- I met a guy a while ago who's passion was enabling self-hosting. His vision was to use an old android phone as a server--he ended up building a domain registrar[1] to facilitate OAuth-style flows for configuring DNS and an ngrok-style proxy[2] service that could configure DNS through said flow.
[1]: https://takingnames.io/
[2]: https://boringproxy.io/
by swiftcoder
1 subcomments
- I feel like Cloudflare tunnels have trivialised a fair bit of the setup around this. You no longer have to directly expose your home server to the open internet, nor mess with routing tables and DMZ on your router... Just pop a cloudflare tunnel infront of your http server, and let Cloudflare do the rest.
Of course, the physical side still needs some work. Ideally one needs a battery backup and a small solar panel, so that you can weather the odd power cut. And constant connectivity is trivial (but a cheap cellphone as a backup for when your line drops probably gets you 99% of the way there)
by myflash13
2 subcomments
- This is very doable nowadays and in fact may be cheaper, more reliable, and faster than renting a VPS with unpredictable noisy neighbours. Just grab a mini-PC from Beeline for $200 and you've got a 16 GB RAM powerful baremetal server for the price of renting an equivalent VPS for 2 months from DigitalOcean.
Backup power is easily achieved with a UPS, and backup internet connection with an LTE router (or two).
But the feeling of being able to tinker with something physically in your own space? Cannot be beat. You can do so much that isn't possible over SSH, just because it is there.
by hnuser123456
6 subcomments
- Yep, my website (very WIP) is hosted on an RPi 5 in the corner of my apartment, and every once in a while my IP changes and I have to update DNS and tell my friends to connect to the minecraft server by IP. I'm probably around 98% uptime, so github levels of assurance.
by Agilesuitcase
3 subcomments
- Unrelated to the article, but a creative Canadian flag used the title to spell words out. They slowly circled characters in the title. I thought I was deciphering a cool message… but it was just "whore"
- I used to run a BBS from my bedroom when I lived with my parents. I had attached a phone to the same line, and replaced the speaker with a led, so I would know someone was connecting because the led would blink intermittently for a few seconds while it "rang". Not sure if I remember correctly, but I think the BBS software even allowed me to see what they were doing.
- Home internet is so fast now and hardware is so cheap and powerful its a good solution. It amazes me how expensive aws compared to having your own hardware.
- I have a small cluster I use to run my personal server/nvr/etc on. Instead of Raspberry Pi, I just bought some small mini pcs, which are amazingly powerful and cheap for their size. I have them stashed in a few random places around the house near my switches. Works great!
by Levitating
0 subcomment
- I run a bittorrent client in the corner of my room. The hard disk gets quite loud when it gets going, so between 00:00 and 09:00 it automatically throttles the bandwidth down to 1mb/s to prevent the noise from keeping me up.
You can actually view the interface statistics publicly here: https://collectd.levitati.ng/archpi/interface/end0
- The only real hurdle to this now even for people with little computing knowledge is having a backup internet connection for when yours flakes.
If it’s just a personal site, you can just let it go unavailable during an outage (and maybe rely on a CDN to keep it partially functioning).
- I have a raspberry pi 400 on my desk which hosts some stuff on my home internal network. I've recently set up the num lock LED on it as a CPU activity indicator. It is nice to look at it flashing away while it is being utilized.
- The idea of having your server just over there, and being able to touch it is a nice feeling and a great spectacle.
But in the age of scrapers, APT bots and whatnot, I don't want that kind of whirlwind in my home network, even though I can isolate it to its DMZ.
I sit in front of a fat pipe at work and can witness what a single, lone server has to stand against even with best practices applied to minimize its attack surface.
This is why all my personal servers are out there. I don't want my network to become a defense point.
- I enjoyed this article very much. It used 99% of my CPU though.
- One question about this: How do most internet plans work with this?
If someone connects with a request, is that metered as ingress/downloading, and if your server responds, it is metered as an egress/uploading?
If so, that means an unlimited plan is a must, and even then, might ISPs flag you for abuse if large frequent requests/responses are being received/sent by the server?
- How to Create a Cache Server?
https://cyfuture.cloud/kb/howto/how-to-create-a-cache-server
- Great article but I think I was having too much fun spinning my mouse with other people lol
by empressplay
0 subcomment
- When I was a teenager, I ran a BBS out of my bedroom. People would call in at all hours to download (ahem) 'Public Domain' (wink) games off of my Atari 130XE and its array of half a dozen floppy drives. It was kind of noisy, but it always lifted my spirits when I'd hear the drives start grinding.
- And to avoid technicalities, make it big enough so you can see and use it.
by ChrisArchitect
1 subcomments
- (2022) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33165836
- When you have a website or little server to play around with as your little sandbox online, that doesn't get much traffic, but it keeps things up that you can play with or share and learn about, great things can happen.
It's made _so_ much easier simply by installing a free cloudflare tunnel in front of it.
- I used to run a Web server (and email server) like this. The novelty wore off, and I currently structure it for static hosting via AWS S3 + CloudFront.
(No matter how personal a Web site, the occasional prospective employer will go look at it. If you're a techbro, you normally don't want this site sometimes acting like it's running on a potato and wet string. Even if you still keep your 2002 visual design, ahem.)
If that's not a concern, you can run a nonessential Web server from home, and it's fun and concrete, like the author suggests. You might want to forward/proxy the traffic through some external cloud server (even if you don't use CDN/caching features), to shield your home pipe a bit.
by josefresco
1 subcomments
- Claude-Code has turbo charged my (basement) RPi4 development.
Hacker News