Am I dumb? Yes. But setting up new servers and domains is also new to me. I know the high-level, but I don't usually get in the trenches for these processes.

Taking the time to read the messages and instructions, I need to set the #DNS config for this domain in Nextcloud.

SO I need to figure out how to (1)determine which DNS address I should be pointing the AIO instance/network to and (2)setting that forwarding.

So #SelfHosting #Nextcloud is NOT for non-technical people.

#networking

What happened with Outlook will happen again.

Before you jump to another host, consider #selfhosting.

In 2026 you can have a fast and secure mail server of your own, easy to admin & update without a compsci degree. One that is tightly-secured, supports all mail clients, has top delivery & encrypted storage. All under your control, & your domain.

If that sounds interesting, sign up:

https://courses.nikau.io/convoy

We'll pick a date as a group, & I'll guide you all through the build.

Alt...

The title image for the convoy training, featuring Canadian Geese flying against a pale sky above the word convoy in caps.

I guess this is a good time to be all smug about #SelfHosting my email.

I've always appreciated the simplicity of the BSDs. Power, yes, but without unnecessary complexity.

BastilleBSD and vm-bhyve have been my trusted companions for many years. But whenever I used Linux, I missed them.

That's why, years ago, I started putting together a collection of shell scripts (and some Python, although to a much lesser extent) to create something somewhere in between.

A bit of Bastille, a bit of vm-bhyve, a bit of Proxmox: unprivileged Linux system containers and virtual machines, managed from the command line.

Live backups. And live restore: bringing a workload back online before all its data has finished copying from the backup. Multiple storage backends. Encryption at the storage or individual workload level. Different networks. Isolation of each workload (a bit like illumos zones), with additional layers of protection.

Each container has its own UID/GID mapping. VMs run under separate unprivileged identities, with namespaces, seccomp and resource limits adding further layers of protection.

Pull-based backups from external hosts, with different levels and types of encryption. With raw encrypted ZFS replication, the backup server doesn’t even need the decryption keys. Backups are pulled over SSH by an external server. The workload host holds no credentials to log in to that server.

It also runs on a 1 GB Orange Pi PC 2, where I’ve tested both containers and native ARM64 KVM guests. And on a Orange PI One, armv7 and 512MB, it can run some lxc containers without problems, from the SD, using f2fs.

Simple disaster recovery. Because after those 142 servers went up in flames in Strasbourg, disaster recovery became something I care a lot about.

Currently supported and tested on Alpine Linux, Debian 13 and Armbian. On Debian, LXC containers also run under enforcing AppArmor profiles, adding another layer of protection.

Few commands. Lots of power. And it's called "Jail It!"

I'm not going to release it, at least not for now. I need to focus on my other projects, and Jail It! still needs some cleaning up.

But it works. And it does its job very well.

For containers, there's absolutely nothing running in the background. For VMs, just a small Python helper. No continuously running services. You connect via SSH, run your commands, and that's it.

Still, for anyone curious enough to have a look, I've put together a short demo on Asciinema:

https://asciinema.org/a/BbwGs99U9UJDLAzZ

Well, "short" might be a bit of an exaggeration. It's quite long, but I think it's worth watching all the way to the end.

#Linux #LXC #KVM #FreeBSD #Virtualization #OwnYourData #BSD #SelfHosting #Homelab #SysAdmin #DisasterRecovery

There has never been a better time to introduce young French people to the wonderful world of decentralized social networks and - optional - #selfhosting.

An accidental ad for the #Fediverse, exhibit A: https://www.politico.eu/article/french-government-mulled-blocking-social-network-amid-protests/

🌐 Simple NetBSD webserver https://bsandro.tech/posts/simple-netbsd-webserver/

#netbsd #selfhosting #webserver

1/n OK about to start dipping my toes into the world of #selfhosting.

Reasons.
My disappointment with the new Mastodon web UI just reminds me of the many issues of using the "cloud", that is having your stuff on someone else's server.

My disappointment with those working on the new UI sound just like any other UX developer in a big oligarch owned company who are not going to go back or not make any significant improvements to their beloved concept.

