Of the many useful things I could do with my spare time instead I'm setting up a Lemmy instance because why not. The scope of this is definitely greater than any self-hosting I've ever attempted, so please feel free to tell me just how much trouble I'm in. I'm just giving the broad strokes to see if I've made any crucial errors (other than deciding to do this at all).
And if this is a completely wrong place for a post like this or I'm missing data I'm supposed to include I apologize, I probably need a sanity check, in more ways than one.
First limitation, I'll be hosting it on an existing Linux Mint box acting as a file share mostly and occasional gaming PC/movie streaming box. Its hardware is overkill for this, I do not anticipate issues when it is in use. It receives regular updates and weekly reboots, instance will be set to automatically restart. NVMe with loads of space for local storage, RAID SSDs for data offload/backup.
Second limitation, I hate Cloudfare and Oracle. I do not want to use either of them.
Third limitation, money. Cheaper is better. I have a URL picked out and a registrar which will give me the cheapest long term option, in case I actually keep this thing going.
Last limitation, I'm already in over my head so I'll be relying on a lot of googling and probably some chat bots to figure things out as I go through the actual deployment process. What could go wrong?
So, Lemmy hosted on Linux Mint box using Docker containers. ISP is a good one for this I'm told, no CGNAT, largely stable public IP but I'll have a script running in case it does change. Confirmed ports 80/443 are open. Using Caddy for the HTTPS. Closed registration to start, if by some miracle I make it to actually wanting to allow additional users it will not be fully open, and I'll use Brevo for the email SMTP. Security wise I know I'm making it harder for myself by exposing my IP, I'm going to have UFW running and Crowdsec to help keep incoming bad traffic out.
Down the line I'll get Lemmy updates, backups, retention rules in place/automated, and make decisions on federation, etc. Thoughts?
My instance has been online for about a month, the supplied docker-compose.yaml was quite straightforward, had a little headache with Nginx but nothing overly complicated.
The long-con so to speak is federation, you have to subscribe to each community manually to begin federating with them, i have noticed timing issues with other instances such as Lemmy.world and have not been able to resolve them.
I'll write a script you can use to seed with top communities. I already have most the work done.
Interesting. And yeah I'm aware of the federation issue, I was gonna use that to my advantage in terms of my plans to slow roll who to federate to to keep my bandwidth and storage allowances under control. I also know there is a script you can set up which will handle the initial contact to federate automatically.
I tried finding such a script but had no luck. I was able to export my subscription list from sh.itjust.works and imported it on my instance.
I had to unsubscribe and resubscribe to the communities I follow as I was experiencing the ‘Subscribe Pending’ issue but after a little while things seemed to start evening out and becoming a bit more stable.