Interested in setting up an instance with a spare laptop
3 years ago by BOMBS to c/selfhosted
I have a spare laptop running Linux Mint. I would like to try running my own instance and sharing it with a few users to help out and for the experience. Below are the specs. Do you think it will be powerful enough, and if so, how many users would it be able to handle? I could restrict uploading of media if that would make a considerable impact.
Dell Inspiron 15-5000 CPU: Intel Core i5-5200U, 2 cores, 4 threads RAM: 8GB Storage: SanDisk SSD Plus 1TB
You can always do stuff like proxy through cloudflare. My instance is proxied.
You could get a second static IP address from your ISP to keep it isolated from your home network. That may require additional hardware.
So yeah, probably cheaper to use a cloud based solution. Unless you want the experience of setting that stuff up.
What exactly do you mean with "potentially attract unwanted attention to your IP"? Any public IP attracts automated bot probing, regardless of what you host on it... and the rest is pretty much FUD by VPN snake-oil vendors.
Just keep in mind that if your server dies, or you stop running it for any reason, all the content and user accounts are gone. It doesn't really feel like something that should be taken lightly.
Small instances don't seem to require anything major, I'm running mine on a VM with 4c/6gb ram/256gb disk with no issues- it's just a few Docker pods. Just make sure you use a dynamic DNS provider if you're hosting from home, as valid SSL is required to connect to the federation.
I've got all my home services routed through ZeroTier to Nginx Proxy Manager on a cloud VM, so my home IP is pretty well hidden. As long as nobody is uploading illegal content to your instance you should be fine though.
Yes, you can use the Cloudflare proxy and update your dynamic IP with ddclient: https://developers.cloudflare.com/...
A good frame of reference would be the VPS that lemmy.world is running on imo. Looks like they upgraded to a 4 core/16gb setup to handle the influx of users, so if your instance is running under 1k users, I believe those specs would be sufficient.
If it starts chugging, I wonder how well it'd work to run the server on the laptop and the DB on a VPS (or vice versa).
I suppose it depends. An 4/8gb RPi 4 may be able to handle a smalll instance, keeping in mind that a 2 core/4gb VPS has sufficed for most instances until the recent influx. My concern with using one would be primarily with storage capacity and speeds, but iirc, there's a SATA hat you can get to connect drives directly (as opposed to external USB storage).
That's a good point. My entire household, which is just me, average's about 500 Mbps download and 25 MBps upload. Is that pretty low for a server?
Probably a dumb question, but how does hosting your own instance work? I'd love to help but do I then need to provide content? Or is it more of an admin type situation?
do I then need to provide content?
No. You manage the server, and manage people registering. If it is enabled, they create communities (I.e. subreddits) and provide content. They can also use other server communities via federation.
I am not sure how hosting your own instance helps anyone thought. It's fun and it let you own/host your data, but it's not something that help the fediverse unless you have a lot of users which would be too much to the other instances?
You will need to fine-tune the database a bit, but generally speaking this hardware should be sufficient for a medium sized instance < 1000 members or so. What kind of connection do you have? Lemmy itself is not very bandwidth heavy, but image storage and remote access can be somewhat problematic if you have a very slow upload speed.
@lemmy.world
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@lemmy.world
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
Be civil.
No spam.
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
Submission headline should match the article title.
No trolling.
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
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I actually have an interest in doing this as well. One concern though. Wouldn't standing up a Lemmy instance on you own network and federating potentially attract unwanted attention to your IP? Would it be better to host on a VPS instead?
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