Self-hosting does not make your data safe.

If you don't put in place, review, *and test* backup and recovery plans,,and security measures appropriate to the risk, your data are not "safe".

Your data might be less affected by the whims of third parties, which can be valuable for sure, but don't confuse that with your data being "safe".

And I say this as someone who loves self-hosting.

Any "beginners' guide to self-hosting" which doesn't lead with, or at least focus on, security and resiliency, is getting it wrong, IMHO.

#SelfHosting

I also want to add: I hope this doesn't discourage people from messing around and trying things.

If you're new to homelabs and selfhosting it totally makes sense that these are one and the same thing, my warning isn't a "you MUST" but a "please consider" kind of message.

If anyone wants help or advice what makes most sense in their personal context, feel free to shoot me a DM

I would only encourage people to start homelabbing and #selfhosting; both to learn, to break free, and to have fun.

pro tip: a Homelab and Selfhosted infra are two different things.

If you use your #homelab for #selfhosting your personal stuff, one of two things happens:

- you can no longer use your homelab as homelab and for experimentation

- your selfhosted infra is constantly offfline

Selfhosted infra should be seen as a PRODUCTION environment, which homelabs are not.

It should have automated backups, and ideally receive automated updates for security; you should avoid touching it as much as possible.

☕ Lighthouse Lore — Saturday Morning

The kettle clicks off.
Coffee steams.
The sea doesn’t care about deadlines.

No alerts. No stand-ups.
Just a keeper, a warm mug,
and a lighthouse doing what it’s always done.

Take it slow, travellers.
The light works weekends too. 🌤️⚓

#LighthouseLore #SaturdayMorning #CoffeeFirst #Fediverse #SelfHosting #SlowTech

Alt...

a lighthouse on a concrete promontory

🕯️ Lighthouse Lore — 23:59

The hour when the loud ones log off.
When dashboards dim, pings fall silent,
and the lighthouse keeps watch without applause.

No algorithms. No rage.
Just steady light, self-hosted calm,
and a keeper still at the desk.

Sleep easy, travellers.
The light stays on. 🌊⚓

#LighthouseLore #Fediverse #SelfHosting #DigitalCalm #QuietTech

#selfhosting

Po zmianie sprzętu, na którym stoi linuksowy serwer (spory upgrade, bo z i5/2gen i 4 GiB RAM n i7/10gen i 16 GiB RAM), mam więcej zasobów i trzeba to wykorzystać. ;-)

Na pierwszy ogień — przeniesienie istniejących usług, czyli Endurain i BookLore. Bez problemów.

Teraz dorzuciłem:
1) Dawarich — thx @tymoteuszjozwiak
2) PhotoPrism
3) Immich

Najpierw PhotoPrism, aby sprawdzić integrację z Dawarich.

No i tutaj coś nie działa jak powinno, bo owszem, Dawarich ściąga lokalizację zdjęć z PP, ale zdjęcia nie są wyświetlane (tak, włączone warstwa photos).

Dlatego postawiłem też Immich. I tutaj podobnie. Lokalizację zdjęć pobiera, ale nie są wyświetlane zdjęcia w Dawarich.
No nic to.

Ale!

Mam teraz PhotoPrism i Immich i nie wiem, które zostawić. ;-)

Seit ein paar Wochen folge ich @HolosSocial, weil ich die Idee einer eigenen Instanz, die vollständig als Smartphone-App läuft (ggf. plus eigener Relay-Server), ziemlich interessant finde.

Habt ihr Einwände, die dagegen sprechen würden?

mastodon.social/@HolosSocial/115691449342113089

#HolosSocial #SelfHosting #FediVerse

🌅 Friday Evening at the Lighthouse

As the week exhales, the Lighthouse glows a little warmer.
Servers hum, seas settle, and the noise of the wider web fades into mist.

No rush. No shouting. Just steady lights and quiet signals for those who prefer calmer waters.

⚓ Welcome in.

