Good morning Fedi friends!

This week I will publish a first post in my mini series for total newbies about how to self-host with #YunoHost.

The very first article will simply cover the basics of what is needed... then part 2 will be the step-by-step installation and connecting a domain + creating a subdomain... and then part 3 will cover installing an app (NextCloud) and setting up a backup system.

I'm hoping to get all this done before Christmas, in time for my one year anniversary of self-hosting with YunoHost (thank you again @ilja for setting all this in motion last year).

As I type this, I'm currently backing up my YunoHost and these days my backup files are about 13GB in size, broken down as follows (in descending order):

• #GoToSocial: 5.3 GB
• #PeerTube: 4 GB
• #NextCloud: 2.3 GB
• #Pixelfed: 1.4 GB
• #LinkStack: 91 MB

Wishing you all a great day & week!

#MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting

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

🎄 Advent of Donations - Day 2 🎄

Today's donation of $50 go to Daniel García, maintainer of the Vaultwarden project.

Read more about Vaultwarden and why I'm sponsoring it in my blog: https://britter.dev/blog/2025/12/01/advent-of-donations/

#opensource #selfhosting #vaultwarden #bitwarden #donation #AdventOfDonations

In the past few days I’ve seen talk about RAM prices shooting up due to demand from big datacenters.

Today I read that a historic brand like Crucial - I own plenty of their hardware, including SSDs - is dropping consumer products to focus on gear for those same datacenters.
The result (or maybe the intention?) is to push people away from self hosting, undermine the OwnYourData idea and make everyone depend on huge datacenters for life.

So much for owning your data.
So much for decentralisation.

Because taking down one giant datacenter is far easier than taking down thousands or millions of individual nodes.

Friends and colleagues, don’t trade your freedom for a bit of convenience. Once you give it away, getting it back is very hard.

Always Own Your Data.

#OwnYourData #SelfHosting

Il web che amo.
Quello dei piccoli blog indipendenti, magari ospitati su qualche VPS dove si offrono anche servizi open source e privacy oriented, istanze del #fediverso, e tanto altro.

Si può parlare di #indieweb?
In ogni caso, impegniamoci per alimentare un WWW più sano.

Per non creare un'accozzaglia di url, mi limiterò a taggare alcuni profili (in ordine sparso), da cui poi ricavare i link:

@stefano
@lorenzo
@dado
@denial403

@internet

#linux #web #blog #vps #selfhosting #homelab

Ever messed up an update? We got you covered! Simply restore your Snapshot!

You can now also manage (create, delete, restore) a snapshot of your Box! If you ever messed up your application, OS update or anything else - simply go back to your last snapshot and try again! This way, you can test and learn #BSD even better and easier!

cc: @gyptazy

#education #opensource #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD #RUNBSD #learning #ipv6 #freevm #freevps #community #fosdem #hosting #selfhosting #snapshot

Alt...

BoxyBSD allows you to manage snapshots of your Boxes, now!

Aaaand we're back!

https://kzimmermann.0x.no

Now from a new location!

#selfhosting

Obligatory meme for my fellow homelab hosters 🙂
#homelab #selfhosting

Alt...

The Drake "no / yes" meme with cloudflare as the "no" and homelab as the "yes"

Pssst! BoxyConnect comes soon to @BoxyBSD!

BoxyConnect allows you to create a private network / private link between multiple boxes at BoxyBSD. And the best? You can even create this over different locations/countries to provide you more flexibility.

You can simply assign any RFC1918 addresses on your new additional network interface on both sites and communicate in your own private network - even miles away.

This feature is currently in beta and will hopefully be available to everyone (just like all other services of course for free). Enjoy #RUNBSD!

This new feature is powered by @gyptazy!

#BoxyBSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonflyBSD #MidnightBSD #SmolBSD #Hosting #SelfHosting #Provider #BSD #FreeVPS #VPS #opensource #community #education #openeducation

Alt...

Image of BoxyConnect for BoxyBSD which shows multiple locations where people can start instances, which soon can be linked within a private own network.

@drscriptt Same, send and receive, and I'll share logs. #selfhosting

#selfhosting folks:

How, really, louder are ironwolfs 10tb+ compared to we red 6tb?

