I met a guy a while ago who's passion was enabling self-hosting. His vision was to use an old android phone as a server--he ended up building a domain registrar[1] to facilitate OAuth-style flows for configuring DNS and an ngrok-style proxy[2] service that could configure DNS through said flow.
who's can also mean who has, which is where you've probably seen it used in ways that imply a possessive, but normally means who is, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45257167 indicated
Yep, my website (very WIP) is hosted on an RPi 5 in the corner of my apartment, and every once in a while my IP changes and I have to update DNS and tell my friends to connect to the minecraft server by IP. I'm probably around 98% uptime, so github levels of assurance.
Cloudflare lets you create tunnels for free which will keep your site online when the IP changes. This will also hide your IP as your DNS entry will be pointed to Cloudflare.
Unrelated to the article, but a creative Canadian flag used the title to spell words out. They slowly circled characters in the title. I thought I was deciphering a cool message… but it was just "whore"
The internet in its purest form. I grepped for all words containing the substring whore in the hopes of coming up with some witty explanation and shame you in assuming the worst from our Canadian bretheren. To my great chagrin they all refer to, well, whores.
Home internet is so fast now and hardware is so cheap and powerful its a good solution. It amazes me how expensive aws compared to having your own hardware.
I wish it was that fast. Somehow in the past 15 years prices for a 10/100/200Mbit have stayed exactly the same, only Gigabit came down a smidge to around 70 euro/month now. As if all the hardware and switches hadn't evolved at all.
And for some reason, nowadays over 5G you get pretty much the exact same speed/price combos as for DSL or cable, only with less guarantees.
That's the other point, fibre can be a bit cheaper but not even all 10 year old apartment blocks have fibre run in to building??? If you wanna get it installed that'll be at least a couple hundred extra
I used to run a BBS from my bedroom when I lived with my parents. I had attached a phone to the same line, and replaced the speaker with a led, so I would know someone was connecting because the led would blink intermittently for a few seconds while it "rang". Not sure if I remember correctly, but I think the BBS software even allowed me to see what they were doing.
I think you remember correctly! A lot of the BBS software would just show what the current user was doing as if it was their screen. I believe from there you could start a chat as the sysop and interact with them, else you kinda just watched.
The few times I ran one (was a sysop on a few, but remotely), I was always a little creeped out that I could see people typing messages, etc. Felt like invading their privacy.
I have a small cluster I use to run my personal server/nvr/etc on. Instead of Raspberry Pi, I just bought some small mini pcs, which are amazingly powerful and cheap for their size. I have them stashed in a few random places around the house near my switches. Works great!
When I was a teenager, I ran a BBS out of my bedroom. People would call in at all hours to download (ahem) 'Public Domain' (wink) games off of my Atari 130XE and its array of half a dozen floppy drives. It was kind of noisy, but it always lifted my spirits when I'd hear the drives start grinding.
Dear Mr. Architect, I've noticed you make this historical link effort frequently, so I hope it's okay to express my appreciation, and gently request you include a little more detail about what is behind it (age + comment count). Otherwise it's hard to know if a link is worth clicking or not.
This is one of the things that has me so hesitant towards upgrading my "server". I've been using an old Thinkpad for a while now and it has served me well, but lately I've been using it for more intensive things (like JetBrains remote development and a Jellyfin server). It's become a regular occurrence that, while I'm trying to sleep, its fans spin up and sound like it's trying to take off because someone downstairs is watching a movie from it. I don't begrudge them for it since I set it up for that exact purpose, but it can make it difficult to sleep soundly.
The most obvious solution would be make a small PC: more powerful and bigger fans means less noise. I've been considering something like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr5MjhgPz_c)... but then how am I supposed to use it? Yes, I can ssh into it, but what if it fails to start? Just last month my Thinkpad server failed to restart properly. This was a trivial fix but it being a laptop whose lid I can just open and use immediately made it an extremely easy fix, which would not be true for a PC.
