to be done in the applications.
      - _cenw 3y ago
        What would an application do that is more secure than namespaces+cgroups? Containers absolutely are a security tool (especially if you configure your capabilities and don't use PID 1), one with a security tradeoffs compared to real virtualization, sure, but you're not going to do that on a VPS. Docker (or Podman) is just a tool that sets up some linux primitives for you. One with a track record and volume of users that'd make me trust it over things that specifically advertise themselves as "security sandboxes" (i.e. firejail, who had some extremely funny basic exploits to get root from their SUID'd binary). You can even pair containers with user namespaces now and get the fakeroot equivalent of containers.

vmfunction 3y ago

I have tried for a client who wanted to install open source app in server with sandstorm about 3 or 4 years ago, it is just very slow at the time. Hope they improved that since.

closewith 3y ago

The issue for me with Sandstorm is that it's great until some service/app you need is missing or broken, and then you're back to manual self hosting. I always find that self hosting even one app is the pain, self-hosting more isn't that bad (once you have your box setup).

fractalnetworks 3y ago

Check out fractalnetworks.co if you are looking for something similar that is still under active (commercial) development.