#LighthouseLore #Fediverse #SelfHosting #QuietWeb #DigitalCalm #forgejo #githosting

Dear Fedi friends,

I just hit "publish" on my blog post "A newbie's guide to #selfhosting with #YunoHost. Part 1: reasons + requirements". It's here if you wanna read it:

🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-with-yunohost-part-1-reasons-requirements/

This guide is intended for true newbies who are curious about self-hosting some essential digital services. I'm hoping to dispel some myths about self-hosting and make it appear accessible to all. Well, at least to people curious about it but hesitant to get started because they think it's too complicated. That was me up to a year ago.

Special thanks and shout-out to @ilja for setting my journey in motion. And eternal gratitude to @yunohost for the way they are empowering us all with the tools to self-host

#MySoCalledSudoLife #blog #BigTech #rebellion #digitalsovereignty #NextCloud

Folks who own a #domain. What trend or logic do you use for subdomains?

I'm a mulling over a good strategy for subdomain v/s CNAME v/s folder

#selfhosting

P.S: Do you keep different domains for different #fediverse services (like one for gotosocial, one for pixelfed, etc)?

Slight WAN speed update.

#HomeLab #SelfHosted #SelfHosting

This perfectly matches something I've been telling friends for years: if your data exists only in "the cloud", then you don't actually own your data - you're just being granted permission to access it.

This applies to every online service.
Telegram is a whole separate story: people store tens of gigabytes of personal files there, trusting them to a platform with a questionable history and a very blurred idea of privacy.

If your photos live only in iCloud - then you don’t have your photos.
If your files exist only in Dropbox - then you don’t have your files (just one example - https://www.reddit.com/r/dropbox/comments/scflkf/dropbox_account_disabled/).

I don't know who said it first, but the phrase fits perfectly here: "the cloud is just someone else’s computer".
If your data lives only in the cloud, it simply means it's sitting on someone else's machine. And the question becomes: do you trust that machine more than your own?

Having cloud storage is fine - it's convenient and useful.
But it should never be your only storage. Never.

You always need backups. Preferably encrypted backups. And you must test them, because an untested backup is the same as having no backup at all.

#Privacy #DataOwnership #CloudComputing #SelfHosting #Backup #Encryption
#CyberSecurity #DigitalSovereignty #InfoSec #Mastodon #Fediverse

Alt...

All you data are belong to us or the painful truth of using Telegram and other online services Yesterday, Telegram logged me off from all my devices without showing any warnings or notifications, even though | wasn't using it at the time. | don't participate in any illegal groups. In fact, I'm not subscribed to or part of any public groups except those created by my company. | only chat with my friends and coworkers. This prompted me to remind everyone that: Your Telegram account or any online account does not actually belong to you. The company behind it can take it from you any time they want or by sheer negligence, e.g. "we've been compromised and lost our backups". Telegram essentially has no support. Nothing. Nil. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Only the powers that be can restore their Telegram accounts due to sheer publicity and public channels. If your care about your Telegram chats and contacts, perform regular backups. Please do, you'll thank me later. Unlike other messengers that implement end to end encryption, Telegram does read your messages and can ban you at its own discretion without telling you anything at all. Telegram has private chats with the same E2EE encryption, but hardly anyone knows about or uses them. They also come with all sorts of "perks" (no synchronization between devices is one of them).

Lighthouse Lore XIII — The Long Watch

Keepers never die;
they just age like stone and salt.

Stacks change, storms come and go,
but the duty remains:
hold the beam steady,
watch the horizon,
and leave a warm place for anyone drifting in from the dark.

Some of us aren’t fading.
We’re simply deep into the watch.

#LighthouseLore #SelfHosting #CalmCorner #HauntedTech

Alt...

lighthouse keeper peering over the balcony

Reaching out to fellow #selfhosting fans and #DevOps using #S3 Storage. Since #minio is no more and is now just in "Maintenance Mode", what alternatives are you recommending?
currently thinking between SeaweedFS (https://seaweedfs.com/) and and Garrage (https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/)

Boost welcome.

