Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
view the rest of the comments
It depends on what you're self-hosting and If you want / need it exposed to the Internet or not. When it comes to software the hype is currently setup a minimal Linux box (old computer, NAS, Raspberry Pi) and then install everything using Docker containers. I don't like this Docker trend because it 1) leads you towards a dependence on property repositories and 2) robs you from the experience of learning Linux (more here) but I it does lower the bar to newcomers and let's you setup something really fast. In my opinion you should be very skeptical about everything that is "sold to the masses", just go with a simple Debian system (command line only) SSH into it and install what you really need, take your time to learn Linux and whatnot.
Strictly speaking about security: if we're talking about LAN only things are easy and you don't have much to worry about as everything will be inside your network thus protected by your router's NAT/Firewall.
For internet facing services your basic requirements are:
Quick setup guide and checklist:
Realistically speaking if you're doing this just for a few friends why not require them to access the server through WireGuard VPN? This will reduce the risk a LOT and won't probably impact the performance. Here a decent setup guide and you might use this GUI to add/remove clients easily.
Don't be afraid to expose the Wireguard port because if someone tried to connect and they don't authenticate with the right key the server will silently drop the packets.
Now if your ISP doesn't provide you with a public IP / port forwarding abilities you may want to read this in order to find why you should avoid Cloudflare tunnels and how to setup and alternative / more private solution.