🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 186 (bandwidth edition)🚦

A moment of gratitude for #VarnishCache and how incredibly it has protected my self-hosted #Ghost blog from the so-called "Mastodon stampede" / "Mastodon hug of death":

Yesterday I published a page on my site with the French-language version of the Fediverse promo video https://news.elenarossini.com/fedivers-video/

Then I posted a message on my Mastodon account about it, asking people to boost it, so that people in the Francophone world could see it.

How many boosts did I get? 1300 so far (you people are amazing).

Well, my Ghost blog is still standing and super fast. Varnish is INCREDIBLE and I could not recommend it more.

Oh and my VPS with PeerTube is also still standing because I embedded the French version of the video on my Ghost site, so that hundreds of Mastodon servers attempted to fetch the cover image of the POST and not the cover image of the video.

Bandwidth consumption (for my VPS with GoToSocial and PeerTube) so far this month: 0.457 TB (my limit is 8 TB)

Bandwidth consumption for my VPS with Ghost: 0.06 TB (limit: 4 TB)

So far so good 😅​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Thanks to all our customers who run their own #selfhosting #NetBSD VMs with us for helping with this migration. Our #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD VMs were already running HVM. Yes, we #RunBSD and provide hosting in our UK datacentres (also #Windows and #Linux as required)

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 182 (new software edition!) ☁️​

Good morning Fedi friends!

This #GoToSocial account is officially back to posting about... self-hosting from the POV of a newbie / non-dev.

This morning I hit a new little milestone: I FINALLY installed #NextCloud on my VPS (thank you #YunoHost).

I'm getting ready to share short clips of my Fedi promo video (that anybody could use / upload on their own accounts - esp. Big Tech ones, if they're so inclined) and I needed a solution to let people download files. NextCloud is perfect for the task - and something I had looked forward to installing for a looooong time.

I'll share more details soon, but so far I'm excited to finally use it.

Wishing everyone a great day! 🌞​

#FOSS #MySoCalledSudoLife

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 177 (VPS stress test edition) 📈

Dear Fedi friends,

You might have noticed I've been a little quiet on here since launching my Fedi promo video. What happened?

Well well well, the unexpected victim of my viral toot / video was... my beloved #GoToSocial account.

Approximately 12 hours after posting about my video - a toot that got 1200+ boosts - for some reason federation broke on this account. I was still posting messages and replying but getting zero interactions.

So yesterday evening, thanks to the amazing help of people on the GoToSocial Matrix help room, I was told to upgrade to the latest version of GoToSocial. And that fixed the problem, yay.

If you don't mind, I'll copy and paste parts of 2 messages I had tried to publish Tue & Wed:

((( message from Tue evening )))

Thank you for all the amazing feedback you shared today re: my Fediverse promo video. I’m really touched.

Extra thanks to everyone who helped spread the word on Big Tech platforms - to reach a wider audience. I don’t have any accounts there anymore (not even on LinkedIn) so I appreciate your help with fediverse advocacy 🙏

And special special thanks to all the superheroes who intentionally left the browser tab open on my video to take advantage of PeerTube’s P2P feature, helping offload bandwidth strain from my little server. You rock! 🥹

((( beginning of message from Wed Jun 11 )))

The past 24 hours have been incredible! Thank you for all the boosts to the post about my Fedi promo video (over a thousand!)

It looks like my self-hosted Ghost blog did well with the massive wave of traffic and didn't experience the "Mastodon hug of Death." THANK YOU Varnish cache for it! Total game changer. I could not recommend it more! (As someone who experienced the Mastodon hug of death TWICE before installing Varnish cache) 😅​

So: my #Ghost blog survived. Ditto for my self-hosted #PeerTube (which is on a separate VPS - installed/managed via #YunoHost). The video so far has almost 5000 views - which is pretty good for PeerTube.

✨​ The magic of the fediverse for you ✨​

((( end of pasted messages )))

Since yesterday, I changed the visibility of the video, making it public. And my VPS is surviving, thanks to PeerTube's P2P and various instances mirroring the video (thank you fellow admins, I owe you big time!)

I'm just so grateful for all your nice words and support.

Later today I'll travel to Amsterdam, as I will be speaking at #PubConf2025 about the Fediverse YAY. I'm super honored for this opportunity and I look forward to reconnecting with many other Fediverse advocates who have become friends.

