3 ms·

It depends a lot on how accessible those services are. I tried to host some git repos 5 years ago and it was a hassle (needed mostly private git and reviews not

by vladms 7mo ago

It depends a lot on how accessible those services are. I tried to host some git repos 5 years ago and it was a hassle (needed mostly private git and reviews nothing fancy). I tried again this year and using forgejo was extremely easy. I don't remember exactly what problems I had before, so maybe I got better at finding things, but this time felt more polished. Containers, reasonable defaults, good tutorial on how to start, took in total less than one hour. I did in the meantime an upgrade and that was really 5 minutes (check change-log, apply it and go) Of course, lots of work was done in the background to reach this point, but I think it is possible. Will I make the effort to make that happen for a social network? No, because I am not using them that much. Technically things become simpler (in the sense that you can do it "at home" and if you add LLM-s to answer you when you don't know some obscure option it is even easier), but identifying well the use-case, deciding defaults, writing documentation, juggling trade-offs will remain as hard as before. Note/edit: something being possible does not mean one should do it, so I think it will depend on everybody's priorities and skills. I wish though good luck to anybody trying...

theamk 7mo ago
Out of curiosity, how do you handle backups? (To my great disappointment, a lot of "how to self-host" guides just omit that step, and quietly assume that disks don't go bad...)
- nine_k 7mo ago
  Not the poster, but: use ZFS or LVM + XFS on your machine, do a snapshot, use restic or kopia to back it up to cheap object storage in the cloud, such as R2. If it's too technical, run syncthing and mirror it to a USB-connected external disk, preferably a couple of meters away from your machine. A poor haphazard backup is better than no backup.
  - theamk 7mo ago
    > A poor haphazard backup is better than no backup. but is it better than cloud provider? Cloud provider can lock you out without recourse and you'll lose your data. Local backups can fail, be destroyed (for example a failed PSU kills both your PC and any attached devices), or be deleted by malware How complex do you need to have your local backup to achieve cloud providers' reliability?
    - nine_k 7mo ago
      The best backup is a proper 3-2-1, with regular testing of integrity, and regular restoration from a backup as an exercise. But most people cannot be bothered to care quite so much. So, keeping a half-assed backup copy on a spouse's machine in a different room is still better than not keeping any copy at all. It will not protect from every disaster, but it will protect against some. My own backups progressed from manual rsync to syncthing to syncthing for every machine in the house + restic backups (which saved my bacon more than once).

by vladms 7mo ago

theamk 7mo ago

Out of curiosity, how do you handle backups? (To my great disappointment, a lot of "how to self-host" guides just omit that step, and quietly assume that disks don't go bad...)

nine_k 7mo ago
Not the poster, but: use ZFS or LVM + XFS on your machine, do a snapshot, use restic or kopia to back it up to cheap object storage in the cloud, such as R2. If it's too technical, run syncthing and mirror it to a USB-connected external disk, preferably a couple of meters away from your machine. A poor haphazard backup is better than no backup.
- theamk 7mo ago
  > A poor haphazard backup is better than no backup. but is it better than cloud provider? Cloud provider can lock you out without recourse and you'll lose your data. Local backups can fail, be destroyed (for example a failed PSU kills both your PC and any attached devices), or be deleted by malware How complex do you need to have your local backup to achieve cloud providers' reliability?
  - nine_k 7mo ago
    The best backup is a proper 3-2-1, with regular testing of integrity, and regular restoration from a backup as an exercise. But most people cannot be bothered to care quite so much. So, keeping a half-assed backup copy on a spouse's machine in a different room is still better than not keeping any copy at all. It will not protect from every disaster, but it will protect against some. My own backups progressed from manual rsync to syncthing to syncthing for every machine in the house + restic backups (which saved my bacon more than once).