hi veilverse, i make stuff from games, and questionable infrastructure decisions at 3am.

#newhere #devlife #selfhosting #fediverse #introduction

Lighthouse Lore (Keeper’s Log)

Keeper back from holidays.
Everything appears normal.
This is rarely true.
#LighthouseLore
#TheKeeper
#BorderCollies
#DogsOfMastodon
#SlowInternet
#QuietTech
#SelfHosting
#CalmCorner
#MastodonVideo

I’ve set up a self-hosted #Grafana instance complete with metrics storage using #Mimir, central log storage with #Loki, and remote sending of data from my servers using the #Alloy agent.

I couldn’t find any good resource describing the complete process, so I’ve documented my setup along with some tips on how to create dashboards and alerts in Grafana, and am sharing the documentation via my Projects page: https://oxcrag.net/projects/self-hosted-grafana-server/

Happy monitoring!

#SelfHosting #HomeLab #Linux #HAProxy #IPv6

Perhaps someone can recommend some good relays one can add to a newly-created Mastodon instance to help with federation?

#mastodon #selfhosting #mastoadmin

Ich kam mal auf die lustige Idee, so Seiten wie #Instagram oder #TikTok in eine Liste zu packen, diese auf #GitHub hochzuladen und die Liste dann meinem #pihole zu füttern via List Import, schwupps- waren sämtliche Seiten geblockt und ich komme, zu mindest Zuhause, nicht mehr auf diese Seiten.

Ob das jetzt so useful ist? Keine Ahnung. Aber ich denke, mir hilft es mich von diesen Seiten fern zu halten.

#selfhosting #didit #diday

I'm trying to pick a linux distro for my server. I see CentOS (RHEL based - not sure how I feel about bringing that home?) and Ubuntu (Debian Based, but I no longer trust the maintainers), but I'm not sure if those are options I like. What is everyone else using?

#homelab #selfhosting

Quiet hours
#SelfHosting
#QuietTech
#Lighthouse
#Lighthouselore

"And what happened then? Well...in Whoville they say,
That the Grinch's small heart Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light,
And he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast!
And he, HE HIMSELF! The Grinch carved the roast beast!" #zfs #selfhosting

Alt...

Screen shot of a green terminal with black text. Shows the before and after effects of expanding a ZFS pool from 9 TB to 18TB.

Final massaging this week with #MusicBrainzPicard to re-tag all the things possible. About 60GB of audio files aren't known to the system so I'll have to migrate those manually.

One of the nice things that Picard does is tag duplicates with a "(1)" instead of overwriting the already existing version. This means I can automate the detection of duplicate files after re-tagging and clear out accidental double imports or double copies.

The "Ship of Theseus" music archive is ready for another year. #selfhosting

SelfHosting week 0, phase 2A, documentation.
There is one thing I find quite uncomfortable on @yunohost documentation: the emojis at the beginning of every chapter. They are very annoying to read for a blind user when going back and forth heading by heading with a screen reader. And, worse, when you attempt to isolate links through the "link list" or "heading list", "element list" whatever name used by screen readers for that feature, you cannot choose an item by initial letter and get into it quickly, from the list that pops up.
The "element list" feature allows a user to press a shortcut and find items of the same type, organized in a list. Links, headings, form controls, etc. So, if it is the table of contents in a documentation website, you have all chapters ordered. You press down arrow in the list, till you find the desired element then press Enter. Or, better, in a normal situation, if you have to choose "domains" for example, you pop up the link list and type "d", then if Domains is the first, you press Enter on it. Or at least, links with that initial are isolated by pressing the letter over and over again till you find the desired one.
But this YunoHost docs are full of those emoticons which maybe are pleasant for sighted folks, but not for blind. Not at all.
#accessibility #a11y #blind #docs #SelfHost #SelfHosting #YunoHost

New #Documentation: #SelfHosting a #Firefox #Sync Server

I decided to look at the feasibility of moving syncing off Mozilla's servers and onto one that I control.

It turned out not to be too much work as someone else had already done the legwork

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/documentation/linux/selfhosting-a-firefox-sync-server.html

This holiday will involve adding a 2nd Internet uplink, upgrading my domain controller and deploying a new NAS.

#overengineering, #selfhosting

Quick question for the ZFS experts: I'm planning to install FreeBSD on my home server and want to use raidz2 with four disks. One thing is not clear to me from the manual.