Exciting times 🥹

Wishing you all a lovely day! ✨🚀

#MySoCalledSudoLife #TheFutureIsFederated

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 175 (video launch day) 🍿​

Dear Fedi friends, you may have noticed that 20 minutes ago I made the announcement about the release of my Fediverse promo video on here. Why? 5000 character limit, so I could credit/thank everyone who helped. It really took a village to make it.

Today is not only the video's release day, but also, from the POV of a new self-hoster:

- a stress test for my self-hosted #PeerTube instance (worry level: low, they have P2P)
- a stress test for my self-hosted Ghost blog (it should hold up just fine with Varnish cache)
- and a test to see how far and wide a message posted on my #GoToSocial goes. If you're a fan of #GtS you may be pleased to see it mentioned in the video 🤗​

I was afraid of the infamous Mastodon Hug of Death (with hundreds / thousands of servers trying to fetch the video cover image) so I ended up uploading it as UNLISTED on my PeerTube and embedding it on my Ghost blog... this way Ghost (protected by Varnish cache) will take most of the hit. I also provided an alternative video location for it.

Curious to see how all these self-hosted services will do today.

Have a great day everyone!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

@evan

People have been giving me "broken" computers for years, which I can Frankenstein together to make working servers. Currently three desktops and one laptop. I've run out of power supplies, but have enough cases, drives, and mainboards for a few more.

I could probably pay for a half dozen SBCs with the power I'd save using those SBCs instead of old desktops...

#SelfHosting #SysAdmin

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 170 (studying edition) 🎒​

Hello Fedi friends!

This account will hopefully revert back to tales of self-hosting in a few days. My Fediverse promo video is 99% done and I'm currently working on English subtitles. Then: French and Italian.

Monday will be a stress test for my #PeerTube instance and how well it deals with concurrent viewers. It'd be fascinating to see its P2P functions at play. In the meantime I'm getting an education in PeerTube optimization.

Very excited about premiering the Fedi promo video at #FediForum tomorrow (I was about to type in a couple of days but ahhhhhhh it's tomorrow).

My first #FediForum last September felt like my personal SuperBowl, plus Christmas plus birthday rolled into one. It was such a fantastic event - truly energizing and heartwarming. It felt incredible to be in the same virtual room as people I had gotten to know in my year on the Fediverse... It was such a special special feeling.

I never imagined that at the following FediForum I'd be showcasing a video I had made to promote the Fediverse to people who are not familiar with it. Plus I have the tremendous honor of showing it right after @cwebber 's presentation. She's an absolute legend and icon, whom I admire tremendously, and I'm super honored to present right after her. Thank you @j12t 🙏​

So: premiere at FediForum tomorrow. Video upload on my self-hosted #PeerTube on Monday: @ele

Now: subtitles! And final tweaks.

Thanks for all the support and encouragement. I hope you will like the video, it's been a real labor of love ❤️​

#EleFediVideos #MySoCalledSudoLife

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 165 (VFX edition) 🎞️​

Good morning Fedi friends!

I've been quiet on here (it's a temporary pause, I promise) as I have been spending every second of free time - that doesn't include childcare - editing the fediverse promo video.

The video will premiere next week at a really exciting event, right after a presentation by an absolute legend. I'm experiencing low key anxiety / palpitations, rushing to get the film ready for that.

On the to do list: sound mix, fixing some VFX animations, adding a couple of slides to the end credits, color grading, doing subtitles, exporting the video and uploading it to my PeerTube. Gaaaaah!

On the self-hosting side, I have to admit it's incredibly empowering to know I can put it on my PeerTube. Super grateful to #YunoHost for that.

If you're curious, I've published some updates re: what I've been up to this month... including a video replay of my presentation for YunoHost at #JDLL: https://news.elenarossini.com/what-im-up-to-may-2025-edition/

As a geeky side note, I had to edit a link in the article... and it would not update on my site. Awww the wonders of #Varnish cache. It's really THAT powerful. So even though I don't have time to do proper self-hosting tasks these days, I still went into my VPS and used command lines to clear Varnish cache. It counts for something, right?

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Puh. Finally simplified my web server setup, consolidated a bunch of letsencrypt certificates, cleaned up my repositories and forgejo-runner workflows to make updates and deploying new sites as automated as possible.