At the point where I don't really want to talk about what personal projects I'm working on. When I do, I get negativity, push back, or at best, indifference.
#FOSS #Selfhosting #Unplugtrump

Lighthouse Lore XI — The Witching Hour

At midnight the Lighthouse holds its breath.
The sea goes quiet, the logs go cryptic,
and something old prowls the server room —
a shadow that knows every cable by name.

The Keeper tightens his coat, nods once,
and whispers into the dark:
“Alright then. Show me your worst.”

#LighthouseLore #WitchingHour #SelfHosting #Fediverse #GhostInTheMachine

Alt...

green terminal in a server room with a ghost

Here are my go-tos — show me your runners.
Out on the rock, these are the tools that keep the Lighthouse glowing through every storm: nvim, rclone, Tailscale, MinIO, htop, systemctl, mosh, Proton Drive.
Your turn — what keeps your setup alive?

#SelfHosting #Linux #SysadminLife #LighthouseLore

After Storm Bran tore across the coast
the Lighthouse iust shakes off the salt
and carries on
The Keeper does the same - pacing
the racks, listening for any trouble Bran
might've slipped into the cables
But everything hums.
Out there. chaos
In here, calm
Some lights refuse to bow to any
storm.
#LighthouseLore #SelfHosting
#IndieWeb

Alt...

sunrise over a lighthouse

🌙 Tonight’s Lighthouse Lore

Some nights the Lighthouse feels older than the storms around it.
Built on equal parts Linux, late nights, and a stubborn belief that small corners of the internet can still be kind.
No boardroom, no shareholders — just one bloke, a pile of servers, and a flame that refuses to go out.
#LighthouseLore #SelfHosting #MastodonAdmin #IndieWeb

@nicholasburns Most of it is SAS. But where local storage bit me was in migrating from one host to another as I upgraded XCP 8.2.1 to 8.3. When you have shared storage, moving a node from one compute to another is trivial. When I have only local storage, migrating VMs has been really difficult. It's either time-consuming (20-120 minutes to move a big VM) or even impossible (version-to-version migration on XCP has been difficult with only local storage).

#homelab #selfhosting

@unixorn

I'm going to admit that I am doing something immature in my #homelab and I'm looking for opinions. I've got multiple #XCPng hosts, all using local storage. I have no NFS or iSCSI storage. That's kinda silly. Shared storage is super useful and I'm literally not using it.

Unless I go to some serious effort to make a high-performance SAN, I expect network storage performance to be so-so for VM storage, but maybe I'm too pessimistic. I currently only have copper gigabit in the rack. No fiber, no 2.5G copper or anything like that. I'm not sure if that's going to be viable for NFS or iSCSI.

I could dedicate a host to running TrueNAS Core with a bunch of storage. But what has always bugged me about this is that my storage host becomes a single point of failure for all the compute nodes. #TrueNAS is super reliable but everything has to reboot once in a while, and these stupid enterprise-grade servers take anywhere from 4-8 minutes to boot. If I had a single storage node, and I needed to reboot it for an OS upgrade, everything would hang for a while. That's no good. Not updating the OS on the storage system is also not good.

So what am I supposed to be doing for shared storage on a #Xen cluster? How do I avoid a storage host becoming a single point of failure? How do you update and reboot a storage node, without disrupting everything that depends on it?

#selfhosting #san #storage

I just published a new blog post about my #selfhosting plans for 2026 and... I remembered to add this pic (a scan of my own handwriting) at the bottom of the post.

It's now more important than ever: "written by a human"

🔗: https://blog.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-357

#NoAI

Alt...

a screenshot of a blog post... there is a picture inserted that is a scan of my own handwriting that reads: "written by a human" with a heart symbol drawn in, too

🏕️ my adventures in self-hosting: day 357 (big picture edition) 🖼️

a blog post in which I discuss my big #selfhosting plans for Q1 and Q2 of 2026... involving a major #PeerTube migration.

as I wrote in the post, if you're a sysadmin based in Paris and you could help me with this task, I could offer you in exchange a professional photo shoot for you and your family 🤗​

🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-357/

Psst: the blog is now federated and you can follow it here: @ele

#MySoCalledSudoLife

I think this is the end of #Immich experiments for now. Will try again in a couple of years more.

Got 10k photos uploaded successfully, but the second 10k fails continuously.

#selfhosting #SelfHosted #selfhost #homelab

Tom on #Immich

#HomeLab #SelfHosted #SelfHosting

I Moved to Immich… Can It Really Replace Google Photos? - Lawrence Systems (Lawrence Systems) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5tdK10CRFE

#Immich first impressions

Well, not really first, but current. Last time I tried it was a couple of years ago, I think.

1. Looks and feels like a polished product.
2. I still can’t have two separate libraries. I really like the idea of two libraries - shared and personal. Like in Synology Photos or iCloud Photos.

#selfhosting #SelfHosted #selfhost #icloudphotos #synologyphotos #photo #homelab

If you could start from scratch with the basics of your homelab infrastructure what would your ideal arch look like?

Which switches would you buy? What would you do for dns? DHCP? Ipam? Hypervisor? Containers? K8s? 2.5gbe? 10gig sfp+? More?

#selfhosting #homelab #infrastructure

#Plex needs more storage.
Guess this will do.
For the price of a Netflix subscription.

#HomeLab #SelfHosted #SelfHosting

I decided to give #Immich another try. I'll let it serve as a backup for my iCloud photos. Will see how it's going. For now, my poor phone is uploading my entire shared library to my poor server. Both are running hot but still standing strong : )
#SelfHosted #SelfHosting #SelfHost #HomeLab #iCloudPhotos #iCloud

I have one very silly question for #selfhosting
Which service is best for hosting my music library for me, myself and family.

Needs: any android client app support
Any Linux client app support
Works on x86_64 server

Nice to have a web ui but it's not a must have

I have over 1 terabyte of music and I want to have ability to listen to it using our mobiles.

Moin mastodon.de! Bin #neuhier und freue mich auf Content zu den Themen #selfhosting, #Linux und #knackigepfirsische

⭐ COMPLIANCE TOOT

The Haunted Lighthouse just levelled up — full GDPR/ICO-ready data protection framework, DPIA, SAR forms, internal policies, the whole pack stitched together.

Self-hosting feels even better when the compliance goblins are fed and quiet.
Back to building… and hey, don’t forget the paperwork 😉

#SelfHosting #GDPR #SysadminLife #MastodonAdmin

#selfhosting #freebsd - day 268

Moved over to 15.0-STABLE (weekly) with no issues... only potential gotcha was remembering to update the pkgbase repo names and it was easy peasy.

Did I say no issues? Nearly... the web servers wouldn't come up. After a few expletives and a little digging it turns out there was (as usual!) a sysadmin competence deficiency - apparently the weekly backups have included all the previous backups and the backups inside them (yes, and the backups inside them...) you get the idea. Every week since march! 🤣 The fact that it has taken me until now to notice says a huge amount about how frugal FreeBSD is on drive space.

In other news (to me) the amazing #BastilleBSD has landed on pkg latest with pkgbase support AND the ability to bootstrap STABLE releases. So far
`bastille bootstrap -p 15.0-STABLE` isn't adding anything to the releases folder... I'm sure it's only a minor thing - and once it is I need to work out how to get it to track base_weekly. @BastilleBSD - if you've got some ideas I'm all ears!

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent is all about XMPP.

Snikket (https://snikket.org/) is an easy-to-install, and easy-to-administer, XMPP server. It is designed for families and other small groups. The apps for Android and iOS (based on Conversations, I think) are great.

Dino (https://dino.im/) is my desktop XMPP client of choice.

Profanity (https://profanity-im.github.io/) is a terminal / console XMPP client, which is incredibly convenient.

Why not have a fun festive project of setting up an XMPP-based chat server for you and your family and friends?

#XMPP #FOSS #SelfHosting

Hey #selfhosting fans - I am looking for recommendations for an RSS converter app I can run on my home server. I have a few web sites I want to follow, which don't offer RSS feeds. I believe apps like RSSHub and RSS Brudge can do the job.

Have you used any of these apps? Which ones are worth investigating? Thanks!

Just published: how I migrated the Mastodon instance burningboard.net to a multi‑jail FreeBSD setup with BastilleBSD. Central PF firewall, real dual‑stack, and clean service separation.

https://blog.hofstede.it/migrating-burningboardnet-mastodon-instance-to-a-multi-jail-freebsd-setup/

#FreeBSD #BastilleBSD #Mastodon #SelfHosting #IPv6

Currently most biggest email providers put mails from my domain in TLD .cloud and my server to spam. Even tho I have all the shiny things set up like SPF, DKIM, DMARC, reverse dns, the domain is not new, and there was never spam sent from my server. I am not on any blacklist of course.

And I don't get why ppl actually don't check what is in spam folder, like they really receive so much spam, so that they can't notice there is something? I have plenty of mail accounts in various places for a long time, some of them used a lot befor I started selfhosting, and everywhere I receive no, or almost no spam.

What is your #email #selfhosting experience?

#homelab

New blog post!

A postmortem on how my VPS got infected with a crypto miner through, probably, a vulnerability in a docker container. And that has shown all things I have been doing wrong with administrating my server and self hosted services.

With many thanks to @louis @agturcz and @cichy1173

https://stfn.pl/blog/88-i-got-hacked/

#blog #vps #selfhosting #umami

(more Linux and FOSS news in previous posts of thread)

Code editor Zed adds long-awaited rainbow brackets for improved nested code readability:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/12/code-editor-zed-adds-long-awaited-rainbow-brackets-for-improved-nested-code-readability/

Django 6.0 released with template partials, backround tasks and more:
https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2025/dec/03/django-60-released/

AMD GPU Managed Memory Support Merged For The GCC 16 Compiler:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-GCC-Managed-Memory

WordPress 6.9 adds block-level Notes, dashboard-wide Command Palette, and Abilities API:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/12/wordpress-6-9-adds-block-level-notes-dashboard-wide-command-palette-and-abilities-api/

Anthropic acquires Bun to accelerate its development and integration into Claude Code:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/12/anthropic-acquires-bun-to-accelerate-its-development-and-integration-into-claude-code/

Wireshark 4.6.2 Is Out to Update Protocol/Capture File Support and Fix More Bugs:
https://9to5linux.com/wireshark-4-6-2-is-out-to-update-protocol-capture-file-support-and-fix-more-bugs

Let's Encrypt will decrease SSL certificate validity from 90 to 45 Days by 2028:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2025/12/let-s-encrypt-will-decrease-ssl-certificate-validity-from-90-to-45-days-by-2028/

FreeBSD 15.0 Now Officially Available With Many Software Updates, Reproducible Builds:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE

ReactOS Lands Improvements For Its USB Stack - Fixing Various Blue Screens of Death:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Better-USB-For-ReactOS

Genode OS Framework 25.11 Adds Intel Alder Lake Graphics Support:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Genode-OS-25.11

#WeeklyNews #OpenSource #FOSSNews #OpenSourceNews #FOSS #Zed #Django #WordPress #Bun #Wireshark #LetsEncrypt #GCC #GCC16 #FreeBSD #SelfHosting #Networking #NetworkingTech #WebDev #WebDevelopment #Python #JavaScript #BSD #ReactOS #GenodeOS #OS #OperatingSystem #ProgrammingLanguage #Development #Programming #Coding #FosseryTech

Looooooooong overdue but now that #immich is stable I feel confident enough in it as a long term solution that I am finally doing it. I am deleting everything in Google Photos today. Long overdue.

Also, the deleting process stinks. You have to do it manually from the webUI bit by bit. Anti-user behavior. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. #selfhosting

Someone needs to make homelab wrapped

"Your DNS got fucked up 753 times"
"You downloaded 53 petabytes of anime"
"Your uptime was 20% higher than US-East-1"

#selfhosting