Thing is, I know that dumb terminals exist, ie, a screen, keyboard, and trackpad that takes the form-factor of a laptop but has no actual internals, it's just a convenient interface when plugged into a server. I've seen them. I've tried searching for them but there doesn't seem to be an agreed-upon search category, and the ones I manage to find are more expensive than the PC itself and are usually designed as a server-rack drawer.
Genuinely, what do people do here? Do they just have their server setup somewhere like a desktop? Or are people keeping spare monitors, keyboards, and mice around that they then need to unpack, plug in, and use awkwardly before putting it all away again?
I have a tiny HDMI screen which I can power from a USB port which I can plug into a computer if for some reason it is unreachable over the network. (this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1L935ZT ), and a tiny keyboard with built-in track pad (something like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B9996LA ).
They're stored together in a small box with all needed cables, so they're easy to take with me to whichever computer is having issues. In practice I only use them a few times per year.
Since you're mentioning opening laptop's lid I assume you mean literally failing to start, as after power cycling. For that, wouldn't simple hitting the power button be enough? It certainly doesn't require keyboard. If you plan to place it somewhere not easily accessible, there is Wake on LAN, which most modern PC motherboards are going to support.
If some maintenance task cannot be done with ssh/tmux, you can always use remote desktop software, in local network even RDP will do. And if something went wrong enough for you to not be able to connect to the server remotely then there is indeed no way around bringing and connecting a spare keyboard and monitor, but events like that should be quite rare normally.
SSH most of the time of course, and a management interface (iDRAC, iLO, etc) if you have an enterprise server; otherwise an old monitor and spare keyboard. Sometimes they'll support serial out that you can use over a cable to another computer instead of the whole monitor+keyboard combo. Or nowadays you can use a network KVM like a PiKVM, NanoKVM, or JetKVM
I just keep a cheap screen and a cheap keyboard near my servers. No need for a mouse. For my garage and basement servers, the KV stays in place always, and the MIL's condo, the KV goes away when not in use... and the keyboard got moved at some point, so I have to remember to bring it over when it needs adjusting.
Around me, most days I can stop at goodwill and get a monitor and keyboard for $30 or less.
My server sits next to my existing desktop, and I just move the keyboard cable from one to the other when I need to get at a local interface on the server. One of my monitors has two inputs, and so is always plugged into both, I can just change the input selected. Not the "cleanest" solution, but it works when I need to get at it, and the space it's in wasn't being used by anything else.
I used to run a Web server (and email server) like this. The novelty wore off, and I currently structure it for static hosting via AWS S3 + CloudFront.
(No matter how personal a Web site, the occasional prospective employer will go look at it. If you're a techbro, you normally don't want this site sometimes acting like it's running on a potato and wet string. Even if you still keep your 2002 visual design, ahem.)
If that's not a concern, you can run a nonessential Web server from home, and it's fun and concrete, like the author suggests. You might want to forward/proxy the traffic through some external cloud server (even if you don't use CDN/caching features), to shield your home pipe a bit.
I met a guy a while ago who's passion was enabling self-hosting. His vision was to use an old android phone as a server--he ended up building a domain registrar[1] to facilitate OAuth-style flows for configuring DNS and an ngrok-style proxy[2] service that could configure DNS through said flow.
[1]: https://takingnames.io/ [2]: https://boringproxy.io/
who's can also mean who has, which is where you've probably seen it used in ways that imply a possessive, but normally means who is, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45257167 indicated
Whose! Who's means who is
[delayed]
Yep, my website (very WIP) is hosted on an RPi 5 in the corner of my apartment, and every once in a while my IP changes and I have to update DNS and tell my friends to connect to the minecraft server by IP. I'm probably around 98% uptime, so github levels of assurance.
Cloudflare lets you create tunnels for free which will keep your site online when the IP changes. This will also hide your IP as your DNS entry will be pointed to Cloudflare.
Spend 20 minutes setting up DuckDNS and you'll never have to worry about this again.
https://www.duckdns.org
I solved this with a corn tab that runs a script that checks my ip and updates my cloudflare dns if it changes. https://github.com/pastorhudson/cloudflare_dns_updater
> with a corn tab that
A corn tab you say? I'm all ears!
I wonder if that tastes good.