#SelfHosting

#onpremisesinfrastructure is vastly underrated. What are you going to do when #GoogleWorkspace or #Microsoft365 shut your account down because their AI decides to and you have no recourse. You can’t sue them because you’ve agreed to their terms of service. Oops? 🤷‍♂️

Also, what many don’t know is even if data is stored in the cloud, the customer is still responsible for backing up and archiving their data. The cloud company does some rudimentary disaster recovery but has specific indemnification against data loss. Marketing conveniently glosses over this. 😈

The #cloud cannot be trusted for small businesses. #Selfhosting is the way to go. It’s not hard at all and I am in the midst of writing a book for people with a minimal technical background to get started as easily as possible. Or even for them to have a technical friend help them out.

Hello Fedi friends!

Today marks a really special occasion: I’ll be speaking at #JDLL in Lyon as part of the #YunoHost presentation… discussing how I use their amazing #selfhosting tools for #DigitalSovereignty.

It’s hard to believe I had only installed it 158 days ago (according to my Mastodon archive) https://mastodon.social/@_elena/113667636910565210

Thanks to @yunohost I have been able to self-host my own #GoToSocial #Pixelfed #Friendica & #PeerTube instances. I’m incredibly grateful to them ❤️

#MySoCalledSudoLife

So, WTF, Pocket?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket

Setting up a @wallabag instance has been on my mind for a while, so I guess thanks for forcing my hand?

The frequency of things like this makes me want to stop using any software I haven't written myself.

https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag

#pocket #selfhosting #wallabag

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 156 (busy bee edition) 🐝

Hello Fedi friends!

Sorry I've been a little quiet over here but any minute of free time I have (aka when my 4-year-old is in pre-school) I spend working on:

1) a promotional video for the Fediverse with my two amazing interns -> #EleFediVideos

2) a presentation about how I use #YunoHost for digital sovereignty - at an upcoming #FOSS conference

I just realized - oh the horror - that it's the first time in 5 months I've been skipping my Monday morning routine of #YunoHost manual backups. So this week I'll be doing it on a Thursday, aka right now 😅​

The Fediverse video is coming together really nicely and I cannot wait to share it on here (actually, on my self-hosted #PeerTube).

I'm infinitely grateful to the Fediverse for getting me back to filmmaking and motion graphics after a long hiatus. It feels amazing.

Wishing you all a lovely day!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Good morning Fedi friends!

Not much to report on the #selfhosting side... I need to update #Ghost to its latest version but I have another day of filming ahead... so maybe I'll get into it tomorrow morning while my husband takes care of our daughter. VPS Snapshot -> a couple of commands and the new Ghost should be updated in give or take 10 minutes (if all goes well, ha!)

My point today was to say that being a beginner is really humbling. I've been a total newbie in the self-hosting / Linux space. How fun it is to learn new things!

And now I'm experiencing the newbie feeling in my professional field - filmmaking - as I am learning a new editing system: #DaVinciResolve.

I started out editing in #FinalCut Pro in film school... then moved over to #AdobePremiere when Apple remade Final Cut from scratch, simplifying it for beginners. And now that Adobe is on the highway to enshittification and is hiking prices to extortionate levels, I am moving to DaVinciResolve.

When I moved from Final Cut to #Adobe Premiere I imported Final Cut shortcuts... so it was really easy to get started fast. Professional editors use keyboard shortcuts for EVERYTHING and almost never go to the menu for actions... Well, there is no such thing as importing shortcuts into DVR, so I need to learn its shortcuts from scratch. And it's a lot of fun! A little embarrassing to say that yesterday it took me 10 minutes and multiple searches to figure out that to cut a clip at a specific point I had to use command-B.

It's super humbling to feel like a beginner in film editing - when, in my previous life, I used to spend 10 hours a day every day editing or doing motion graphics. I hit the proverbial 10,000 hours many times over.

I love this "newbie" feeling and I never get tired of learning.

Wishing everyone a great day!

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 139 (filmmaker edition) 🎬

Good morning Fedi friends!

I've been quiet over here for a good reason: I'm currently laser-focused on producing a first promo video about the Fediverse. I'm working with two talented interns and today we start filming! More on this here: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/114454286121971517

Any free time I have I spend working on a 10 minute presentation about my self-hosting journey, that I will deliver later this month at a FOSS conference. I was invited by the amazing #YunoHost team to speak along with other inspiring folks about using YunoHost to self-host.

