I’ve tried to figure some of this stuff out but I really don’t know what I’m doing. Most documentation is written with a vocabulary I don’t understand. Tutorials assume a high-level understanding of coding, software, CLI and a bunch of other stuff.
So far I’ve got an old gaming PC with a R7 2700x + 2060 Super and I think maybe it’s overkill. I’ve got TrueNAS running on it but that’s about as far as I got…
Thinking maybe we can have an open Jitsi meeting and just anyone who needs help can get it (myself included 🙂)?
Would anyone be interested in something like that?
E: some people have imagined up some things that I said so let me be clear about what I did not say:
At no time did I insist, beg, or demand that anyone help me.
I did NOT ask anyone to help with a specific issue, nor should I be required to.
I asked if anyone would be willing to help myself and possibly others to get some services running, and I asked to do it in a videoconference setting where we can have a discussion and where you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it, out of respect for both of our time.
If you are not interested, you do not need to come in here and announce it, and you sure as shit do not need to speak for anyone else on whether they will want to. Just keep scrolling.
E2: special thanks to those who actually reached out and offered to help!
You’re probably not going to find someone knowledgeable that’s willing to do open ended support like that, because we all know it turns into a huge time sink. But if you post specifics we can try to help.
The truth is self hosting also involves a lot of self learning. People will help you solve problems, but nobody has time to give free classes.
The truth is self hosting also involves a lot of self learning
I tried self-learning but I explained in the OP why that’s not working out.
But if you post specifics we can try to help.
I don’t have specifics.
When you run into something vocabulary wise you don’t understand, Google is your friend just keep googling and reading to get the gist, Google any error messages too, I’m 43, I’ve been googling my whole life as a big fraud in IT, jk
But seriously Google Google Google has all the answers and as you use it more you hone your search skills to the point where you just scroll past the crap and wham find things right away. The more you search and work with the stuff the better you’ll get way more comfortable. Maybe try and find a local friend who’s good with computers or search that can help you a bit
I’ve helped many friends fix and troubleshoot stuff from time to time, but I’m not anyone’s full time IT, I work on retainer.
I don’t know everything but every day I learn, even stuff I’ll never have to use again.
I do IT consulting Reiners.io , if you want paid help no problem, but it does turn into a huge free time sink, with no reward.
Source: retired 15 year Linux systems engineer and sysadmin, turned consultant at https://reiners.io $60/hr minimum I charge clients much more, including my old boss, who’s at $110/h but I bring my laptop to Hawaii for that guy, so he pays for access to me in 80 hr blocks.
It is freaking expensive and few people will want to do it for free.
Hey can you suggest a good vinyl cutter/sticker printer/plotter/whatever for making small batches of high quality stickers for under $300? $500?
Cricut?
And then if you can’t find help on Google or are confused with a specific problem, THEN ask your specific question here or somewhere similar.
I can Google things for hours and it’s just this rabbit hole of shit I can’t make any sense of.
It is freaking expensive and few people will want to do it for free.
I understand that. I thought maybe there would be someone wanting to help others get started but I totally understand if they don’t, also. I just hear so many people talk about how easy it is.
If you’re confused about a specific term, ask about that specific term, and you’ll get many people eager to help. Sorry nobody wants to get on an open ended video call with a stranger to teach you how to run a server, but that’s just how these forums work. Everyone’s setup is different so there’s not much I could do to help in your video call.
Learning this stuff is hard, don’t let anyone tell you any different. We all went through the same struggles, perhaps for some people that was so long ago that they forgot how hard it was.
If you’re confused about a specific term, ask about that specific term
And we would end up going back and forth for hours instead of just figuring it out in a matter of minutes on a voice chat.
Sorry nobody wants to get on an open ended video call
Speak for yourself. Others have already volunteered. If you don’t want to join, feel free to keep scrolling.
perhaps for some people that was so long ago that they forgot how hard it was.
Seems to be a common thing with tech people.
If you can’t make any sense of it, keep trying. If keep trying isn’t what you want to do, don’t do it. Really, you don’t have to force yourself into this if it’s unintelligible and frustrating. I’ve hit the wall plenty of times, and I keep hitting the wall, sometimes I wish I could just stop while I’m not stressed and going bald.
I do want to keep doing it. I just want to do it in a way that is efficient instead of scowering the web for more information I can’t understand.
Don’t give up! There are a wealth of basic tutorials on Youtube. You just need to find one that works for you, and work up from there.
The problem with someone setting everything up for you is, what do you do when something goes wrong? If you don’t have an understanding of the basics, you’re back to square one of just asking someone to fix it for you. And at that point you’re not really self hosting, you’re just a residential co-lo (datacenter) for your managed service provider (whoever is helping you) that’s doing all the work!
The problem with someone setting everything up for you is, what do you do when something goes wrong?
