Selfhosted

Cloud vps with debian. Then fix/update whatever weird or outdated image my vps provider gave me (over ssh). Then setup ssh certs instead of password. I use tmux a lot. Sometimes I have local scripts with scp to move some files around.

Usually I'm just hosting mosquitto, maybe apache2 webserver and WordPress or Flask. The latter two are only for development and get moved to other servers when done.

I don't usually use containers.

I'm better at hardware development than all this newfangled web stuff, so mostly just give me a command line without abstractions and I'm happy.

Kubernetes.

I deploy all of my container/Kubernetes definitions from Github:

https://github.com/JustinLex/jlh-h5b/tree/main/applications

I've recently switched my entire self hosted infrastructure to NixOS, but only after a few years of evaluation, because it's quite a paradigm shift but well worth it imho.

Before that I used to stick to a solid base of Debian with some docker containers. There are still a few of those remaining that I have yet to migrate to my NixOS infra (namely mosquitto, gotify, nodered and portainer for managing them).

Web servers: unikernel (nanos) + fastly to backblaze Mail servers: tailscale (for admin ssh), fail2ban, letsencrypt nginx, docker compose, mailu, heavy use of vps firewall Raspberry pi "servers": k3s, managed with lens desktop pro, but honestly learning kubernetes isn't exactly enjoyable and feels painful compared to a shell script that launches dead simple API deployments

I used to do a lot of Ansible to manage a lot of servers but most of the time the thing I need to fix is manual, and a setup.md in my personal notes is all I need for "how do I make a new minio backup host" or whatever.

I usually set up SSH keys and disable password login.

Then I git-pull my base docker-compose stack that sets up:

• Nginx proxy manager
• Portainer
• Frontend and backend networks

I have a handful of other docker-compose files that hook into that setup to make it easy to quickly deploy various services wherever in a modular way.

I'd like to use rootless podman, but since I include zerotier in my containers, they need access to the tunnel device and net_admin, so rootless isn't an option right now.

Podman-compose works for me. I'd like to learn how to use Ansible and Kubernetes, but right now, it's just my Lemmy VPS and my Raspberry Pi 4, so I don't have much need for automation at the moment. Maybe some day.

Probably the odd one here with Arch Linux + docker compose with still a lot of manual labor
updating it after maximum 4 weeks is enough, container more often

I have a base Debian template with a few tweaks I like for all my machines. Debating setting up something like terraform but I just don't spin up VMs frequently enough to wan tto do that. I do have a few Ansible playbooks I run on a fresh server to really get it to where I want though.

I have a stupid overcomplicated networking script that never works. So every time i set up a new server I need to fix a myriad of weird issues I've never seen before. Usually I setup a server with a keyboard and mouse because SSH needs networking, if it's a cloud machine its the QEMU console or hundreds of reboots.

I use SSH to manage docker compose. I'm just using a raspberry pi right now so I don't have room for much more than Syncthing and Dokuwiki.

NixOS instances running Nomad/Vault/Consul. Each service behind Traefik with LE certs. Containers can mount NFS shares from a separate NAS which optionally gets backed up to cloud blob storage.

I use SSH and some CLI commands for deployment but only because that’s faster than CICD. I’m only running ~’nomad run …’ for the most part

The goal was to be resilient to single node failures and align with a stack I might use for production ops work. It’s also nice to be able to remove/add nodes fairly easily without worrying about breaking any home automation or hosting.

For years over done an Ubuntu LTS base with docker, but I've just recently started using debian base. Moved to debian for my workstation as well.

K

A series of VPSes running AlmaLinux, I have a relatively big Ansible playbook to setup everything after the server goes online. The idea is that I can at any time scrape the server off, install an OS, put in all the persistent data (Docker volumes and /srv partition with all the heavy data), and run a playbok.

Docker Compose for services, last time I checked Podman, podman-compose didn't work properly, and learning a new orchestration tool would take an unjustifiable amount of time.

I try to avoid shell scripts as much as possible because they are hard to write in such a way so that they handle all possible scenarios, they are difficult to debug, and they can make a mess when not done properly. Premade scripts are usually the big offenders here, and they are I nice way to leave you without a single clue how the stuff they set up works.

I don't have a selfhosting addiction.

I run Debian + Docker, and use Portainer to manage the docker stacks

I have a bunch of different stuff, a dedicated server with Debian, 4 raspberry Pis + 1 micro computer that acts as a LB/Router/DHCP/DNS for the Pis.

In general I would say that my logic is as follows:

• Every OS change is done through Ansible. This sometimes is a pain, you want to just apt install X and instead you might need to create a new playbook for it, but in the long term, it paid off multiple times. I do have some default playbook that does basic config (user, SSH key provisioning, some default packages) and hardening (SSH config, iptables).
• I then try to keep the OS logic to a minimum, and do everything else as code. On my older dedicated server I run mostly docker-compose with Systemd + templated docker-compose files dropped by Ansible. The Pis instead run Kubernetes, with flux and all my applications are either directly managed via Flux or they have Helm in between. This means I can destroy a cluster, create another way, point it to my flux repository and I am pretty much back where I started.