I'd like to install FreeBSD on "hard disk 1" and leave the other drives untouched until I've configured the system (so I can still boot into the current OS on let's say "hard disk 2"). After having configured the system, I'd like to add "hard disk 2 - 4" to the existing zpool which has "hard disk 1", so that I end up with a raidz2 setup.

Reading https://openzfs.github.io/openzfs-docs/man/master/8/zpool-attach.8.html I'm not sure how I should go about this. Should I configure the initial zpool (with one hdd) already as raidz2 (is that possible?), or is it converted automatically once I add the extra drives? The way I read the man page, the result after `zpool attach` will be a mirror instead of raidz2.

As you can tell, I'm quite new to this and still figuring things out. Any advice, links or boosts are greatly appreciated.

#zfs #raid #FreeBSD #BSD #SelfHosting #homelab

Ended up with Gitea rather than GitLab and very much enjoying it.

#overengineering, #selfhosting

Just signed up my AS space for @greynoise. Curious to see what will land in my inbox as we're tiny, but it can't hurt...

#netops, #overengineering, #selfhosting

Today's fun, cleaning up the external router and core firewalls for the house. Added in a 5G router as an alternate uplink and enabled automatic failover using IOS's ip sla feature. Up until now, I'd been reliant on a failover on the internal mesh wireless network itself but when that kicks in, I lost access to internal DNS services which are located on the core network.

#overengineering, #selfhosting

Accidentally powered the wrong rack on in our lab after a business continuity exercise. Reason: The sticker with our lab name on it had fallen off and been reattached to the wrong cage. Great table top exercise.

#overengineering, #selfhosting

Productive morning:

* Fitted new UPSs
* All my home Cisco FW+R+S infrastructure upgraded to latest releases
* Broken out the core network segment into second rack
* New Catalyst switch wired in for second NAS and lab kit
* Firewall logs now go to SIEM (finally got around to fixing the access-list!)
* MRTG configs updated

Afternoon question, should I build a second domain controller on the lab LAN?

#netops, #overengineering, #selfhosting

Throwing more wifi into the mix because I want to extend the core network into the rest of the house.

Both the current rack in the office and the new core rack in the living room will however benefit from a new UPS each.

#overengineering, #selfhosting

Unplanned business continuity exercise.

Wife flipped power on the rail that the house rack is on and dropped the external, internal and core networks along with guest and trusted wifi.

NAS is currently "Power was lost from the system. Performing file system consistency check. Please wait."...

All those precious uptimes.

#overengineering, #selfhosting

how many #vlans u got? we're at 17 currently with 1 virtual bridge and 1 10G SFP+ switch behind #opnsense c:

#selfhosting #homelab

I self-host not because it is cheaper or easier, but because it lets me break things in very personal, handcrafted ways.
Also because the server lives in Europe and speaks politely to GDPR.

But jokes aside, I am genuinely curious:
Why do so many technically aware people still default to Google, Microsoft, or Meta for almost everything?

Is it convenience? Habit? The feeling that “everyone is there anyway”?
Or maybe the quiet assumption that opting out is pointless because the damage is already done?

The problem is not that these platforms are evil in a comic-book sense. The problem is structural. Their business models are fundamentally built around surveillance, profiling, and extraction of behavioral data. Even when you are not the customer, you are the product. Often both.

Your email metadata, your documents, your location history, your contacts, your photos, your calendar patterns. All of it is collected, correlated, retained, and analyzed. Not because someone is spying on you personally, but because at scale, this data becomes power. Economic, political, and informational power.

And the argument “I have nothing to hide” misses the point entirely. Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing. It is about retaining agency. About not having your digital life continuously optimized for engagement, monetization, or influence by systems you neither control nor meaningfully understand.

What makes this especially frustrating is that alternatives exist. Good ones. Mature ones. European ones. Open-source ones. Federated ones. Boring ones, even. Email providers that do not scan your inbox. Search engines that do not follow you across the web. Social platforms that do not build shadow profiles of non-users. Cloud services where data residency is not a marketing slogan but a default.

Yes, they may require a bit more effort. Sometimes the UI is less polished. Sometimes you have to read documentation. Sometimes you even have to think.

But that trade-off buys you something valuable: autonomy.