I’m not asking anyone to do it for me, just to help me do it and help to understand how things work, for exactly that reason
Start by walking us through what you’re trying to do, and where you’ve run into problems.
That’s not what I’m asking for.
We know. What you’re asking for is the wrong to thing to ask for, here in these forums. Aint nobody got time for walking a strqnger through thw entire install process of five or eight different self hosting programs. My own personal process has taken several months and is still ongoing.
Then why did you make this post?
I don’t understand the question. The intention of the post is explained…in the post.
Point 1. If you’re asking someone to donate their time to help you, don’t be surprised if they have a few questions first. Wanting to know more about the exact nature of your problem is a good start to figuring out, for example, if they’re even the right person to assist you.
It doesn’t do you any favours to insist that someone commit to teaching a class over video chat without even being willing to go so far as to give them a syllabus first.
Point 2. When begging for a free ride, don’t complain that the car didn’t come with seat warmers. If you’re going to insist on dictating the manner in which people help you, the result is just going to be that people don’t want to help you.
For instance, after posting my first comment, I actually considered offering to PM or chat on Discord so that we could sort out your problem together. I have since reconsidered; this is, in fact, exactly why people who know how to do this stuff usually aren’t super jazzed about the idea of an open jitsi meeting or similar. You’re going to end up dealing with far too many people who feel entitled to make demands of your time.
I actually like helping people learn about computers. Part of my job involves teaching IT skills, and I genuinely enjoy it. Under the right circumstances, I would be exactly the kind of person you’re looking for. And I genuinely do appreciate your frustration; self-hosting is a mess of bad documentation and incomplete guides full of jargon, poorly explained ideas and assumptions of prior knowledge.
But looking at your behaviour throughout this thread, I don’t think you’re ready to be a student. You’ve been nothing but combative and demanding, while showing absolutely no appreciation for the time that people are taking to try to help you. It’s a bad look, and it just reinforces exactly why people generally prefer to do this stuff at a remove, if at all.
If you’re asking someone to donate their time to help you, don’t be surprised if they have a few questions first.
The entire purpose of my inquiry is to not sit here and waste each others’ time going back and forth for hours on end over text trying to figure it out. It’s for us to be able to have a discussion and so that you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it. If you’re not interested, that’s fine, keep scrolling. No one is trying to twist your arm.
Wanting to know more about the exact nature of your problem is a good start to figuring out
I don’t have an exact problem.
It doesn’t do you any favours to insist that someone commit to teaching a class over video chat
When begging for a free ride, don’t complain that the car didn’t come with seat warmers.
You’re going to end up dealing with far too many people who feel entitled to make demands of your time.
You’ve been nothing but combative and demanding
You’re literally just fabricating all of this. None of that happened. I didn’t “insist”, “beg” or “demand” a damn thing. I simply asked if anyone would be interested or willing. Because, as you’ve said, that’s the sort of thing you enjoy.
I’ve been combative because I’ve almost exclusively been met with hostility for daring to ask such a thing.
The entire purpose of my inquiry is to not sit here and waste each others’ time going back and forth for hours on end over text trying to figure it out. It’s for us to be able to have a discussion and so that you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it.
I only post on forums because if everybody used discord and other non-searchable communication mediums, the internet would be a complete failure, or about as available as peoples secret mushroom spots. I promise you that the issues you face are not original. Everybody else who comes across this thread looking for a good place to start is going to be pissed because there’s only one or two listed, when there could have been an entire thread full of good places to start, with commentary about specific tutorials and why they suck or what parts a new person could get stuck on.
These forums are not just for you to use as a dump to vaguepost and hope someone will spend several hours of their life cheering you on while you figure out how to do stuff. They are for everyone in the thread, and everyone who comes after while looking for similar solutions. Trying to take whatever support you end up getting away from everyone who comes after you is called pulling up the ladder after yourself, and is the exact opposite of why forums exist in the first place.
If people had actually been rude when you asked a basic question, it would be different. But it isn’t. You’re not trying to engage with the way this forums actually works and it really shows. As far as I can see, most everyone here is trying to help. You just don’t want the great help that is being offered. You want an unpaid private tutor who will cheer you on and sometimes give you a tip to make things easier, while you avoid doing things like reading the manual, looking through tutorials, or heaven forbid, googling what aomething is.
When everywhere you go smells like shit, check your shoes.
It doesn’t 🤷 just here. Bye now!
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If you’re not interested, that’s fine, keep scrolling. No one is trying to twist your arm.
Wow I hope English isn’t your first language.
…why is that?
I just love when people are bilingual.
Oh yeah, English is actually my only language, sorry.
Not to be a dick, but to explain why forming the question the way you did will not get you any assistance or responses for that matter.
