What self hosting feels like (It's painful, please help 🥲)

Comments

• ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah the documentation (if it even exists) is usually clearly written by people intimately familiar with the project and then never reviewed to make sure it makes sense for people unfamiliar with it.

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  • SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Relevant xkcd

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    • wick@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Bold of you to assume I know how to read!

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  • teft@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is why Technical Writer is a full time job.

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    • Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s also why the humanities are important. Stemlords who brag about not doing literature classes write terrible documentation.

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  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “set all environment variables”

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    • mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      More recently its go to discord for the env…no joke.

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  • AstralPath@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The mistake is the assumption of a certain level of end user knowledge.

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    • Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You have to assume some level of end user knowledge, otherwise every piece of documentation would start with “What a computer does” and “How to turn your computer on.”

      I’ve found the best practice is to list your assumptions at the top of the article with links to more detailed instructions.

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    • GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Why’s that a mistake? Not everything is built for a novice

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  • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is why I did a “walkthrough test” when I had to write documentation on this sort of thing. I’m a terrible technical writer, so this shit is necessary for me.

    I grabbed my friend who knows enough about computers to attempt this, but not enough about infrastructure to automatically know what I meant when I was too vague.

    Took two revisions, but the final document was way easier to follow at the end

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s why blog posts rock. Most popular projects will have a dozen blog posts for different configurations. For example, when looking to set up NextCloud, I found docs for almost all combinations of the following:

    • Apache and Nginx configuration
    • running through Docker or directly on the host
    • MariaDB and Postgres configs (and SQLite, with proper disclaimers)
    • Collabora and OnlyOffice config

    It does take some knowledge of each of the above if you need one of the few configs that’s not available on a blog post, and some of the posts are outdated, but with a bit of searching almost everything is documented by someone on the internet.

    This shouldn’t be necessary (official docs should be more comprehensive), but at least it’s available.

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    • cron@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’d rather have a great documentation than five different blog posts, where some of them might be outdated, wrong or insecure (and you only find out later).

      But yes, they are helpful and easily available for popular software.

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    • harsh3466@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Okay, please point me to the blog posts that helped you with collabora/onlyoffice. Thanks have NEVER been able to get that to work with my nextcloud (currently using the Docker AIO).

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  • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Reminds me of the time I asked a question about a Magic: The Gathering card tomy local game store’s Facebook page. The card was Sublime Archangel. I asked what happened if it gave a creature Exalted that already had one. Someone sarcastically replied that it already says it on the card. I was a new player, how was I supposed to parse the phrase “If a creature has multiple instances of exalted, each triggers separately”? For all I knew that could mean that they didn’t stack because they would need to trigger together. I didn’t have the vocabulary to understand those things.

    I try to remember this when explaining what I might believe are simple concepts to people because that person really upset me.

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  • hperrin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think it’s (just) that. It’s also a different skill set to write documentation that it is to write code, and generally in these kind of open source projects, the people who write the code end up writing the documentation. Even in some commercial projects, the engineers end up writing the docs, because the higher ups don’t see that they’re different skill sets.

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  • marcos@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s just sloppiness.

    The information that familiarity gives you is “WTF does this field means”, and it’s the only thing that’s actually there. How you get a value and how a value is formatted are things no amount of expertise will save you from having to tell the computer, and thus you can’t just forget about.

    (And let me guess, the software recommended install is a docker image?)

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• AstralPath@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Honestly, as a newbie to Linux I think the ratio of well documented processes vs. “draw the rest of the fucking owl” is too damn high.

  The rule seems to be that CLI familiarity is treated as though its self-evident. The exception is a ground-up documented process with no assumptions of end user knowledge.

  If that could be resolved I think it would make the Linux desktop much more appealing to wider demographics.

  That said, I’m proud to say that I’ve migrated my entire home studio over to linux and have not nuked my system yet. Yet… Fortunately I have backups set up.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Linux on the desktop almost never needs CLI interaction though. Maybe you’ll need to copy/paste a command from the internet to fix some sketchy hardware, but almost everything works OOTB these days.

