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.
Yesterday evening just before going to sleep I installed #pihole on #raspberrypi 5. The process was straight forward and it works like a charm. It neatly blocks advertisements for all devices in my local network. It also blocked #youtube adds to my surprise.
I am actually considering donating to support #pihole.
So I found a 4 GB RAM / 40 GB storage VPS for just USD 10.99/year (!) recently.
It's from George Datacenter, which I had never heard about before. I looked it up and found a few negative reviews but nothing that suggested it was an actual scam, so I decided to give it a try considering the absurdly low price and the fact the complaints were all from a long time ago.
So far it's been smooth. Apparently you can load custom ISOs (I haven't tried, but the UI is there) and there is toggleable VNC access.
I'm curious if anyone has any experience to share about this provider?
Also, the offer is still up if you are interested:
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 🗻
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
Does anybody has a hint for a Mastodon INstance where i could test my Emby Notification Bot? It works using my own GoToSocial Server as endpoint, but it fails most of the time on mastodon.social, especially when i try to upload media. The logging on the Emby console is a catastrophy. I can only recon there is some kind of rate limiting etc.
I mean in the past there was something like botsin.space, is there something similiar, or could somebody give me an account on its mastodon instance for testing?
Dont want to fire up an own mastodon instance just for this.
#mastodonbot #mastodon #bot #selfhosting @homelab @homelab_de
When I select a VPS how do I know that my data on the server is safe and private? Is trust all I've got?
Eine #Frage an die #Misskey Nutzer / Admins unter euch.
Kann man die Anzahl an Bildern, die man einer Galerie hinzufügen kann, irgendwie erhöhen? Bei mir sind es maximal 32 Bilder.
Wenn das im UI nicht geht, wo kann ich das im Code ändern vor dem builden? Hat ein #Admin damit schon Erfahrung gemacht?
Gerne boosten. Im Internet finde ich dazu nicht wirklich was 😅
boostedAfter the newest fuckery from #MinIO, I tried #SeaweedFS and Garage, and then decided to just go with #Backblaze for my server backups, with local replication to my Synology NAS.
Sometimes, #selfhosting is the tedious, nerve-wrecking answer to a question, whose real solution is paying $0.5 a month. 🫠
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?
Today's AWS debacle is the perfect example of the reason why in the last few years I started to be less enthusiastic about Signal, and more oriented to federated or even P2P solutions like XMPP and Jami. I wrote about it already:
https://gagliardoni.net/#im_battle_2025
Signal was down for few hours today, after an outage that affected AWS:
https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/115405436746725236
Let's ignore for a second the blind reliance on AWS or any other cloud provider. In a decentralized system, this would not have happened, or at least it would have not impacted so many users.
Yes, I am a cryptographer myself, I know that Signal's encryption is the best. But encryption is not everything. Availability issues, geopolitical troubles, risk of enshittification, limitations on users' freedom to use and control the software lead to a lack of trust, even in a supersecure solution. And I say that with honest admiration for the folks at Signal, who are doing a great job.
May they prove me wrong over and over again.
#signal #im #aws #amazon #privacy #security #digitalsovereignty #selfhosting #fediverse #federation #p2p #enshittification #xmpp #jami #politics #opensource #freesoftware #libre
Anyone have experience using #Snac2 for a small activitypub instance? Currently I use #gotosocial which is great but I'm curious about other options. Running a second instance with a different domain for friends or a second account is appealing to me.
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!
I'm strongly leaning towards giving up hosting my own email. I've been doing it for 25 years this November, and I'm about done with jumping though all the hoops needed to get mail delivered.
Is there a company you can recommend that will take over all the work and give me an imap account?
I don't mind paying a reasonable sum per year, but I'd really like my email to work again consistently so I can move away from google. #email #selfhosting #SellMeSomethingIWant
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.
🏕️ 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.
Toby @tobykurien has been busy building a new release of his "bubble-wrapped services" tool for simpler hosting on FreeBSD *or* Linux, using tmux and jails or bubblewrap. See v1 post at https://tobykurien.com/simpler-linux-selfhosting/ for some background, and https://tobykurien.com/post-1759335266/ | https://fossil.tobykurien.com/bws/ for the new shiny.
#bws #linux #freebsd #selfhosting #container #sandbox #docker #podman
Curious about Raspberry Pi and Tailscale? Discover how to transform your Raspberry Pi into a subnet router and exit node, enhancing your self-hosting capabilities. Dive into this slice of delicious Pi and explore the possibilities! #RaspberryPi #Tailscale #selfhosting
@xankarn Self-hosting might be better. It's not free but it's in many ways less problematic. Depending on your particular skillset, you could either do it yourself or find folks that will volunteer some help. #selfhosting
That #Peertube instance is the place to spend your time, instead of letting them grind you down with new rituals of doom at the neutered #TikTok
What Peertube instance? The one you are #selfhosting that's the best one, always! It is not that hard, and people will help you.
@stefano
Dear Fedi friends,
Thank you for adopting #GratefulForYou and filling up my feed with so many shout-outs to amazing Fediverse people.
Today my #GratefulForYou nod goes to @ilja and @shollyethan for encouraging me to start my #selfhosting journey.
ilja was the first person who ever mentioned @yunohost to me (SUPER GRATEFUL for them too!) and Ethan told me: "you learn by doing things" (so true).