The truth is, not a single person here went to self-hosting school, we got to where we are because of our love for the craft. I hope this doesn’t discourage you from trying. The high you’ll get from finally solving that one error you’ve been trying to resolve for hours is one I love experiencing over and over again which is why I self-host.
Your self righteous answer, is why Linux will never be a viable solution on the desktop. Or in this case why self hosting will never take off.
why linux will never be a viable solution on the desktop
Has been pretty viable for me for the last 7 years or so.
why self hosting will never take off
Literally who cares, the community stands to gain nothing from another few million novice users who don’t even know or care to learn how to formulate a question or usable bug report.
Lol OK
This shit is so annoying and I’m done explaining why. I gave a detailed account of my situation and what I’m asking for but you want to pick apart the title of my post. Go away.
I guess so. Your question was
Would anyone be interested in something like that?
Which most of us have answered with a clear “no”. So I guess we’re done here.
Which most of us have answered with a clear “no”.
Literally no one has done that. Most of you criticized me for daring to ask the question. If your answer is no, feel free to just move along with your day.
I asked if anyone would be willing to help myself and possibly others to get some services running, and I asked to do it in a videoconference setting where we can have a discussion and where you can see what I’m doing as I’m doing it, out of respect for both of our time.
Sure, I can do that. My rates start at $90/hr, 4hr minimum.
Sorry, I charge $10/reply
You can send it to my Bitcoin wallet:
KekBsodnKhxojHsidkd9nHqisbHsinIjrnnMJJHjeweornva
You want to charge people to help you?
Sorry, I charge $10/reply
You can send it to my Bitcoin wallet:
KekBsodnKhxojHsidkd9nHqisbHsinIjrnnMJJHjeweornva
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IP Internet Protocol IoT Internet of Things for device controllers NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
[Thread #239 for this sub, first seen 24th Oct 2023, 19:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Appreciate that but it doesn’t tell me what they actually are haha
That’s a bot lol
No shit lol
Honestly, Switch to a basic Linux distro and use docker directly.
I ran TrueNAS for a while and it’s just too complex and janky. I dropped back to void (for ZFS) and have a directory of compose files for radar/sonar, jellyfish, mediawiki, Lemmy etc.
Thank you. Someone else also suggested this.
I’d suggest proxmox. Sinple web UI for management, but debian backend. Very powerful virtualization. Supports GPU passthrough, LVMs, ZFS, and a bunch of other stuff out of the box. If you get another machine, you can also put them into a cluster.
Yeah at this point I’m ready to pay someone for help. I wasn’t expecting setting up a mastodon or piped instance in docker to be so hard.
How much?
Lol
It’s not that hard. Go to awesome-selfhosted to have a look at what you’d like to host. Then, go to YouTube and find videos that host said thing. If you don’t find the specific application, watch simpler tutorials deploying containers (most people will use Docker if you’d like) and go from there. Read some documentation on the container runtime and maybe some networking. That’s it.
I’ve already explained why none of that is helpful. If you can point me to tutorials intended for straight beginners I will try that. It isn’t “hard” but it is complicated, and there’s a lot to learn, and I don’t appreciate you downplaying that.
I suppose it feels like an info dump when you’re coming from zero. This community shares a love for hosting and orchestration and it takes a second to get out of that hole. My apologies.
In my opinion, DBTech has some of the easiest tutorials on this subject. Just search for how to set up Docker on YouTube by DBTech. TBH I’d always recommend reading the documentation, Docker devs tell you how to install Docker and he basically follows that. Should be doable if you have a distribution set up. The documentation covers most use cases whilst he just installs on his distribution in the video, but the process should be similar if not the same.
Good luck!
Thank you, I will check out DBTech
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I’ve looked at a lot of channels. There are a bunch by DigitalOcean and Akamai that are just ads for cloud machines.
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I don’t use Google, sorry.
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“Just Google it” is just about the most useless piece of advice anyone can give. I know how to use a search engine. I have used a search engine. I came here after that. This is not helpful.
Since the other people don’t seem too helpful to you, we can gladly setup a meeting and see where it goes :) I don’t have exeprience in all these software like TrueNAS you’re using but I have a lot of experience in a lot of other things, so I’m sure I’ll be able to help!
Thanks. Maybe we can learn some things together and from each other?
DM’ed
If you need something running fast and easy buy a synology nas. Not the best hardware and expensive geat if youi dont have the time to mess around with stuf like unraid etc. There a lots of great guides on setting op docker containers on that. https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/ is a geat example of easy to follow guides.
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TrueNAS is good but has a steepish learning curve for many people, it’s way more oriented towards being a NAS than running services, which can be confusing overkill (only using ZFS for example).
I recently discovered CasaOS which is now my go-to recommendation for people starting off. It is a good combo of “just works” with the ability to tweak for those who are interested in diving deeper.
