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.
@rastilin It'd be a good move to ditch GMail. I teach people how to go about it, and I'm thinking I should publish resources towards this end. But say the word if that's something that interests you. I want to see the world break free from GMail.
The outline: Buy a domain. Rent a VPS so you have an easy static IP address with reliable and power. Spin up BIND or similar. Serve up basic records for your domain. Make a glue record and delegate your domain to your name server using your registrar's web site. Next, spin up minimal web service and get a Let's Encrypt cert. Make a cron job to renew it. Spin up Postfix and Dovecot. Have Postfix use Dovecot auth and have them both use your Let's Encrypt cert. Add cron jobs to restart them when certs renew. Test. Now add MX and SPF records to your DNS. Consider spinning up DKIM, and adding records for that and DMARC to your domain. Consider procmail or maildrop for filtering and sorting. Consider RBLs, SpamAssassin, SpamProbe, and similar. Decide how you want to back the server up. Consider redundancy.
TFW you realize you've had your MX entry set wrong for over a month.
Yet somehow I've still been getting (some) mail? 🤔
So…Bitwarden quietly swapped their CEO for a PE exit specialist, dropped “Always free”, rewrote their values, then half-scrubbed a 4 year old blog post to cover it. Post still contradicts itself. I looked. There was no announcement.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/the-quiet-renovation-at-bitwarden
#bitwarden #passwordmanager #selfhosting #userhostile #privacy #blog #vaultwarden #privateequity
Alright folks, it's time for me to zero in on my self-hosted RSS aggregator setup.
Priorities: ease of maintenance, support for a variety of readers (or at least Capy)
I know people have opinions. Tell me them!
Anybody have fun #irc channel and #xmpp MUC recommendations? Anything involving #sysadmin, #programming, #selfhosting and maybe fun nerdy #memes?
My experience with larger IRC channels on Libera have not been great. It'd be fun to find an online hangout.
New blog post: #GoToSocial self-hosting tutorial, with #Guix and Guix Deploy, of course. Get it while it's hot. :)
https://fabionatali.com/posts/gotosocial-self-hosting-tutorial/
I had found a very thorough server checker (e.g. TLS, DKIM, certificates, PFS, DMARC, you name it) here on the fedi at some point and thought I'd bookmarked it, but just can't find it anymore. Any recommendations from the sysadmin crowd?
Is there anyone out there running an AMD 5650GE based system running Linux or BSD?
Can you tell us your CPU and GPU idle power numbers as displayed in btop?
Maybe this is an "easy button" of sorts to reduce power on an existing AMD AM4 system without going through the machinations of new mobo, ram, etc., etc. Get most of the way there?
#Linux #RunBSD #AMD #5650GE #PowerConsumption #Power #HomeLab #SelfHosting #SelfHosted #SOHO
Is there anyone out there running an AMD 5825U based system running Linux or BSD?
Can you tell us your CPU and GPU idle power numbers as displayed in btop?
#Linux #RunBSD #AMD #5825U #PowerConsumption #Power #HomeLab #SelfHosting #SelfHosted #SOHO
Looks like it has basic Markdown -> HTML converting. Neat.
forme.
🙂into emoji, which I don't like, though. Leave my #emoticons alone ;)And of course, no post or poll length limit :)
boostedPleased to announce another edition of Cloudbreak, taking place May 28.
For those that don't know already, this is a 6hr fully-supported live training opportunity leading participants with no prior experience in system administration through the process of building up their own #sovereign & secured cloud server.
Hosted in the EU on renewable energy, the finished server also offers both Zoom & Google Docs alternatives.
Info & signup here:
👩💻 My So Called Sudo Life - day 500: still a newbie edition 🆕
Dear Fedi friends,
Today marks the 500th day of my self-hosting adventures and I'm celebrating it with... a slice of humble pie:
Also: please remember to update your Linux system to patch the critical vulnerability that has been found.
#Linux #CopyPaste #security #MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting #YunoHost
Today in #selfhosting fun. I have a mail server that's been in place for years and hasn't had any noticable problems, but today I sent the same email from two different addresses to hotmail. Both had SPF, DKIM, DMARC and the same outbound IP address. One was delivered and one went to junk. Headers on the latter show a spam score of 5 (which is sufficient for it to be diverted):
X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SCL: 5
I tried running it through https://github.com/mgeeky/decode-spam-headers but that didn't give any clues
Hi folks! I would love to hear about the non-standard physical #homelab #selfhosting security measures you've taken. From alarms to boobytraps, from customized IKEA boxes to reinforced closets. The crazier the better!
One requirement: you need to have it implemented (at some point in the past or currently). No concepts that never left the design table please.
New blog post: Self-Host Me, Self-Host Me Not
I like to self-host my services. But there are some things that I don't self-host, and I gladly pay somebody else to handle them.
https://www.crosenthal.com/chrome/2026/04/28/self-host-me-self-host-me-not.html
👩🏻💻 my so-called sudo life - day 489: new experiments edition 🧪
A blog post that chronicles what I have been up to since December... namely: advocating for the Fediverse, creating #selfhosting guides for newbies and experimenting with e-reader jailbreaks and off-grid mesh radio communications
#MySoCalledSudoLife #KindleJailbreak #KOreader #SimpleUI #meshtastic #blog #tech #resistance
Veronica Explains creates fun and interesting videos about technology including FOSS, Linux, retro computing, retro gaming, self-hosting and assorted other stuff. You can follow at:
➡️ @vkc
There are already 60 videos uploaded. If these haven't federated to your server yet, you can browse them all at https://tinkerbetter.tube/a/vkc/videos
#FeaturedPeerTube #Linux #FOSS #RetroComputing #RetroGaming #SelfHosting #PeerTube
New #blogpost
I have come to share what I've done, some more confessions from a FOSS enthusiast...
https://joelchrono.xyz/blog/more-confessions-from-a-foss-enthusiast/
This is day 53 of #100DaysToOffload
Among my friends, I see four stances about using #LLMs, with many nuances. Can you identifiy more or less with one of the options?