    However, self-hosting isn’t a desktop Linux thing, it’s a server Linux thing. You can host it on your desktop, but as soon as you do anything remotely server-related, CLI familiarity is pretty much essential.

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    • AstralPath@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That depends on your use case for desktop linux of course. For me, yabridge is the tool I needed to run VSTs on Linux. Its CLI only as far as I know.

      Don’t get me wrong; I’m not afraid of the CLI. Its just some tools are assuming the end user is a server admin or someone with deeper than the upper crust knowledge of how Linux works.

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    • Damage@feddit.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I always update via CLI 'cause most GUI tools are slow and buggy, so…

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  • hactar42@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Don’t forget the situations where you find a good blog post or article that you can actually follow along until halfway through you get an error that the documentation doesn’t address. So you do some research and find out that they updated the commands for one of the dependency apps, so you try to piece together the updated documents with the original post, until something else breaks and you just end up giving up out of frustration.

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    • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That sounds an awful lot like modifying an ESP32 script I’ve been trying to follow from a YouTube tutorial published a while back. Research hasn’t uncovered anything for me to troubleshoot the issue so it’s a really shit experience.

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    • Archer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Pre-systemd tutorials 💀

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  • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    CLI familiarity is fine. CD, Nano, mkdir, rm. I am proficient with that. But I am not necessarily proficient with Docker (went with it because it worked nicely for another thing which was well documented and very straight forward). It’s just I’m trying to self host stuff. Some things like Wordpress and Immich are straightforward. Some things aren’t like Matrix and Mastodon. Lemmy is also notoriously bad.

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  • desentizised@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think if you’re talking wider demographics your model OSs are (obviously) Windows and macOS. People buy into that because CLI familiarity isn’t required. Especially with Apple products everything revolves around simplicity.

    I do dream of a day when Linux can (at least somewhat) rival that. I love Linux because I am (or consider myself) intricately familiar with it and I can (theoretically) change every aspect about it. But mutability and limitless possibilities are not what makes an OS lovable to the average user. I think the advent of immutable Linux distros is a step in the right direction for mass adoption. Stuff just needs to work. Googling for StackOverflow or AskUbuntu postings shouldn’t ever be necessary when people just want to do whatever they were doing on Windows with limited technical knowledge.

    However on another note, if you’re talking a home studio migration, not sure what that entails, but it sounds rather technical. I don’t want to be the guy to tell you that CLI familiarity is simply par for the course. Maybe your work shouldn’t require terminal interaction. Maybe there is a certain gap between absolutely basic linux tutorials and the more advanced ones like you suggest. Yet what I do want to say is that if you want to do repairwork on your own car it’s not exactly like that is supposed to be an accessible skill to acquire. Even if there are videos explaining step by step what you need to do, eventually you still need to get your own practice in. Stuff will break. We make mistakes and we learn from them. That is the point I’m trying to get at. Not all knowledge can be bestowed from without. Some of it just needs to grow organically from within.

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  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We hold these truths to be self evident

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    • fubbernuckin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If only i knew the truths 😞

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• caseyweederman@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Step one: use Dendrite instead.
  Step two: come back and help me set up my Dendrite instance, it’s definitely not easier.

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  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Step one: email must be much easier, I’ll just make an email server instead.

    Step two: screw this, I’m writing letters and posting them.

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    • Archer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Isn’t running your own SMTP server effectively impossible nowadays?

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• iamjackflack@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Am I the only one in this thread that too this as it’s asking for a clear text credential which is a terrible idea?

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  • vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A temporary one that you’re expected to remove as soon as you’ve created the admin user(s) you need, but yes. It should only be there during initial setup and ideally removed before the server is ever exposed to the internet.

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    • iamjackflack@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes because having a user remember to do something is a great line of defense, better than encrypting it from the get go. It should just be encrypted in the file.

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• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Here’s some more of the owl, the official docs: element-hq.github.io/…/config_documentation.html#…

  So add this to your matrix config:

  registration_shared_secret: <PRIVATE STRING>

  I’m guessing this string can be whatever you want it to be.

