this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
133 points (97.8% liked)

Selfhosted

61335 readers
512 users here now

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:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. 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.

  8. 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!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world
133
I need a new hobby, I'm going to set up my own Lemmy instance. Am I an idiot? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
77 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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?

(page 2) 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ArborNode@lemmy.shutes.org 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I did a very similar setup very recently. Its not bad. I did try piefed first as some people suggested, but had some issues and it felt like it just wasn't ready yet. I switched to self hosting lemmy and really like it. I also went with Brevo for email (I started with sendgrid, would not recommend).

Main difference for me is I am using cloudflare (they are my registrar and they allow me to deal with the CGNAT at no extra cost which you don't have to deal with not to mention a pretty solid WAF for free tier). You may want to implement a WAF of some kind to keep the federation in check. I federate both lemmy and a matrix home server and it doesn't eat up too much bandwidth.

I also like saving money, so a VPS is something I was trying to avoid. Personally, I don't think the VPS does a much for securing your home network as people are trying to say here. It is another layer of security, but it's not a panacea. Not saying I'll never try it though.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BuckFutter@timeyak.com 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Best of luck to you!!! I just went through this last week and wow it was a challenge. I went the docker route not using ansible…and yah by far the worst install I ever went through of all the self-hosting projects I have setup…but my setup was largely complicated by the fact I had an Apache reverse proxy setup in front of the nginx proxy that has an example config provided…finally figured it all out, but yah fun times 😂 happy to help if you get stuck.

[–] tko@tkohhh.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not sure what your solution was, but I eliminated the reverse proxy from the official compose stack and configured my existing reverse proxy to point directly at the lemmy containers. It works well for me.

[–] BuckFutter@timeyak.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks. Yah that was what I tried to accomplish using Apache but couldn’t get the correct proxypass statements in Apache that would do the correct passing depending on the header received. Tried asking an LLM for help but never got it to work, so ended up doing a basic/straight pass through apache to a local VM running nginx as an outer proxy which proxy’s to the nginx internal proxy…its messy as all hell but it works 🤷

[–] tko@tkohhh.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't know enough about Apache to say one way or the other, but based on what you described, you SHOULD be able to get rid of the internal proxy. Since both the inner and outer are both NGINX, getting the settings right shouldn't be a problem.

But, on the other hand, if it works it works!

[–] BuckFutter@timeyak.com 2 points 1 day ago

Good call. Perhaps on a rainy day I’ll take another crack at it…but yah the ports are exposed through docker so yah, makes sense. Thanks and have a great day!

[–] AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

One of my earlier deployment plans had me using Ansible, then a bot aided revision had me remove it since I'm doing a single machine install and a fairly straightforward process. From my understanding I'll get a better learning experience not using it so I figured that was better.

[–] BuckFutter@timeyak.com 2 points 1 day ago

Yah i had never used it either, alot of the tutorials I found suggested it, and what threw me for a loop and was the ultimate Aha! moment for me was there is an ansible version and a non ansible version for the docker configs with different options in each, and the ultimate key thing I overlooked is on github, I kept using the “main” development branch which had changes that didn’t work with the stable .19 version. Switching to the .19 branch on GitHub and referencing those configs made it all click

[–] valar@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thought about doing something very similar, I'll be curious to hear the feedback and your experience

[–] AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

If at some point in the near future you step outside and hear a weird screaming sound echoing around the globe, that's me.

[–] aReallyCrunchyLeaf@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (13 children)

You should not host anything that's going to be public facing on your home network in 2026, period. Get a cheap German VPS and go nuts with it. There's simply too much at stake opening up your home router/firewall for such little gain. Plus, being a residential IP behind NAT might just make it straight up impossible.

I host my own email and a matrix server. I would never think of exposing my home network to the internet. I use tailscale to get into the homelab, anything exposed to the net lives somewhere far, far away.

I use netcup for my email and matrix. It's extremely reasonable.

[–] valar@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I also don't get this fear. Assuming you aren't blindly exposing your entire filesystem or opening tons of ports what is the risk?

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] artyom@piefed.social -1 points 15 hours ago

You're an idiot of you don't use PieFed instead 😃

[–] amio@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Not necessarily, but why choose a project that needs interfacing with an existing ecosystem where it can mostly only be noise?

If you want to deal with a complicated mess of a system as a project, you could always grab Arch

[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How much RAM do you have available? Do you have an unlimited internet connection?

[–] AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

32gb, not unlimited but good enough that I am willing to proceed, then limit bandwidth usage through restrictive federation.

[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 2 points 22 hours ago

Great, that should be plenty! Smart to restrict, federation indeed results in a ton of traffic :D

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Why not host a PieFed instance instead? Similar but more features and easier to maintain. Does have some scraper countermeasures built in, so maybe you don't even need Cloudflare. Also as a next project after that, you could learn Python and contribute to the project.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›