This self-hosting journey is incredibly empowering. I feel like a new person, 9 months in ❤️ 🙏 ✨
🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting: day 275 (coping mechanisms edition)
World events being what they are, authoritarianism, technofeudalism and other everyday horrors are pushing me to spin up another server on Hetzner with the excuse "well, I've gotten so many requests to show what's it's like to install YunoHost, this is the perfect opportunity."
Self-hosting is a pretty good distraction from the
(dumpster FIRES) going off everywhere. At least for me. Top 3 coping mechanism (top 1: playing with my child; top 2: aromatherapy).
I may do it next week 🙈
I hope you're having a nice day. Chin up! Resist! Enjoy the little things 🌸🍵🌈
In our quest to move away from GitHub, we have a working self-hosted cgit instance as well as a runner for CI.
The last missing piece is to find a way to safely expose it to the world.
Are there any good Cloudflare alternatives to protect the origin?
Tor works fine, but I would like to also be reachable from the clearnet.
Question for #GoToSocial folks: Is it possible to have different timeline layouts for different accounts on the same server?
I'm toying with the idea of having a predominantly text account on my GTS server with a text layout, and a second photos account with an image layout.
Is this possible?
Question for those of you who are #selfhosting your #fediverse/ #activitypub instance with a very small number of users (max 5, let’s say): how many other instances are you federated with?
No reason, I’m just curious.
FYI my little #gotosocial instance that hosts @logistics
(with ~150 followers at present) is federated to ~6,500 other instances after 2 months online.
Please boost for visibility.
| 0-1,000: | 2 |
| 1,000-5,000: | 1 |
| 5,000-10,000: | 2 |
| 10,000+: | 3 |
Watching how to install some selfhosted-software to the my #NetBSD box:
Deployment methods:
- Docker
- Docker Compose
- Kubernetes
- Unraid
- Synology NAS
- Deploy to cloud service
- Build from Source
Looking inside:
- Please install npm and 256 NodeJS dependencies.
Lol, I already love #SelfHosting 
Dear Fedi friends,
Happy Thursday from rainy northern Italy 🌧️
In case you missed it: I've spent the past two weeks doing all kinds of #selfhosting explorations, as I strive to learn #Docker to move my Ghost site there (it's recommended for Ghost v6 and going forward).
Yesterday I shared a blog post about the peaches (highs) and pits (lows) in #MySoCalledSudoLife adventures.
I'm hoping my mistakes can be useful for fellow newbies 😅
🔗 : https://news.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-so-called-sudo-life-month-8-peaches-pits/
New blog post: "My so-called sudo life: month 8: peaches & pits" in which I share the highs (peaches) and lows (pits) of my #selfhosting adventures for this month:
🔗: https://news.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-so-called-sudo-life-month-8-peaches-pits/
Dear sysadmins, trigger warning: this post contains mention of clueless/reckless behavior by a self-hosting newbie. You may shudder in horror 😆
On the upside, I hope that people who aspire to self-host can learn from my mistakes.
As I wrote in the post: I know very little about self-hosting, but I know more than I did yesterday (and I'm having a lot of fun in the process)
🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting: day 249 (mind of a #newbie edition) 🧠
a blog post about what it's like for newbies to self-host... read till the end to find out what caused my OVH VPS fail (a facepalm moment for sure):
I'll probably take a break from self-hosting and reading about #Docker (my Everest) for the rest of the weekend... so I can come back to it on Monday with my batteries fully recharged 😅
boostedMy future NetBSD server finally arrived
MWA-HA-HA
!
Basically, it is just a part of POS terminal, so I can say that I run my services on the cash register.
But inside of it there is a fanless PC with a little motherboard and the top board with a 6 RS232 connectors, two USB connectors and a SATA for 2.5' hard drive.
4 Gb memory, Intel Atom N2800, 64 Gb SSD and free space for (another SSD?) WiFi card, integrated TWO (!) 1 Gbit Ethernet and much more USB, RS232 and VGA + HDMI connectors.
It works completely quiet, and just a slightly warming up when Window 7 is working.
After I change the CR2032 battery and find a M3x17 brass stand for PCB (one is missing
) — I'll install #NetBSD on it and will enjoy #selfhosting , finally 
#introduction ― I decided to create an alt account here to allow me
to connect more easily with SDF community.
My primary focus will be on tech-related things I like:
#pkgsrc on #netbsd #illumos and #slackware
#unix #sdf #gopher #smolnet #usenet #dos #c #lisp
#selfhosting #homeserver #permacomputing #lowtech
#hamradio #progrock #progmetal #ambient #postrock
#90s #scifi #cyberpunk #novels #seinen #manga
Dear Fedi friends,
Oh happy day!
My #Docker woes have gone away since I realized I can use Docker exclusively via CLI (and not GUI - I thought that was the default). When I couldn’t connect Docker Desktop to my VPS yesterday I was feeling so down. But yay Docker CLI here I come.
Special thanks to everyone who offered advice yesterday, ESPECIALLY @antoine_ali 🏆
I have a feeling you’ll get a laugh out of my next blog post detailing my #selfhosting attempts - because my perception of how Docker operates was all warped.
I must have exposed to the outside my current Docker instance with yesterday’s inane tweaks to access the GUI, so I will uninstall and re-install Docker first thing today… and up the challenge by attempting to do a fresh Ghost installation on it.
I truly know nothing! But I know more than yesterday, that’s for sure. 🤗
Thank you for all your advice (and patience!) 🙏