As no-one is going to force them to.

Sigh, #salt is slop, and dropping features.
I've looked at https://www.rexify.org/ and I failed to find how it deals with secrets.
I guess I either switch to #puppet by way of #OpenVox, or unify my systems on #NixOS (and swallow linux sloppification). Sigh.

#SaltStack #SaltProject #SysAdmin #SelfHosting #HomeLab

Finally turned attention to getting Immich up and running tonight. I like it, seems snappy enough with tens of thousands of photos imported.

The Immich website has a handy form driven page for generating a docker compose file so it took like 30 seconds to get it running once mutated to follow my way of doing things on my server (persistent storage, naming, cert proxy, etc).

I struggled a bit with using the Immich command line tool to import my photo collection and in the process of trying to figure out why --recursive didn't work, stumbled upon the immich-go project on github. It's also a command line tool and works very well; immediately was able to recursively import photos, etc. Compiles cleanly on Alpine Linux (ofc, it's just golang).

Immich-go has a migrate function that allows you to connect to one Immich server and copy the files to another Immich server (but no 'delete source' as far as I could tell).

I set up a second Immich instance on a different port and started to use the migrate function to finally start moving all the photos of my computer electronics and vehicle technical projects out of the whole household's photo collection. My wife will appreciate that. Ha. Managed to split out 2026-2025, only ~25 more years to go. Ugh.

Anyway, Immich (the server) and Immich-go (the CLI tool) are cool. Recommended.

Fun!

#immich #immichgo #AlpineLinux #cli #photography #photos #HomeLab #SelfHosting #SelfHosted

I just had a thought. Some people talk about #SelfHosting and #Homelabs as some prepper like thing for weird people. I want to change that, as it certainly doesn't reflect how I feel about my mailserver, my various web servers and other services I run myself.

And that's where the thought comes in. From now on I will call it:

#PersonalComputing instead (or again, depending on your age :)

@homelab

Hi everyone from my littlefedi instance, this is my first test post with a media file.

This is one of my dogs when she was very young

#LittleFedi
#SelfHosting

Alt...

a medium size black dog lying in a white and blue bed. Inside the bed is some of her toys, the one in the foreground is a little orange fox. The wall behind is white and the floor is a light coloured.wood

LittleFedi is an excellent light weight but fully featured Fediverse platform (ActivityPub). I've been kicking tires and providing feedback on the test instance and excited for the first release to give it a go self-hosted.

@stefano has been leading a master class in community and developer relations. He has been stewarding the team and user community with enthusiasm and transparency. Congratulations to Stefano and the team.

Here's a great story of the project's genesis and journey. https://littleone.littlefedi.social/@littlefedi_official/01a0f644-8ed6-7a7d-ade6-46f4c0a74f41

#littleFedi #ActivityPub #Fediverse #FOSS #SelfHosting

So, I decided not to use ZFS for my in-home NAS. I checked it in another server with 2GB of RAM and... it works, but any heavy I/O operation resulted in killing spree of NetBSD kernel, OOM-killing the processes to free the memory. And NetBSD ZFS doesn't have knobs to fine-tune memory limits (IIRC they are still in development).

Instead, the usual approach - the old^Wmature technology - is in use. With the help of netbsd-users maillist (https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2026/09/21/msg034895.html) I configured the next thing for HDD with RAIDframe, CGD and LVM:

1) Two identical 1TB disks: /dev/wd0 and /dev/wd1.
2) Both in use in RAID1 /dev/raid0 (as described in this document: https://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rf.html, but without any tricks for root FS).
3) /dev/raid0 divided in two parts: /dev/raid0a for root FS and /dev/raid0b.
4) Both disks (/dev/wd0 and /dev/wd1) has installed bootloader via /usr/sbin/installboot -o timeout=10 -v /dev/rwd0 /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv2 and /usr/sbin/installboot -o timeout=5 -v /dev/rwd1 /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv2
5) The /dev/raid0b was encrypted with CGD, so the /dev/raid0b -> /dev/cgd0.
6) The whole encrypted disk (/dev/cgd0a) was added as physical volume to LVM. The volume group /dev/vg0 was created with this PV and the logical volume /dev/vg0/lv0 was created inside this VG to store the real data.