Proxmox as a host for a VM running Docker is the way to go. You can snapshot and restore things when you mess up, and you can install Proxmox Backup Server alongside to take point in time backups that you can restore to a new VM if you have to. I probably have a couple dozen inactive VMs of various learning projects that I can fire up and play with as the mood takes me.
Well I did find another taker. I can loop you in if you’re interested?
You don’t need to use the cert, but I’ve got a basic setup here that you could get running in docker, then play around with understanding it / adding to it:
Sorry can you explain what I’m looking at here.
A quick docker setup to get you going with a reverse proxy (Traefik) and insights/management (Portainer).
I don’t know what any of those things are :( is there a tutorial?
If you are successful in this, perhaps a twitch channel walking through the basics running on a regular ish basis
What do you mean? Like hosting a Livestream and asking the viewers for help?
I was imagining a “I just wiped my hard drive and flashed the current version of Debian. Let’s get basic services up.”
I wish there was a “hey watch me code/self host” channel that helped noobs see how to approach the problem of starting. Usually their is a “hey watch me code” YouTube that is old enough to have a critical breaking point (some library updated) so a noob finds it impossible.
This will forever be the problem with video tutorials.
Development often moves fairly quickly and videos on most platforms can’t be edited after posting.
The result is your best outcome is if they make an update video to address the changes. Unfortunately that’s also one of the least likely outcomes.
Otherwise the options are:
- Take the video down and lose any income it generates
- Put a note in the description linking to a document addressing the updates
- Keep the outdated video up and keep making money from it
If you’re lucky you might get option 2, but in most cases you’re gonna end up with option 3.
In the vast majority of cases content creators aren’t going to pull or replace a profitable video even if it becomes outdated.
It’s a tough situation, I can’t really blame them for doing what is in their best interest as a business.
Ideally you should try to get comfortable with non-video tutorials.
In truenas go to apps, pick one, and click install.
Also, you may want to add truecharts repository (assuming you’re using truenas scale)
https://truecharts.org/manual/SCALE/guides/getting-started/#adding-truecharts
In truenas go to apps, pick one, and click install.
Not helpful.
Also, you may want to add truecharts repository (assuming you’re using truenas scale)
This is very helpful, thanks.
Guess what all of that is on the getting started page for truenas. Instead of reading that you made a post here.
Why?
Once again, I explained why in the OP.
It took me an hour and a half just to get logged into the server because their documentation is outdated. That’s something a knowledgeable user could have worked out in 5 seconds.
Just from a cursory glance, here are some advanced concepts on the first paragraph of the “getting started” that I don’t understand:
- SSH
- “web shell”
- “go to system --> advanced” where!?
- “link aggregations”
- VLAN
- “default gateway”
You understand what I’m saying? These documents assume a certain level of knowledge that I don’t have and thus cannot make any sense of them.
I’m happy to help if anyone needs help with docker and/or Linux stuff. (I’ll probably try to convert you to Linux, the os to rule them all. You’ve been warned) Wont necessarily be everything or set it all up for you, but enough knowledge to get you started and able to learn more yourself is doable
For op, that setup is likely overkill, most stuff will use more ram than cpu and very few self hosted apps will use the GPU at all (Plex and jellyfin are the only ones that come to mind). Only hurt to it being overkill is a higher power usage than a smaller setup, but if you already have it running full time then it’s unlikely to make a different
I’ll probably try to convert you to Linux
I’m already running Linux/TrueNAS so that’s okay.
Wont necessarily be everything or set it all up for you, but enough knowledge to get you started and able to learn more yourself is doable
Yeah I’m hoping if someone can walk me through a couple of services I can learn from that and just apply it to other products.
For op, that setup is likely overkill
Hoping to host some public servers/websites that hopefully others can use. Also I’m not sure I could sell this thing and buy something else and do better for the same money. I should monitor the consumption though…
I’m already running Linux/TrueNAS so that’s okay.
Wont necessarily be everything or set it all up for you, but enough knowledge to get you started and able to learn more yourself is doable
Yeah I’m hoping if someone can walk me through a couple of services I can learn from that and just apply it to other products.
For op, that setup is likely overkill
Hoping to host some public servers/websites that hopefully others can use. Also I’m not sure I could sell this thing and buy something else and do better for the same money. I should monitor the consumption though…
In terms of electricity consumption, it’s still not going to be huge, just was noted in case you wanted to go smaller. You can almost certainly go smaller, but at the same time if you already have the hardware it’s not going to be useful to sell it second hand and buy new hardware that has less performance.
Hosting static websites at home is fine if you really want to, but for anything dynamic and/or that will have a lot of users, get a vps (basically a server that you pay for storage and compute resources on and can use remotely how you like, including hosting stuff like mastodon and lemmy instances)
I have zero interest in having someone else host my services but thank you.