@rainy Get a
VPS (Vultr, Digital Ocean), a domain (Porkbun). Learn some DNS (BIND) and email handling (Postfix, maybe Courier IMAP). Pick a Fediverse server (Friendica, Mastodon). There's a lot to learn but you'll become more powerful for knowing it.

#selfhosting

PS: Dovecot is the common option for IMAP but they pulled a fast one recently with their config that's impacted lots of folks, and I've lost faith.

Dear Fedi friends,

If you can set aside 11 minutes today, I highly encourage to watch @vkc's latest video: "I stream nothing, and I am happy."

🔗​: https://tinkerbetter.tube/w/ns3WDZZgAoe1SfrDCAUrni

It is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT and should be shown in media literacy and digital literacy classes everywhere. Actually, everyone should watch it (I'm about to send it to my family and friends).

My favorite part comes up towards the end. Veronica eloquently explains (9 min 27 sec in):

"I feel like we owe it to ourselves and to those who follow us to try and break free of algorithms, which tell us what we should like, who we should believe, and how we should feel about it.

It may sound melodramatic and maybe it is, but I see the increased dependence on algorithmically-driven entertainment as a symptom of that larger problem: uber-convenience that separates us from our critical thinking.

We're learning to abandon reason for small decisions, and wouldn't you know it, now it's easier to ignore reasons for the larger ones.

I'm not here to tell you what to think. I was raised in a "mind-your-own-damn-business" household and that's where my head is at. But I do want to implore all of us to think critically about how streaming media, autoplay, and the algorithm are impacting us."

I'm super proud to be a backer of her Patreon and I cannot thank her enough for this incredible video... which comes at the perfect time, as I was already planning to set up #Jellyfin next week.

If you can, join me in supporting Veronica's work here: https://www.patreon.com/VeronicaExplains

#DigitalLiteracy #BigTech #SelfHosting #independence #resist #MediaLiteracy

I made a few updates to my solar powered website.

Most of all, I fixed the uptime counter. I also made some tweaks to the wording, the gallery and the overall site design.

https://solar.stfn.pl/

#solarpunk #pv #selfhosting #raspberry

In early September, The Matrix Foundation homeserver went down.

I'm extremely proud of our SRE team. They had a Disaster Recovery Plan and monthly exercises to apply it, resulting in no data loss despite a 24h outage.

I've learned a lot about how to properly backup/restore a Postgres database when writing this post with SREs. We also learned how to better prevent and be resilient to human error.

Thanks all for the hugops during the outage!

https://matrix.org/blog/2025/10/post-mortem/

#homelab #selfHosting #sre

🏕️ my adventures in self-hosting: day 316 (realist edition) 👩‍🏭

a blog post in which I discuss how my #Sharkey misadventures provided some illuminating insights... including how grateful I am for self-hosted software that just works (hello @gotosocial). Also: I'm super grateful for the dot world group that allows me to have a Sharkey account that actually works as intended (thanks @ruud )!

🔗​: https://news.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-316-realist-edition/

#MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting

Good morning Fedi friends and happy Saturday! 🌈​

File under: I'm such a clown sometimes. I did something extremely foolish yesterday (installation-wise) that bricked my whole YunoHost with Sharkey instance. This is not the fault of YunoHost or Sharkey, it's just me being the biggest airhead.

So this morning I nuked that VPS (Hetzner makes it so easy to start and stop) and, armed with a stopwatch, I wanted to see how long it would take me to order a new server, log in, install YunoHost and set up a main URL and a subdomain to log in.

I had this unique challenge that we're going hiking in the mountains so my time is very limited this morning.

How long did it take me? A grand total of 14 minutes.

The perks of being a fool is that you repeat the steps so many times that you go from being terrified (what do I have to do now?) to just sailing through the steps.

Time went like this:

1m30s: logged onto Hetzner, ordered a new server (Debian v12)

4m50s in: logged in, increased security, ran apt update and apt upgrade

5m in: installed YunoHost (thanks #curl)

7m30s in: with YunoHost successfully installed, I got into their beautiful graphical interface to continue the post install

9m30s in: post installation complete

11m 20s in: began tweaking DNS records for the main domain and the logging in subdomain, installed certificates, etc.