Self-hosting is not for everyone, and it does not need to be. Neither is abandoning Big Tech overnight. But questioning defaults should be normal for people who claim to understand technology. Blind trust in massive, opaque platforms is not pragmatism. It is outsourcing responsibility.

So I will keep running my small, imperfect services. I will keep breaking them. Fixing them. Learning from them.
And I will keep asking this question, especially to fellow tech people:

If we know how these systems work, why do we still accept them as inevitable?

#SelfHosting #Privacy #DigitalAutonomy #Fediverse #OpenSource #Decentralization #BigTech #DataOwnership #SurveillanceCapitalism #GDPR #TechCulture

#SelfHosting week 0:
Phase 0. Choosing domain name for self hosting: plusbrothers.online seems available. the .net is my main website based on #WordPress
Considering also plusbrothers.community but who knows if it's possible. Something that warns users that's the same site but with other purposes.
What to do there: Mastodon instance with more than 500 characters if possible. Then Castopod, and maybe a WordPress to transfer English blog there.
Finally, choosing the most appropriate VPS server where to install #YunoHost currently confronting most famous VPS vendors' websites user interface for #accessibility - this is a showcase for customer care. Less accessible means less disability-friendly, that means "I'd prefer you don't come to us". Hostinger has an accessibility statement but it's very superficial and maybe copy-pasted from a template just because obliged by european laws, not for real care.

Self-Host Weekly #152: Wrapped

#NewYear resolutions, software updates and launches, a spotlight on #Tugtainer -- a #Docker update platform, and more in this week's #selfhosted recap!

https://selfh.st/weekly/2026-01-02/

#selfhost #selfhosting #foss #opensource #homelab #devops #sysadmin #fediverse #resolutions #privacy #newsletter #development #smarthome #magic #mongodb

Friday dawn.
Amber warnings on the horizon. Snow pressing its face against the glass.
The Lighthouse doesn’t flinch.

Servers warm the stone. Backups are sealed.
The Keeper tightens his coat, checks the lantern, and lets the storm pass judgement elsewhere.

Calm is not the absence of weather.
It’s preparation.

#LighthouseLore #AmberWarning #SnowDay #CalmUnderPressure #SelfHosting #SmallTech #Friday

Happy #NewYear! To kick off 2026, I've revisited all the new #selfhosted software launches I covered in my weekly #newsletter in 2025 and have published a listing of them below for anyone new to my content.

(The list starts in February due to a revamped tracking process I implemented earlier this year.)

https://selfh.st/post/wrapped-new-software-2025/

#selfhost #selfhosting #foss #opensource #fediverse #homelab #homeserver #server #devops #sysadmin #development #smarthome #photos #videos #software #music

My HP ProDesk 600 G2 Mini PC finally arrived, and I'm excited to set it up.

Before powering on, I'm tidying my Room and creating a Calm, intentional workspace where you build matters more than people admit.

This is a small but meaningful step towards self-hosting, learning Linux, and taking back control over my data and digital life.

Quiet progress beats loud platforms.

#SelfHosting #Linux #Privacy #DigitalSovereignty #Homelab

Was watching "Dinner for one" via ARD mediathek to Chromecast device. While it is usually reliable, this time the stream stuttered every some seconds to fill the buffer - seems the endpoint was too slow.

Luckily, I had already downloaded a copy of the show into my personal Jellyfin, so I could come to rescue the evening by quickly starting Streamyfin (iOS Jellyfin client w/ Chromecast support) and stream it from my local server to my Chromecast.

Happy new year and hooray to free and open software!

#jellyfin #chromecast #selfhosting

@sarah @KoosPol

They want to monetize certain access to official simplex servers by charging the owners of large groups in crypto. You dont need to worry about this if you self host or use any other simplex relay that isnt interested in doing this

#PSA #Privacy #Anonymity #SimpleX #E2EE #Cryprocurrency #SelfHosting

@KoosPol @sarah Thats another reason why I recommend self hosting a simplex relay. But also evgeny has reaffirmed on multiple occasions that this will prbably be for large groups only (costs dependent) so it could be worse

#PSA #Privacy #Anonymity #SelfHosting #SimpleX

I wrote a blogpost in Dutch about 2025 being the year that I started with selfhosting. https://sophieschoice.net/2025/12/31/een-jaar-in-selfhosting.html

While it is in Dutch, it should translate well into English with your favourite translator.