  But yeah, I agree in general, some of the docs can be pretty opaque. For example, I wanted to configure NextCloud w/ Collabora in Docker, and I kept getting errors when trying to do what a few sites recommended. I ended up figuring it out, but only through trial and error. I’m going to go through the same pain this weekend when I try out ownCloud Infinite Scale up and running to compare.

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  • EmoPolarbear@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I had very similar experiences with OCIS. Got it all set up following the quick start guide, found extremely odd and unacceptable behaviour with storage space ballooning, start troubleshooting and find “oh you had to do this, this and this manually, it’s in the docs” It is in the docs, but never referenced by any other part of the docs. Because why would you mention the thing that the admin must manually set up in 100% of installs in your setup guide?

    Anyway I’ve become that guy ranting on the internet that I don’t want to be. So just so you don’t suffer as much as I did; you have to create scheduled tasks via cron or your preference of scheduler to clean your uploads folder and data blobs. This also did not fix my specific issue and I ended up giving up on OCIS and sticking to Nextcloud.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Huh, thanks!

      I’m going to run both in parallel for a month or so before trying to get my SO to use it so I can better estimate the WAF. So far, NextCloud is good enough, but it’s kinda slow (and I have Redis configured) despite being on pretty beefy hardware (Ryzen 1700 w/ 16GB RAM). I really hate PHP, so I’d prefer a project I can contribute to if needed. I worked w/ Go for almost 10 years, so OCIS would be a natural fit, but I’d still contribute patches for PHP if that really was the best tool for the job. But I’m not going to get involved unless the project already does what I need (my contributions would be for smaller bug fixes).

      But yeah, the OCIS docs look kinda mediocre from the little I’ve read of them. But at least I don’t need to mess w/ PHP config most likely and can hopefully just forward HTTP requests to it.

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  • douglasg14b@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah that’s the problem is guessing what they meant.

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• cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Matrix and its implementations like Synapse have a very intimidating architecture (I’d go as far as to call most of the implementations somewhat overengineered) and the documentation ranges from inconsistent to horrific. I ran into this particular situation myself, Fortunately this particular step you’re overthinking it. You can use any random string you want. It doesn’t even have to be random, just as long as what you put in the config file matches. It’s basically just a temporary admin password.

  Matrix was by far the worst thing I’ve ever tried to self-host. It’s a hot mess. Good luck, I think you’re close to the finish line.

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  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    funnily there’s an… ansible i think? project that makes selfhosting synapse easy as fuck, you basically just go “ansible deploy synapse” or whatever the syntax is and it does almost everything for you.

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  • u_tamtam@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Matrix seemed interesting right until I got to self hosting it. Then, getting to know it from up close, and the absolute trainwreck that the protocol is, made me love XMPP. Matrix has no excuse for being so messy and fragile at this point. You do you, but I decided that it isn’t worth my sysadmin time (especially when something like ejabberd is practically fire and forget).

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  • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I still have to sort out having a different server name to the access name so I can use the domain as well. Do I just put a field into the config like the rest? Can it go anywhere?

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ok now it’s asking me to serve a “.well_known” file like… How?

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• Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  update: It’s all working perfectly!

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• Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I write technical documentation and training materials as part of my job, and the state of most open source documentation makes me want to stab people with an ice pick.

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• Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Dearest ChatGPT, What the fuck is a shared secret?

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  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    As an LLM, I don’t truly understand the notion of sharing, but I can point you to a few resources that may help you understand more. It’s important to remember that human interaction is complex and varied, and different people will have different opinions.

    Here are some ideas to get you started.

    1. “Sharing is Caring”. “Sharing is Caring” is a popular phrase to explain the meaning of sharing. If you really care about your secret, that way you are sharing it with the loved ones in your life.
    2. Valuable things, such as companies, are often divided into shares. If you divide your secret and sell parts of it to different people on the internet, it becomes a shared secret.
    3. “A problem shared is a problem halved.” This is another popular phrase, showing that if you halve your secret, i.e. make it smaller, or less secret, then you are sharing it.