The LVM allows to add new disk space, just by adding new physical volume to the volume group and then extending the logical volume and resizing the FFSv2. I tested it with a test USB drive and it works and even doesn't led to data loss

And the separate CGD separately encrypts existing physical volume and each new physical volume just in case

One quirk: the underlying physical disks (/dev/wd0 and /dev/wd1) plus /dev/raid0 should use MBR partition scheme or NetBSD disklabel - because the root partition should start from 0 sector - if it started not from zero sector, then the bootloader will be unable to find root FS. I tried to use GPT, but the installer was unable to create root partition not from zero sector, only from 2048 sector

#NetBSD #RAIDframe #CGD #LVM #selfhosting

I love getting #TheOnion in print, but this time they’ve gone too far. I don’t know how they broke into my basement but I did not give them permission to use photos of my stuff in their mock ads.
#selfhosting #homelab

Alt...

Photo of a printed coupon in the onion. It pretends to be from Best Buy and shows a big cardboard box full of random computer cords like USB and power cables. The coupon says “good for one free pull from the Tub O’ Cords”

I think I'm slowly going to make my way back to self-hosting my repositories (via cgit, most likely). Most providers now either have too strict of rules or none at all...

Probably better to have full control anyway 🤷

#git #selfHosting

He-he, my file/kitchen server project is going well Finally, I assembled all necessary wiring to connect 5V/12V from PSU to the external HDDs, bough SATA<->eSATA cables and assembled the storage for 4 3.5" disks.

And it all even powered up and system tried to boot from a connected single disk (unsuccessfully, because disk still doesn't contain NetBSD )

Next step — somehow buy a 4th HDD (hope, a gas for delivery trucks will exist at that moment, and this is not even the biggest problem), setup RAID 1 for NetBSD's root and cgd+RAID1+FFS (or ZFS) for files.

#NetBSD #selfhosting #homelab

Alt...

Front view of homemade file server. There are ITX case with Intel Atom inside, the plastic gray box for electrical wiring on top of it and two 3D-printed black frames for 4 HDDs with 1 HDD installed and a fan connected. The system is powered up and tge fan is spinning. The power source on the background shows 12V on the display.

Alt...

The back view of homemade server. There are ITX case with 4 eSATA ports and one aviation grade connector for power, the gray box with power wirings, power connectors for HDDs and a frame for 4 HDDs with 1 HDD installed, on the background.

Alt...

The top view of homemade server. The ITX black case on the bottom; gray box with wires and 1HDD in frame for 4 HDDs on the top. Everything connected with standard colored cables from PC PSU, also there is a pink eSATA<->SATA cable on the top right corner of the photo.

(Linux news in previous posts)

FOSS NEWS

Elon Musk's X Tried to Kill Nitter. The Project Just Said It’s Coming Back:
https://feed.itsfoss.com/link/24361/17441795/nitter-returns-after-legal-troubles
(FOSS alt frontends are basically unkillable (if they have enough contributors). Not even a billion dollar corp can shut down a community project. See the Invidious case, when YouTube sent them an email threating them with legal action 3 years ago. The project is still active, with a few functional instances.)

GIMP 3.2.6 released with faster font loading, Wacom barrel rotation:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/09/gimp-3-2-6-wacom-rotation-input

Kdenlive 26.08.1 Releases: Stability Fixes, FFmpeg Modernization, and Crash Patches:
https://www.linuxcompatible.org/story/kdenlive-26081-releases-stability-fixes-ffmpeg-modernization-and-crash-patches/

Shotcut 26.9 Video Editor Beta Brings UI Improvements, Better Audio Quality:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Shotcut-26.9-Beta

BleachBit 6.0.4 offers faster scanning, improves Linux cleaners:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/09/bleachbit-6-0-4-update

Cryptomator Hub 2.0 adds user management and emergency access:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/9/cryptomator-hub-2-0-adds-user-management-and-emergency-access/

