- 14 Posts
- 159 Comments
20·4 days agosince I don’t want to pay for SSL certificates to setup https.
You don’t need to pay for SSL certs anymore, most of the time. You can get them for free from a bunch of different places now. I use Let’s Encrypt. The web server/reverse proxy I use, Caddy is able to automatically get a cert for you, install it, and keep it renewed. The only time you need to pay for a cert is if you are handling financial transactions.
Are there security issues I should address preemptively?
WordPress itself has a generally good reputation for security, though depending on how the current drama goes, that may change. WordPress security problems have almost always stemmed from plugins or poor password hygiene. Remove any plugins you are not actively using, keep the ones you are using updated, and use a good password that you don’t use anywhere else. A password wallet like Bit Warden can generate and store such passwords for you.
Better on the security front would be to evaluate whether you actually need something like WordPress at all. A static site would likely be far more secure. There’s less moving parts that might be vulnerable.
While you could program a static site yourself, it’s more common nowadays to use a static site generator like Hugo to build the site. You set it up once for how you want the site to look and then you write your posts in markdown or whatever your particular generator uses.
I don’t have anything to manage my dynamic IP
Most domain name providers have some sort of setup for dealing with dynamic IP addresses, a program called
ddclientis pretty common and is available in most repos.
2·11 days agoTLDR: Vote anyways, and make your voice heard.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, > or to the people. - US Constitution, 10th Amendment
The way that the US is setup, actual power and authority, does not actually exist at the Federal level. Not really. Not over you as an individual. And your individual vote at the Federal level will not really move the needle.
The actual authority and power over your life exists at the State and local levels. And this is where your vote can actually make a real difference as well, because elections at these levels are often decided by mere hundreds of votes. Your local elections are often decided by mere 10’s of votes.
The most powerful of all, however, are the local school boards, which are often elected positions. However, decisions made by school boards don’t make changes to your community over night, however. It takes years for the children they teach to grow up and begin exerting their control over the system.
What if we vote and the problem continues?
That will happen. I’m sorry that’s not the answer you want. It is difficult to make large changes to society or governments in a hurry. You can think of society and governments like large boulders. The larger the society or government, the larger the boulder.
A handful of people might move that boulder slowly over time, more people though, can move that boulder more quickly. And of course, a much faster or larger boulder could always strike it and move it quickly, though not necessarily predicably.
What if voting gives us the illusion of control?
Sticking with the physics frame of reference, as an individual person, you have all the control you could ever want. You just don’t have enough power or “force” to make much happen at larger scales. The physics frame of reference breaks down somewhat, though, as a single voice, well spoken and well presented, at the right time, can not only move all the smaller pebbles (people) and the boulder (society or governments), but an entire damned mountain and can move it precisely.
Tomorrow (November 5th) is Election Day. Go vote. And get informed and vote in every election, local, State, and Federal thereafter. If you don’t, this will continue to happen. The States have this power only because we, the citizens of those States gave it to them, or worse yet, said nothing as they took it for themselves.
If you don’t vote, then don’t go complaining later if the result isn’t what you want.
If I reading your docker ps result correctly, you seem to be forwarding docker port 2283 to host port 3001.
Try http://ip_address:3001 , if that fails try https.
So if he’s taking full accountability, who’s the new CEO of Dropbox? /s
Dumbass.More and more I’m appreciating my decision to selfhost Nextcloud when I decided to start moving away from Google. All nonsense like this affects for me personally (should Dropbox crash and burn) is some redundant backups.
Might check out distrowatch. Just note that popularity for them just means how many times had that entry been looked up.
Well, they are a Chinese company. That they will need to comply will the laws of China doesn’t surprise me.
Might have been a temporary issue. It’s working for me.
It’s a thing, and has been since the late 90’s (I think). Reliability is the main issue. The first one I had heard of had mechanical reliability problems If I remember correctly.
Haven’t looked at Biofires products lately, but they weren’t really weatherproof last I heard and weren’t recommended for duty use as a result. And then there is the eye watering sticker price. A Taurus PT92 is less than half the price of the Biofire, and has a track record for good reliability.
I seem to remember a state, New Jersey, I think, had a law on the books saying that if multiple manufacturers came out with biometricly locked firearms that biometric locks would then become mandatory. As for if that would help things, probably not.
3·2 months agoLast time I tried (several years ago, pre-Proton) iTunes would run fine under Wine but couldn’t see a connected iPhone.
I agree with @qocu@hexbear.net . It sounds like you are trying to replicate your workflow. Windows and Linux come from different mentalities. There won’t always be a drop in replacement.
I’m short on time but perhaps I can help with your point 9 though.