    Overall, humans value both secrets and sharing as a way to build and strengthen community. A shared secret is the ultimate expression of humanity in community.

    I hope that answers your question. If there’s anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

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    • roguetrick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      AI couldn’t even bullshit as good as this and that’s all it’s for.

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  • ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s the thing you only tell your “ride-or-die bitch” server.

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  • Natanael@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    An application password, basically

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• atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s not their job to teach you how to use docker.

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• raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  you lost me at “docker”. The only people using docker are morons and those that trust software by morons.

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  • Isoprenoid@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hey! That’s Mr Moron to you.

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    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I have no mistress, and I know no misters.

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• jqubed@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I haven’t done any programming in over 20 years, but I think I can make a contribution to projects by trying to improve documentation, once I start using some projects

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• Batbro@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Legit, I run Synapse, the registration shared secret is just a random string you supply and add it to the home server y’all

  Then you use that string to create users by API.

  Idonno, felt straight forward to me

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  • el_abuelo@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Who is ymal?

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    • lud@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A dude who’s very picky about whitespace.

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    • baatliwala@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Didn’t he just win the Euros at 17

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  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    the documentation is just missing clearly stating that fact, though from what i recall i think that might be said in the config file?

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• sj_zero ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not sayin nothin, but you might want to look at Matrix Conduit. you won't want to keep it open, but it's much easier to set up and it uses a tiny amount of the resources. Synapse kills the server I'm running both conduit and lotide on just fine.
• Mellow12@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Old I.T. Proverb: Documentation is like sex. Even bad documentation is better than no documentation at all.

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• todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I recently set up Synapse just to play around with the protocol, and I do not remember this instruction at all. Where did you get this?

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• electric_nan@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah, I can’t fuck with Docker either. Check out Yunohost if you want something that is actually easy to get up and running.

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  • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I want to self host.

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    • electric_nan@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yunohost is self hosting. You install Debian on your computer/server at home and run the Yunohost setup script.

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• anamethatisnt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Alternatively, you can create new users from the command line.
  This can be done as follows:

  If synapse was installed via pip, activate the virtualenv as follows (if Synapse was installed via a prebuilt package, register_new_matrix_user should already be on the search path):

  cd ~/synapse
  source env/bin/activate
  synctl start # if not already running
  Run the following command:
  register_new_matrix_user -c homeserver.yaml
  This will prompt you to add details for the new user, and will then connect to the running Synapse to create the new user. For example:

  New user localpart: erikj
  Password:
  Confirm password:
  Make admin [no]:
  Success!

  This process uses a setting registration_shared_secret, which is shared between Synapse itself and the register_new_matrix_user script.
  It doesn’t matter what it is (a random value is generated by --generate-config), but it should be kept secret, as anyone with knowledge of it can register users, including admin accounts, on your server even if enable_registration is false.

  element-hq.github.io/synapse/…/installation.html

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• GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What’s confusing here? Break down the steps and parts of the command

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• TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  (It’s painful, please help 🥲)

  Yes, cause you’re using way too much Docker. lol

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  • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is the second thing I’m running on docker

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    • TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yep, too much docker. 😂

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• dantheclamman@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I have to set literally everything up again on a new microSD for my Pi because the apt-get repositories no longer support the Raspbian version I’m on. I’m not mad; good for security to update, but I don’t have half a day free anytime soon for it.

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• cheddar@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t understand what isn’t clear here?

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  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    it’s unclear what the shared secret is.

    it’s actually just literally any string you want, but they should tell you that fact in the same paragraph as when it’s relevant…

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• jay@mbin.zerojay.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So you added the secret to the file and restarted the docker container, right?

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  • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Which config file does it go in? Where does it go in that file? Do you literally just put “registration_shared_secret” or does it need a value? What is the syntax of setting the value? Does it accept spaces, special characters, etc.?

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    • Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How do I restart synapse…

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