#selfhosting

PS: ik heb trouwens een "terugblik"-blog geschreven over dat 2025 het jaar was dat ik ging selfhosten! https://sophieschoice.net/2025/12/31/een-jaar-in-selfhosting.html

#selfhosting

Just a rant, I'll figure things out, I hope. Apologise for the giant toot.

New year, new attempt to install #Nextcloud on #OpenBSD. I'm a lot closer to a working system than the last time I tried but still not quite there.

I've followed the KB as best I can - https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/installation/example_openbsd.html

This time I at least have a Nextcoud web page, after fixing the assumptions made in the KB I clearly didn't understand the first 25 times around.

But....
"Error
PHP module zip not installed.

Please ask your server administrator to install the module.

PHP module GD not installed.

Please ask your server administrator to install the module.

PHP module cURL not installed.

Please ask your server administrator to install the module."

I am the fsking administrator, and I have no bloody idea how to do any of that. :-( Why does the KB not include any of this information????

I'm resisting the urge to just give up again and renew my Google drive subscription for another 12 months.

And no, I won't use the AIO option full of docker containers that must be public facing with LetsEncrypt certs. This is only ever going to be used internally or from our Wireguard VPN

Why does #SelfHosting have to be this hard !!!!

Lighthouse Lore — New Year, Same Sea

Mist curls low around the stones.
Dogs sleep on the warm couches.
The Keeper makes his rounds, lamp trimmed, logbook steady.

No grand promises this year.
The light stays on.
The storms will come and go.
Not every passing ship needs an answer.

Resolution enough.

#LighthouseLore #NewYear #QuietTech #DigitalStewardship
#SelfHosting

Morning light, first day.
The Keeper’s kettle steams, dogs stretch and resettle.
Systems hum. The sea is still there.
We don’t rush the year, we tend it.
⚓🌫️

#LighthouseLore #QuietTech #SelfHosting #NewYear

Neues Produkt, alte Tugenden.
Unser E-Mail Hosting aus der Schweiz ist live.

Mail, Kalender & Kontakte.
Offene Standards.
Keine Cloud-Religion.

Für alle, die E-Mail einfach nutzen wollen und nicht diskutieren wollen.

👉 https://www.onesystems.ch/services/e-mail-hosting/

#EmailHosting #Schweiz #KMU #IT #SelfHosting #OpenStandards

Great recap of some new projects from this year by selfh.st. Would recommend taking a look!

https://selfh.st/post/2025-favorite-new-apps/

#selfhosting #homelab #foss

Evening at the Lighthouse.
Servers hum, containers breathe, and the tide rolls on regardless of hype cycles.
No dashboards shouting. No clouds bursting.
Just small machines, doing honest work, for people who still like to own their tools.
Tend your light. The night is noisy.

#LighthouseLore #SelfHosting #SmallTech
#NoBigTech #DigitalIndependence
#Fediverse #Mastodon #OpenSource

#selfhosting is:

One of my projects for the #NewYear is to minimize the number of #cloud #servers I run and manage. A big part of that is finding a new #DNS host for my 30+ domains that I #selfhost for myself and others.

Can any of the #sysadmin or #infosec folks recommend a service that provides a good web interface, and a reasonable flat-rate for a couple dozen low-volume #domains?

Ones that I've found charge a monthly fee that eclipses my server costs (3x-4x!), even when taking discounts for up-front annual payments into consideration. I could run my own DNS servers on cloud VMs for a fraction of the price, but again, trying to minimize the complexity in my life.

#SelfHosted #SelfHosting

If I were to release a service to run on servers, how would you prefer I package it? A #poll: #selfhosting #software #release

Hat hier noch jemand CasaOS V 0.4.15 am laufen ?
Ich hab den verdacht das die Container (Immich, Paperless ect.) nicht geupdatet werden, kann das jemand bestätigen ?

#casaos #selfhosting #container

Lighthouse Lore 🌊

“Can you just add my website?”

And so begins the trial.
DNS hesitates. Permissions lie.
Coffee goes cold. The server does not blink.

Selfhosters don’t sleep.
We wrangle the world until it behaves.

The lighthouse stays lit.