Each distro’s repos are built by the people that use that particular distro. Somebody needed a particular piece of software, found it wasn’t in the repository and decided to package it and perhaps maintain it for the repo. Sometimes this is the original developer, sometimes not.
All software is built from source code. If the source code is available for Linux, you can compile it yourself. Instructions for how to do so are usually provided by the developer along with the source code, nowadays usually found at their git repository.
Of course, you don’t have to compile all your own software (it can be a headache, which is why someone came up with precompiled packages), but it is an option if the software in question is not available in your distribution’s repo.
Your number 1 point: I like Kate, vscode and micro as text editors. They are fairly simple.
The simplest way to do this, is to put the server on a private vpn (I use Tailscale, there are others) and expose ports only to the vpn. Then you share access to the vpn with your friends.
With Tailscale, this is as simple as sending them a share link for the host. They will need to have an account at Tailscale, and have the client running, but they will then be able to access the host with a static ip address.
As a general rule of thumb, nothing should be exposed to the public internet unless you want that service to be public access and then you need to keep it up to date. If a vulnerability doesn’t currently exist for the service, one will sooner rather than later. SSH, especially password only ssh, can be broken into fairly easily. If you must expose ssh to the public internet for whatever reason, you need to be using IP white lists, password protected keys, change the default port, and turn off service advertisements and ping responses. I’m probably missing something. When someone scans your server randomly, they should see nothing. And if they fail login they should be ip blocked.
- Host family media through Jellyfin, etc. This would include tv, music, and possibly books as well. Many of these will be managed through the Arr apps.
- Degoogle my phone - I’m beginning by replacing Photos with Immich, but hope to also use Home Assistant, backup other phone data such as messages media, shopping lists, etc. I hope to replace Google storage/backup with Proton Drive.
Seems like a solid plan. I used Nextcloud as a Google Drive/Photos/Calander/Lists replacement, but depending on what you are running as your server it may be a bit too heavy.
I’ve heard that once you get into it, Linux distros like Ubuntu are not very user friendly for self-hosting as a beginner.
Not sure who is saying this. Granted, if your not used to *nix, our ways of doing things can be a bit obtuse from time to time but the Ubuntu based distros are some of the most heavily documented distros available with only Arch being better documented (Don’t use Arch unless you’ve got stock in Bayer. /joking, kinda).
Your current OS choice is maybe not what I would choose, but it is fine. Xubuntu just Ubuntu Server with the XFCE desktop installed. A bit heavy for a server install as a result. One thing I will say is that most server software is setup via the command line and setup via configuration files (These are just regular text files readable by any text editor. I like micro, but anything will work). The desktop environment is just extra weight you don’t really need in this application. Doesn’t hurt anything, just heavy and not really needed.
So is it better on the whole for a beginner to have a popular distro with lots if documentation and step by step guides, or to have a purpose-built OS like TrueNAS that might be more straightforward, but with less support?
Stick with what you have. Ubuntu is a very well supported server distro, and the XFCE desktop doesn’t change that. Things like TrueNAS, UnRAID, and whatever is the flavor of the week tend to cover things up to simplify things. This is fine when they work correctly, the problem comes when things inevitably break. You won’t know where to go looking to fix things. Also TrueNAS is a network storage OS, not really suited for what you are trying to do currently, which seems to be hosting services.
It seems to be working well, but I’ve had a few hiccups trying to update it,
What hiccups were you running into? And were you using the GUI tool or apt on the command line?
I don’t know about Silverblue, but I know you can use NixOS on pretty much any VPS using the tool nixos-infect.
Not sure how it would reduce your attack surface though. That’s not really the problem that they are trying to solve.
I’ve heard mixed things about them, never used them though. Personally I used Digital Ocean for my VPS needs till I had a spare computer available, at which point I moved everything in house.
They didn’t care. You know non tech folk, they don’t care so long as it works. If you’re lucky, they know enough to hit the button with the power symbol to turn it on, but make sure you have step by step instructions printed out for those that can’t figure it out. I wish that was sarcasm.
In our location it was mostly used for passive tracking of equipment via a scanner on the roof of the truck and tags on the trailers and we didn’t use the software much beyond that. From what I saw of it, it was some native custom application. Used the default Gnome interface and design scheme of the time. Looked to be pretty idiot proof.
When I was working for Averitt Express, a trucking company out of Cookeville, Tn, our yard trucks had computers in them (for yard and dock management) that ran Ubuntu. This was 10ish years ago.
Make it three months. It would take at least that long for the loss of their labor to start being felt across the board. Undocumented immigrants are vital in some of the damnest places and their absence would not e particularly noticeable at first.
To add to this, you might check out some of the free Hugo themes here: https://themes.gohugo.io/tags/portfolio/