I assume they meant crontab (TIL that means "cron table", never wondered before)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron
Use cloudflare tunnel. It’ll stay alive through that.
Why not use DDNS?
Alternatively your domain provider likely has some API for you to programmatically update the DNS records.
Because mine didn't I instead used a generic ddns and set a cname on my own domain to that. Works like a charm too.
Kinda breaks MX records so don't so it if you wanna receive emails on that domain, too
Unrelated to the article, but a creative Canadian flag used the title to spell words out. They slowly circled characters in the title. I thought I was deciphering a cool message… but it was just "whore"
The internet in its purest form. I grepped for all words containing the substring whore in the hopes of coming up with some witty explanation and shame you in assuming the worst from our Canadian bretheren. To my great chagrin they all refer to, well, whores.
I'm surprised how many different flags I saw while reading- I guess mostly from HN? Diverse crowd!
Home internet is so fast now and hardware is so cheap and powerful its a good solution. It amazes me how expensive aws compared to having your own hardware.
I wish it was that fast. Somehow in the past 15 years prices for a 10/100/200Mbit have stayed exactly the same, only Gigabit came down a smidge to around 70 euro/month now. As if all the hardware and switches hadn't evolved at all.
And for some reason, nowadays over 5G you get pretty much the exact same speed/price combos as for DSL or cable, only with less guarantees.
I don't think they are ever going to run gigabit over to me if they haven't by this point.
That's the other point, fibre can be a bit cheaper but not even all 10 year old apartment blocks have fibre run in to building??? If you wanna get it installed that'll be at least a couple hundred extra
It's not that expensive everywhere. In the UK I can get 1000/1000Mbps for £29 a month, and 8000/8000Mbps for £99 a month.
Home internet is only fast downstream.
Upstream is usually awful.
(At least in the USA.)
Except for fiber, for all providers I'm aware.
Verizon FiOS has had symmetric gigabit service available for well over a decade for a reasonable price.
Where in the USA are you?
My home fiber is symmetric gigabit in Seattle, for $65/mo
I used to run a BBS from my bedroom when I lived with my parents. I had attached a phone to the same line, and replaced the speaker with a led, so I would know someone was connecting because the led would blink intermittently for a few seconds while it "rang". Not sure if I remember correctly, but I think the BBS software even allowed me to see what they were doing.
I think you remember correctly! A lot of the BBS software would just show what the current user was doing as if it was their screen. I believe from there you could start a chat as the sysop and interact with them, else you kinda just watched.
The few times I ran one (was a sysop on a few, but remotely), I was always a little creeped out that I could see people typing messages, etc. Felt like invading their privacy.
I have a small cluster I use to run my personal server/nvr/etc on. Instead of Raspberry Pi, I just bought some small mini pcs, which are amazingly powerful and cheap for their size. I have them stashed in a few random places around the house near my switches. Works great!
When I was a teenager, I ran a BBS out of my bedroom. People would call in at all hours to download (ahem) 'Public Domain' (wink) games off of my Atari 130XE and its array of half a dozen floppy drives. It was kind of noisy, but it always lifted my spirits when I'd hear the drives start grinding.
I enjoyed this article very much. It used 99% of my CPU though.
You can turn off that "feature" with the "Quiet Mode" toggle on the top right
Yeah something is very CPU intensive on this otherwise plaintext site. The cutesy concurrent visitor cursors perhaps?
That's probably to show the massively distracting cursors of all current visitors.
(2022) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33165836
Dear Mr. Architect, I've noticed you make this historical link effort frequently, so I hope it's okay to express my appreciation, and gently request you include a little more detail about what is behind it (age + comment count). Otherwise it's hard to know if a link is worth clicking or not.
This one was: Oct 2022 - 440 comments.
And to avoid technicalities, make it big enough so you can see and use it.
This is one of the things that has me so hesitant towards upgrading my "server". I've been using an old Thinkpad for a while now and it has served me well, but lately I've been using it for more intensive things (like JetBrains remote development and a Jellyfin server). It's become a regular occurrence that, while I'm trying to sleep, its fans spin up and sound like it's trying to take off because someone downstairs is watching a movie from it. I don't begrudge them for it since I set it up for that exact purpose, but it can make it difficult to sleep soundly.