All this to say: it's a very very busy month and I may not have much to say about self-hosting per se. But! I just did my Monday morning ritual AKA backing up my YunoHost setup.

Wishing everyone a great week!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Hey #SelfHosting / #selfhosted / #selfhost / #selfhostedapps

Any suggestions for streaming audio with features similar to Jellyfin, but not Jellyfin?

And not Plex either.

Looking for alternatives here, not questions as to why I don't want to use Jellyfin, and I definitely do not want help setting up Jellyfin.

✨ The rebellion will be federated & self-hosted ✨

On Dec 5, 2024 I published this blog post https://elenarossini.com/2024/11/the-rebellion-will-be-federated/ on @ele@elenarossini.com

On Dec 17 I signed up for a #VPS.

On Dec 22 I installed #GoToSocial and began personalizing my little corner of the #Fediverse: @elena

On Jan 14 I installed #Pixelfed on my server: @ele@photos.elenarossini.com

Yesterday I installed #LinkStack on https://elena.social

All this feels really empowering and I wanna help others do the same! 🚀

#selfhosting #FOSS

I self-host at home, and last night the worst happened: I woke up to notification my personal website had been down for 8 hours.

Our assigned IP had changed and my automation to automatically update the DNS in response to such events apparently failed.

And all this is fine.

Stores aren't open 24 hours a day, libraries aren't open 24 hours a day and my personal website doesn't need to be up 24 hours a day either.

Happy to have cheap hosting in exchange.

#selfhosting

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 132 (awesome allies edition) 🎬

ICYMI: last week I installed and began tweaking my own #PeerTube instance – thanks to the ease and awesomeness of #YunoHost: @ele

https://videos.elenarossini.com/a/ele/video-channels

Now, the BEST resource there is for anyone who wants to self-host their own PeerTube is this video by @paige on @fedihost : https://video.fedihost.co/w/63AETQCcEMigzTHTmTu2Wn?start=0s

I wish I had watched it on day 1 (instead of day 3 of my journey), as it would have saved me A LOT of headaches.

The ENTIRE FediHost PeerTube channel is full of gems and I would highly recommend subscribing to it.

And now off I go print out the latest version of the script of my Fediverse video... my interns arrive in a few hours for our first production meeting. Exciteeeed

#EleFediVideos #MySoCalledSudoLife

What #selfhosting option is there for memos, notes, tasks, and habits?

#nextcloud kind of sucks
#obsidian isn’t #foss
#logseq doesn’t sync and is vc funded

Using #trilium #memos #baikal #beaverhabits now

Hey, self-hosting nerds, has anyone set up a server-side thing that scans incoming email, and when it contains a calendar invite, throws it on a calendar where I can accept or decline it (à la gmail)?

In my setup, I'm guessing it would be a sieve filter in dovecot/pigeonhole that extracts calendar attachments and forwards them to my CalDAV server. But I'm open.

(cc/ @neil maybe?)

#SelfHosting

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 126 (good luck charm edition) 🍀​

Good morning Fedi friends!

Yesterday I flew back to Paris and I’m spending the week at my in-laws' with my extended family… my little one still has one more week of school holidays. Working is a little difficult with so many people around (especially children) but I have a lofty goal for today: upgrading my VPS and installing #PeerTube.

The 22nd of the month has been my good luck charm in my self-hosting adventures. I installed #GoToSocial (this account) via #YunoHost on December 22nd, 2024. I successfully installed #Ghost on my Ubuntu VPS with command lines on February 22, 2025. Because of that, I will be saving 30€/month…

So in the spirit of #FOSS exploration, I find it fitting to upgrade my VPS today on April 22… and - my oh my! - install PeerTube via YunoHost… so that I can self-host my upcoming videos about the Fediverse.

The children are playing in the garden and I have about 30 minutes to do all that. Wish me luck!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Make Your Own Internet Presence with NetBSD and a 1 euro VPS – Part 1: Your Blog

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/04/22/make-your-own-internet-presence-with-netbsd-and-a-1-euro-vps-part-1-your-blog/

#NetBSD #RunBSD #OwnYourData #BSSG #SSG #SelfHosting

Still searching for a nice web based task management solution. I don't need anything too advanced but would love to be able to subscribe to a calendar or at least have reminders.