14m23s = all done, tripled checked that everything is working in incognito mode (it is) 🥳​

Wishing you all a great day. Time to go hiking for me and my fam 🗻​

#MySoCalledSudoLife #selfhosting

Pretty interesting how an old hardware works well and compute well in the strange configurations.

Prereqs: Intel Atom N2800 1866 MHz and 2 Gb RAM.

Since there are no NetBSD builds of xray-core and v2raya — I spin up a FreeBSD VM inside the Qemu and without NVMM accelerator (not supported by my CPU). Execute these programs inside this VM — and the server still running and even doesn't overload

#NetBSD #FreeBSD #Qemu #IntelAtom #SelfHosting

Alt...

CPU usage graph from Munin. The graph shows 5-10% CPU usage. The graph rises to near 5% at near 11:40. With one visible spike to 120% at near 12:50.

Alt...

Load average graph from Munin. Overall usage were at near 0.3 but raised to 0.8 at 11:30. With one visible spike to 2.8 at near 12:50

Alt...

The memory usage by category graph. It shows rise of anon memory from 0.3 Gb to 0.8 Gb at near 11:00 or 12:00.

Alt...

Processes graph from Munin. It shows that there are near 53 processes before 11:00 and near 65 processes after this time.

Sending mail from residential ip be like:

It's easily solvable using a "free" SMTP relay. But the privacy benefits of self-hosting are lost.

I'm using smtp2go to deliver to outlook and gmail. I have no idea if smtp2go is good or no. Do you have any recommendation?

#mail #SelfHosting #email #relay

Alt...

X-Spam-Flag: YES X-Spam-Score: 6.619 X-Spam-Level: ****** X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=6.619 tagged_above=-10000 required=5.3 tests=[BAYES_00=-2, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, FROM_SUSPICIOUS_NTLD=0.499, PDS_OTHER_BAD_TLD=2, PYZOR_CHECK=2, RCVD_IN_PBL=3.335, RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_RPBL_BLOCKED=0.001, RCVD_IN_VALIDITY_SAFE_BLOCKED=0.001, RDNS_DYNAMIC=0.982, SUBENDNUM=2, SUBSCONFIRM=-2, TVD_SPACE_RATIO=0.001] autolearn=no autolearn_force=no

Good morning Fedi friends!

Earlier today I installed #DeltaChat to give it a try... and I'm currently flashing the #YunoHost disk image on a card for my #RaspberryPi5 - so I can write about the process.

Super grateful for the world of #FOSS ❤️​

Have a great day everyone!

#MySoCalledSudoLife #selfhosting

Made my FreeBSD server at Netcup ready to host multiple isolated applications with automatic https via Let's Encrypt.

Internet → Server → PF firewall → Caddy jail (reverse proxy) → Individual application jails

Each app gets its own isolated jail for security, while Caddy handles all the routing and https. PF keeps the front door locked.

All of course with IPv6 first, where every Jail has it's own public IP address and using NAT for legacy IPv4.

Love how FreeBSD jails make this kind of segmentation so elegant.

#FreeBSD #Jails #SelfHosting #Caddy #ipv4

Alt...

Traffic flow diagram

Me: I'm gonna self host a mail service on an old laptop, with my *very* residential and dynamic IP address. What could posibly go wrong?

Spamhaus: *checks ISP and IP range* You are not supposed to do that.

Outlook smtp server: "550 5.7.1 Get lost!"

Gmail: I don't like you. But it's only one mesage, and DMARC is good: You go to spam folder.

spambots: LOOKS LIKE MEAT'S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS! 👹

Besides some test mesasges, 100% of the traffic is spambots sending invalid commands trying to find a vulnerability, I assume.

In the linux world I feel confident with my monitoring tools, iptables and fail2ban. But in NetBSD everything is new to me. So I have to be extra careful.

#SelfHosting #NetBSD #email #spam #bot

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting: day 300 (new project edition) 💡

a blog post that discusses my next self-hosting project. a hint: it's not fediverse-related but is still very empowering.

🔗​: https://news.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-adventures-in-self-hosting-day-300-new-project-edition/

#MySoCalledSudoLife #Jellyfin

Days since the last "kid shut down the server by pressing the shiny button" incident: 0

#homelab #selfHosting