Firefox redesign will arrive in v157 release:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/09/firefox-nova-redesign-coming-september

Ladybird web browser gains video playback, JS debugging, and downloads that pause & resume:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/9/ladybird-web-browser-gains-video-playback-js-debugging-and-downloads-that-pause-and-resume/

Zen Browser 1.22.1b Ships With Cross-Device Sync and Shareable Workspace Links:
https://www.linuxcompatible.org/story/zen-browser-1221b-ships-with-crossdevice-sync-and-shareable-workspace-links/

Ente Photos introduces encrypted library sharing and faster on-device machine learning:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/9/ente-photos-introduces-encrypted-library-sharing-and-faster-on-device-machine-learning/

Privacy-focused email aliasing service addy.io now blocks email tracking pixels by default:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/9/privacy-focused-email-aliasing-service-addy-io-now-blocks-email-tracking-pixels-by-default/

OpenVPN 2.7.7 Released with Various Improvements, Bug and Security Fixes:
https://9to5linux.com/openvpn-2-7-7-released-with-various-improvements-bug-and-security-fixes

Immich 3.2 debuts new search API, cluster groups, workflows' expansion, and much more:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/9/immich-3-2-debuts-new-search-api-cluster-groups-workflows-expansion-and-much-more/

Jellyfin 12.0 adds major books and comics support, faster browsing, and FFmpeg 8.1:
https://alternativeto.net/news/2026/9/jellyfin-12-0-adds-major-books-and-comics-support-faster-browsing-and-ffmpeg-8-1/

(more FOSS news in comments)

#WeeklyNews #OpenSource #FOSSNews #FOSS #OpenSourceNews #News #Nitter #GIMP #Kdenlive #Shotcut #BleachBit #Cryptomator #Firefox #Ladybird #ZenBrowser #EntePhotos #AddyIO #OpenVPN #Immich #Jellyfin #Browser #SelfHosting #FosseryTech

I now also have a favicon (goodbye Susie ) and I overhauled my config Fun! #selfHosting #customEmoji

Today I want to start a little experiment:

• With an ISP who assigns me a /48 prefix, what is it like to host IPv6-only services on a FreeBSD host?
• What works? What doesn't?
• How does setting up IPv6-only services compare to setting up IPv4 services on FreeBSD?

Why IPv6 only?

It's 2026.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that IPv6 offers you more freedom and choice about how you self-host than having to work around NAT (or CGNAT).

https://blog.brendans-bits.com/2026/09/experimenting-with-hosting-ipv6-only-services/

Coming soon:

• Getting IPv6 on FreeBSD: not that hard at all
• Fediverse via IPv6 only: what's the experience like with snac (and littlefedi when that's released)
• IPv6-only jails on FreeBSD

(Thanks to @stefano for BSSG - making this blog possible)

Comments / feedback welcomed.

#selfHosted #selfhosting #ipv6 #ipv6only #bsd

It started as a gag: a tiny popup telling IPv4 visitors that their provider hasn't yet discovered 1998.

To do that honestly I needed something to echo the client address.

Using ipify felt wrong when you run your own AS. So now it's a service. 🙃

curl https://ip.hofstede.it
curl https://v6.ip.hofstede.it/json
curl https://v4.ip.hofstede.it/asn

One Rust binary, server-rendered, zero JavaScript.

https://ip.hofstede.it

#IPv6 #Rust #FreeBSD #SelfHosting #AS201379 /cc @namedbird

Now I even have enough space for all the pictures my wife takes of our kid. <3

#selfhosting

Alt...

Storage space 135.4 GiB of 91.1 TiB used text from Immich

Hello self-hoster friends, I have a question that seems to be a little divisive.
I am building a new Proxmox server on an olde computer and I was wondering if I should install the Proxmox OS on an HDD or an SSD.

Another similar question is, should I put the VMs on an HDD or an SSD? I guess it depends on the type of services and access speed to storage they require, but still, what are your opinions?

#selfhosting #self-hosting #linux #homelab #homeserver #proxmox #vm #lxc #stprage #ssd #hdd