Focalboard looked nice (and simple) but is semi-abandoned and lacks a few features. I'll look at Vikunja next.

#selfhosted #selfhosting #homelab

:; jq -r '.id' < $(ag -l 'six thirty twelve meters' ~/sites/schmonz.com/snac/data/user/schmonz/public)
https://schmonz.com/snac/schmonz/p/1743383179.235112

Good morning Fedi friends!

Today is a palpitations-inducing sort of day: my Ghost (Pro) #blog - that hosted all the posts for #TheFutureIsFederated, up to March of this year - is now slated to be deleted from Ghost's servers. Why?

I'm now #selfhosting my Ghost blog on a VPS at this address:

✨ https://news.elenarossini.com ✨

Time to update your RSS feed (if you're following the blog that way)... and I invite you to check out my latest post in its new home: https://news.elenarossini.com/this-is-what-resistance-to-the-digital-coup-looks-like/

have a nice day

A tracker for cheap VPSes through LowEndTalk: https://search.ponyhost.xyz/

Thank you, @deferred@ieji.de - it will be more than useful to me!

#VPS #OwnYourData #SelfHosting

Good morning Fedi friends!

In case you missed it, on Monday I was able to successfully send a newsletter from my self-hosted, manually installed #Ghost blog. So it appears to be fully working now.

🔗​: https://news.elenarossini.com

I don't have any new #selfhosting anecdotes to share. I thought I would be able to relax for a bit and enjoy this milestone. I spent the day yesterday writing a blog post for #TheFutureIsFederated on the topic of resistance to the digital coup.

In the meantime, my 4-year-old spotted some vintage #LEGO panels in the attic. I identified them as belonging to LEGO's King Castle and she demanded I "BUILD IT RIGHT NOW." I'm not even sure I have all the pieces required... I remember that a couple of years ago I found stacks of old LEGO boxes and organized pieces by color in transparent drawers. I found an old manual online for the castle set and so far so good (sort of). I made it to step 10 out of 43. The real test will be building the retractable bridge.

All this to say: no more self-hosting adventures for me this week, I'll be tackling a complex LEGO project (and I can't use code to get out of hurdles...)

#MySoCalledSudoLife #MyLEGOLife

Alt...

a photo showing a vintage LEGO manual displayed on an iPad (on the left) showing instructions for building a castle. On the right hand side you can see the real set being built by me... and in the background there is the set from Santa's Visit

Let's see how this setup pans out: https://schmonz.com/2025/04/15/sensible-basic-minecraft-hosting/

#SelfHosting #s6 #ProcessSupervision

Hello my name is Elena and I'm addicted to #selfhosting.

2 MINUTES after receiving confirmation that my self-hosted Ghost blog is finally working perfectly (newsletter sending included) - something that took 84 DAYS of trial and error and troubleshooting - I've started thinking: "what now?"

Could I be... bored?

Yes.

In a way having a running list of problems to fix was keeping me distracted (by the world at large) and somewhat entertained.

Thank goodness I have another big self-hosting project coming up: #PeerTube.

But maybe I should enjoy this BIG accomplishment for like 5 minutes... or a couple of weeks. No point in installing PeerTube while my 4-year-old has just started a 14 day school holiday. My parents are a huge help but I am basically getting interrupted every 10 minutes... so I can't really dive into something complex 😆

A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who helped me with Ghost - I owe you big time!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

#MySoCalledSudoLife #EleSelfHostsGhost

Good morning Fedi friends!

I'm finally ready to test if my new self-hosted Ghost blog can withstand the infamous "Mastodon hug of death".

Here's a quick blog post about what I've been up to: https://news.elenarossini.com/what-im-up-to-march-april-2025-edition/

(Apparently Mailgun thinks I'm a spammer, so I couldn't send it as a newsletter - that's a whole other story).

Wishing you all a lovely day + weekend 🌸

#MySoCalledSudoLife #selfhosting

Yay! I finally got 6 drives connected to the HP Z420 for my TrueNAS build. Seems there are extra SATA ports on the motherboard that are not used or something? I found the two "hidden" ones and got all the drives to show up.

This was a pain but I am past it now and can move on to getting all drives into place.

I believe I've got four 4TB drives to stick into it, just debating if I should make one a spare right away or not. I could use an old 6TB drive as the spare.

#nas #truenas #selfhosting