#bigTech #AI #freeSoftware #selfHosting #climateCrisis #surveillance #dataCenter #GAFAM #waterCrisis #energyCrisis
| helpful new tool, I use all of them: | 2 |
| here and there, but with reservations: | 5 |
| only, if free, local, and transparent, no big tech: | 10 |
| never, ever touch any of that evil tech: | 4 |
boostedLooks like not only backups but also my obsession^Wpassion to write detailed entries to my "selfhosting journal" pays back. Any change, I made in my main home server, has a date and a detailed description of changes made. Also, the process of #NetBSD installation and service installation is documented too, alongside with documented list of running services, opened ports, cronjobs, etc.
At one bad day, my main server started to hangup at near 18:00 and at nea 08:00. There weren't any cron (or any another) jobs at this time. In the logs and monitoring the problems with mosquitto (MQTT server) were visible — somehow it eats at near 100% of CPU, then monit restart it, then things become working, then (after some time) the server hangs completely. Investigation showed that write to my second ZFS disk (where the PostgreSQL DB lives) were extremely slowed, so ZFS panicked, crashed and crashes the kernel 
[ 204836.661198] wd0d: device timeout writing fsbn 123148477 of 123148477-123148478 (wd0 bn 123148477; cn 122171 tn 1 sn 46), xfer 38, retry 1
[ 204863.837664] wd0: soft error (corrected) xfer 38
[ 206810.672323] wd0: autoconfiguration error: wd_flushcache: status=0x5128<TIMEOU>
[ 212327.420695] SLOW IO: zio timestamp 211326864412007ns, delta 1000556283358ns, last io 211280726737075ns
[ 212327.420695] panic: I/O to pool 'zfs' appears to be hung on vdev guid 1299234741086050345 at '/dev/wd0'.
[ 212327.420695] cpu0: Begin traceback...
[ 212327.420695] vpanic() at netbsd:vpanic+0x183
[ 212327.420695] panic() at netbsd:panic+0x3c
[ 212327.420695] vdev_deadman() at zfs:vdev_deadman+0x15e
[ 212327.420695] vdev_deadman() at zfs:vdev_deadman+0x31
[ 212327.420695] spa_deadman_wq() at zfs:spa_deadman_wq+0xe0
[ 212327.430704] workqueue_worker() at netbsd:workqueue_worker+0xef
[ 212327.430704] cpu0: End traceback...
At the same time, I hear a strange metal noises from server at near 08:00 too, so the destiny of second drive was specified.
The server restoration will take some time, but since anything were written in the log file, I'm able just to replay some actions and get all systems up as soon as possible 
I've been running two degraded ZFS arrays for the last few weeks (Debian host).
Yeah, I know. Whatevs.
One of the pools was basically "scratch" backup space and one of the spindles died (breaking the utility of the mirror). Pulled the drive, wiped the remaining, put back in service with minimum fuss as a single drive. I'll throw another spindle at it when drive prices drop again.
The other array had the SSD cache die and it's been chugging along fine ever since. Not a big deal, but from a "experience" point of view it "feels slow" like a working md array.
New SSD arrived in the mail so that'll get sorted sometime today/tomorrow.
So, what's this post about?
Linux peeps, if you are thinking about md arrays, just stop, take the time, and throw 'yer leg over the zfs horse. It's worth it.
#Linux #RunBSD #zfs #md #mdadm #raid #homelab #SelfHosted #SelfHosting
Here's something really useful I've found.
One of the great things about the Fediverse is being able to follow hashtags.
But.
If someone puts up a post using that hashtag, and no-one on your instance follows that person or anyone who shares it, it won't appear in your feed.
This is particularly common if you're on a small or single-user instance.
Here's the solution.
First, follow @_followback
It will follow you back.
And then tags.pub bot then reshare all of your posts that use hashtags.
So if you do a post with the hashtag #Fediverse, then @fediverse will share your post.
Here's where the magic happens.
The tags.pub bot will do the same thing to everyone else who follows that followback account.
So if you follow @fediverse, then you'll get a feed of everyone who uses #Fediverse on the Fediverse.
And you'll see their posts even if no-one on your instance follows them.
And it works for all hashtags.
Just put the name of the hashtag, followed by @tags.pub
So @tech follows all posts using #tech, for example.
Or @news follows all posts using #news
#relay #relays #selfhosted #selfhosting #Mastodon #feditip #feditips #fedihelp
boostedNew post:
"A newbie's guide to self-hosting with #YunoHost. Part 5: Upgrades & Maintenance"
Not exactly the most exciting post I have ever written, but system maintenance is so essential.
And spoiler alert: thanks to a botched #PeerTube upgrade I discovered the wonders of #tmux (thank you @teapot_ben and @drfyzziks for recommending it!)
@mastodonmigration We should probably be pushing things like #Friendica and #Pixelfed and other free Fediverse servers over things like Ghost.
Even pushing free wiki software would be a win over a proprietary platform.
But yes, escaping commercial platforms is a critically important idea, and the first step to #selfhosting.
I have deployed and run infra since the noughts, through some wild turns in geo/techno-political history, and will say that now more than ever, #selfhosting is an act of resistance.
Depopulate. Defund. Disempower.