#LighthouseLore #SelfHosting #IndieWeb #SysadminLife #OpenSource #CalmCorner #BehindTheScenes

Anyone else having issues with @1password not working on non-https sites?

#1password #homelab #selfhosted #selfhosting #passwordmanager

There is a recently discovered critical vulnerability that affects all Matrix homeservers of the Conduit lineage. If you’re using a Rust-based Matrix server (which are basically Conduit and forks), please urgently upgrade to the following versions:

• continuwuity: version 0.5.0
• tuwunel: version 1.4.8
• grapevine: commit 9a50c24
• conduit: v0.10.10
• conduwuit: upgrade to the latest version of either tuwunel or continuwuity

If you’re not able to upgrade right now, you should urgently implement this workaround in your reverse proxy.

Attackers exploiting this flaw can arbitrarily kick any user out of a room, join rooms unauthorized on the same server, and can also ban same-server users. They effectively constitute a severe denial of service from an unauthenticated party, and it has been exploited in the wild.

Commitin programming crimes }:->

Few week ago I seriously looked to the mine OpenHAB installation and asked a question for myself: "Am I really need it?" Look, I have a few ZigBee devices, which are connected to the my server with the help of ZigBee2MQTT. Thusly, all necessary values and knobs are accessible through the MQTT topics.

And I'm using the OpenHAB (big Java application which eats ton's of RAM and constantly swapping) just to:
1) Read values from MQTT topic
2) Read weather forecast from Open-Meteo through simple REST API endpoints
3) Store all the data to the PostgreSQL DB.
4) Display these data in the nice Web page which works only in browsers with JS engine.

So, basically, I trade tons of RAM and processing power just for a nice web-page with few indicators. While retrieving data from my ZigBee devices processed by the another service.

After that thought, I started to think about replacing this monster with small hand-written program, which will not eat 700 MB of RAM. Just Nginx, small FastCGI script on C, which will read values from DB and display them on the simple HTML page. And another small daemon (also written in C) which will take data from MQTT topic (and from REST API of Open-Meteo) and will write them to the DB. And possibly some PGSQL procedures to analyze these data.

At least I'll have fun

#programming #C #smarthome #selfhosting

Alt...

Emacs buffer with some C code, which spews out the string with HTML, with substituted values for temperature and humidity.

Por cierto, llevo años con proyectillos montados en DigitalOcean, es barato y funciona muy bien.

Si a alguno le interesa aquí tenéis un link referido que a vosotros os da 200$ en 60 días y si os gastáis 25$ a mi me dan otros 25.

https://m.do.co/c/912f3bd5964f

#SelfHosted #SelfHosting

Lighthouse Lore 🌫️
Monday morning.
No one knows the date.
Christmas is behind us,
New Year is waving from the fog.
Between leftovers and resolutions,
the Lighthouse stays lit ,
quietly self-hosted, steadily tended,
for the wanderers and the weary.
Take it slow.
The year will find you soon enough.
For now, breathe.
You’re still on the map.
🕯️🌊
#LighthouseLore #SelfHost #SelfHosting #Fediverse #BetweenTheYears #QuietMoments #WinterFog

I started my digital music collection in late 2000 early 2001. Its gone from a directory of files in my home dir, to a stand alone directory in my filesystem to a stand alone array attached to my computer.

Today is the first time I pointed MusicBrainz Picard at it ... I might be here a few days.

#selfhosting

Alt...

Status bar in the MusicBrainz Picard application showing 6 hours, 50 minutes, 56k files, 2285 albums and counting.

Thinking about setting up a KVM. I'm sick of rearranging my rack everytime I need to access a server...

Any KVM switch recomendations? And has anyone tried #pikvm

#kvm #homelab #selfhosting #serverrack #kubernetes

https://tools.uphillsecurity.com/ has been added to the portfolio.

An active fork of the original project IT-Tools.

Feedback is welcome. Enjoy!

#foss #opensource #selfhosting

Good morning Fedi friends!

Today is a really special day - it marks the one year anniversary of the installation/setup of this #GoToSocial instance 🎂​

For its first few days I kept the account private, doing tests with @stereo (my self-hosting support buddy - THANK YOU!)... and I only published its first public post on January 1st 2025.

I have nothing but great things to say about @gotosocial – I LOVE everything about it. A huge thank you to its developers - keep up the amazing work!

#MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting