schmonz.com is a Fediverse instance that uses the ActivityPub protocol. In other words, users at this host can communicate with people that use software like Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, etc. all around the world.
This server runs the snac software and there is no automatic sign-up process.
Its been some time since I've setup a home server, and even then I only used it to store backups from devices on the LAN.
Never hosted anything that is reachable from the internet (besides SSH). I want to learn how to self-host a few services, starting with a Google Photos replacement; and littleFedi by @stefano .
Thought of using a old laptop, but decided to step up to a ThinkCentre M720q. I've installed FreeBSD as the host OS.
Onward!
https://btxx.org/posts/memory/
#smolweb #embedded #rpi #ownyourdata #selfhosting #selfhosted
@indyradio This is where #selfhosting is good. I don't want anyone else determining who I can see and with whom I can interact.
Why do I run FreeBSD for my home servers // Mathieu Aumont
Thinking about a new domain+project...
Anyone have the TL;DR; on self hosted fediverse software?
Mastodon vs Snac vs Pleroma vs ?
I'm looking for something that is super low maintenance and lightweight / easy on resources but as full featured as practical within those constraints.
Something easy to tune re: post lengths and media types would be cool too. A "text first" platform is desired.
I've run Mastodon in the past and it's like fishing with nukes for this use case.
What's out there?
Good morning Fedi friends,
I have been feeling a rising anxiety over the state of the open web and the fediverse - after seeing efforts by politicians all over the world (in Europe too!) to introduce age verification laws for social media.
My way of coping?
Teaching people how to self-host their own Fediverse profile (using the superb #GoToSocial) via #YunoHost.
Chapter 1 in this series is available here:
"Twasn't me..."
"Well... it was teh case's fault!!!11!!!"
🤡
If you ever wanted a good reason to keep around your failed hard drives, scavenging screwed up logic boards is a good reason. Ha!
I saw a terrible message from DigitalOcean yesterday. I was helping a co-worker learn to do SASL authentication with Postfix, using Dovecot to do the heavy lifting, (second co-worker this week! Breaking people free from Google!) and we got to the point where we were ready to have him send out a test email - a reply to an email I'd just sent him that exercised all the moving parts of his inbound path.
But when he tried to send, he couldn't talk to my email server. I checked to make sure he wasn't being firewalled, but he didn't show up in my abuse listing. But then on poking around, it became clear he couldn't talk to ANY port 25 ANYWHERE. And I thought, "Oh, right, they've got that blocked. Le'ts find an article talking about how to unblock it." Not too uncommon. So I looked for their docs on unblocking 25.
Turns out, there's no automated way - not even a support ticket type for the purpose. You have to open a general request.
But man, they REALLY don't want you opening a general request! This is a masterpiece of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/why-you-may-not-want-to-run-your-own-mail-server
Without meaning to, they've eloquently captured the essence of everything we're seeing with the destructive corporatization and centralization of online services. They say:
"In many ways, mail server stacks represent a collision between the tools and values of the early internet — self-hosting open source software using well-defined standards and interoperable protocols — and the reality of the modern internet — a few centralized, trusted authorities."
This, not to put too fine a point on it, is BAD FOR US.
We need *more* selfhosting. I was a customer of theirs for a few years, but I stopped after they had some catastrophe that prevented me from accessing my server console for more than a week. Their support was underwater and I didn't get any movement until I decided to publically name and shame them with details of the incident.
This kind of attitude should make anyone hesitant to sign up for services with DigitalOcean.
I've cleaned up my Raspberry Pi selfhosting setup a bit. I'm using two, each in an Argon ONE V5 case with a 1TB NVME drive, running Raspberry Pi OS.
'one' is serving Nextcloud All-in-one, Immich and Vaultwarden via a Caddy reverse-proxy. All using Docker containers, Caddy as a custom build with my domain DNS provider added.
'two' is used as remote borg backup destination for 'one', and later a few monitoring tools.
All three sites are using a wildcard certificate for my domain, and I connect via WireGuard (on the router) when away from home.
Path of least resistance:
I've tried Podman, AlmaLinux, and running a manual install of Nextcloud on Ubuntu. This setup follows recommended installations methods, and gives me fewer things to worry about.
#selfhosting #raspberrypi #nextcloud #immich #vaultwarden #caddy #wireguard
The amazing folks at @yunohost are running a fundraising campaign to cover their operating costs for 2026.
I personally make a monthly recurring donation to them but wish I could give more 🥲
If you use their services and you can afford it, please consider donating to their project. Every Euro / Dollar / Yen counts:
🔗 : https://yunohost.org/donate.en.html
#NotAllHeroesWearCapes #SelfHosting #empowerment #resist #YunoHost
Pretty funny that the most often requested file from my small kitchen-server is "/robots.txt". Pretty surprising, since a lot of LLM-bots usually ignores this file 
The other requested files are just some js crap, which is obviously don't exist on my server — possibly some script-kiddies tried to find some entrypoint (see "config.js" and "env.js").
The funny part: the referrer URLs. Hope, the default content of NetBSD /etc/passwd from inside the sandbox was made someone happy 
Doing a mastodon *minor* update is still a mess in 2026 requiring manual steps to trigger db migrations pre and post update. And that's using docker. Without containerization its even more steps to do. Just in case anybody is still wondering why people do not "just self-host"...