The most obvious solution would be make a small PC: more powerful and bigger fans means less noise. I've been considering something like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr5MjhgPz_c)... but then how am I supposed to use it? Yes, I can ssh into it, but what if it fails to start? Just last month my Thinkpad server failed to restart properly. This was a trivial fix but it being a laptop whose lid I can just open and use immediately made it an extremely easy fix, which would not be true for a PC.
Thing is, I know that dumb terminals exist, ie, a screen, keyboard, and trackpad that takes the form-factor of a laptop but has no actual internals, it's just a convenient interface when plugged into a server. I've seen them. I've tried searching for them but there doesn't seem to be an agreed-upon search category, and the ones I manage to find are more expensive than the PC itself and are usually designed as a server-rack drawer.
Genuinely, what do people do here? Do they just have their server setup somewhere like a desktop? Or are people keeping spare monitors, keyboards, and mice around that they then need to unpack, plug in, and use awkwardly before putting it all away again?
I have a tiny HDMI screen which I can power from a USB port which I can plug into a computer if for some reason it is unreachable over the network. (this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1L935ZT ), and a tiny keyboard with built-in track pad (something like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B9996LA ).
They're stored together in a small box with all needed cables, so they're easy to take with me to whichever computer is having issues. In practice I only use them a few times per year.
> but what if it fails to start?
Since you're mentioning opening laptop's lid I assume you mean literally failing to start, as after power cycling. For that, wouldn't simple hitting the power button be enough? It certainly doesn't require keyboard. If you plan to place it somewhere not easily accessible, there is Wake on LAN, which most modern PC motherboards are going to support.
If some maintenance task cannot be done with ssh/tmux, you can always use remote desktop software, in local network even RDP will do. And if something went wrong enough for you to not be able to connect to the server remotely then there is indeed no way around bringing and connecting a spare keyboard and monitor, but events like that should be quite rare normally.
SSH most of the time of course, and a management interface (iDRAC, iLO, etc) if you have an enterprise server; otherwise an old monitor and spare keyboard. Sometimes they'll support serial out that you can use over a cable to another computer instead of the whole monitor+keyboard combo. Or nowadays you can use a network KVM like a PiKVM, NanoKVM, or JetKVM
I just keep a cheap screen and a cheap keyboard near my servers. No need for a mouse. For my garage and basement servers, the KV stays in place always, and the MIL's condo, the KV goes away when not in use... and the keyboard got moved at some point, so I have to remember to bring it over when it needs adjusting.
Around me, most days I can stop at goodwill and get a monitor and keyboard for $30 or less.
My server sits next to my existing desktop, and I just move the keyboard cable from one to the other when I need to get at a local interface on the server. One of my monitors has two inputs, and so is always plugged into both, I can just change the input selected. Not the "cleanest" solution, but it works when I need to get at it, and the space it's in wasn't being used by anything else.
I have a keyboard and monitor somewhere in a closet. That's also what we do at work with our "real" servers.
I'd say it's needed about once a year at most though. Servers don't just fail to start, normally.
PiKVM
or really any cheap IP based KVM is what you’re looking for
How to Create a Cache Server?
https://cyfuture.cloud/kb/howto/how-to-create-a-cache-server
I used to run a Web server (and email server) like this. The novelty wore off, and I currently structure it for static hosting via AWS S3 + CloudFront.
(No matter how personal a Web site, the occasional prospective employer will go look at it. If you're a techbro, you normally don't want this site sometimes acting like it's running on a potato and wet string. Even if you still keep your 2002 visual design, ahem.)
If that's not a concern, you can run a nonessential Web server from home, and it's fun and concrete, like the author suggests. You might want to forward/proxy the traffic through some external cloud server (even if you don't use CDN/caching features), to shield your home pipe a bit.
The joke about 2002 visual design was referring to my own said Web site.
Claude-Code has turbo charged my (basement) RPi4 development.
Same here! This is an underrated use of LLMs - actually being able to finish weird side projects.