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This newbie who just celebrated 100 days of #selfhosting was able to install #Apache and #Varnish on her #Ubuntu VPS (to prevent the "Mastodon Hug of Death" for link preview cards on her self-hosted Ghost blog). She's very proud of herself for all the sudo commands she successfully ran today. And she's weirded out talking about herself in the third person, so: I did it YAY.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this Linux / self-hosting journey I'm on. Thank you for all your support & encouragement ❤️

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in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

love that you are taking us on this journey with you. I would like to enter the realm of self-hosting too and its very inspiring to see you doccument so much of the process.
in reply to wakest ⁂

@liaizon aw thank you! It means a lot coming from you.

Well, after my PeerTube miniseries I will write about what it's like to self-host with the help of #YunoHost. It's very very easy to do (including updating / maintaining things). I'm self-hosting Friendica, GoToSocial and Pixelfed thanks to YunoHost.

My self-hosted Ghost blog is on another VPS and a whole different story - pure command line prompts for that one. Trickier but very satisfying 🤗

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

I don't know if you've looked into it, but I like using nginx with docker. If you run nginx-proxy, in combination with acme-companion, you can spin up any number of domains on it. This includes stuff like "git.mydomain.net" and "social.mydomain.net" and...in addition to otherdomain.dev. Each time you do this, acme-companion goes and registers for and sets up https from letsencrypt. AND you have set yourself up behind a reverse proxy, which adds a bit of security.
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

Nice! Glad I can occasionally chime in and then ghost you for a few weeks before chiming in again on another subject 🙃
in reply to Ethan Sholly

@shollyethan haha well I’m super grateful for your encouragement Ethan! I would have probably given up if it hadn’t been for your input
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

I had to set up some #Varnish config for another reason: I needed a reverse proxy to redirect the traffic to different containers. Performance gain appeared as a side effect 😁
Did you come to use #Hitch as TLS proxy too?
in reply to François Galea

@zerkman I have no idea what Hitch is so please do tell ! I’m very very green and I may give the impression of expertise but I’m not a sysadmin and I barely know what I’m doing. I’m mostly copying and pasting commands in Terminal 😅
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

Basically, Hitch manages all the encrypted TLS traffic (the security layer that is being used by HTTPS), then you don't need to manage encryption on the apache/nginx side.

Being able to handle all your private keys in a single place is very comfortable.

It might be possible your hosting service is already managing encryption for you, that being the reason you don't actually have to bother about that.

varnish-software.com/developer…

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

you are on a fast track to total sysadmin expert here!

I've dealt a bit with Varnish but it was some time ago. it did work very well!

in reply to Santiago

@sanzky haha the best compliment, thanks! ☺️

And yes I’m really liking Varnish

in reply to thecoffemaker

hell yah! put all your family and close friends out of WhatsApp's reach :D
in reply to Isadora 🏳️‍⚧️

@isadora @thecoffemaker I already initiated a mass migration to Signal in Jan 2020 for family and friends (to keep in touch with me - cause I was OUT).

But they all still use WhatsApp (in addition to Signal) 😕

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

completely abandon WhatsApp is an almost impossible mission :( Local businesses, govern services, banks and a lot of people and institutions end up forcing us to keep a WhatsApp account... but the fact they have an alternative is fantastic!

I'm also a "forced" WhatsApp user, but my family and close friends are using XMPP to keep up with me and these 16 people have all my heart to accept talk to me by my own messenger that I lovely call isaCloud Messenger 😁

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

@isadora LoL yeah... I tell them to not use Mark's #xmpp but mine. Or do they know or have direct access to that guy? or trust more in him than me ? 🤣
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

@isadora and then five years later you recommend them to use an amazing tech which will let them not only use their mobiles but also all their devices to talk with you 🤗 plus they will have access to the amazing federated community of #xmpp
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

Honestly, I am in awe! Great job.
(Hows the haircut? I did mine the other day and made a mess of it.)
in reply to Ellie Kennard

@elliek thanks!

Re: the haircut is a bit messy but it’s hard to notice because I have long wavy hair (it could be a style the unevenness) 😅

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

For me it's the fringe only (bangs) as I also have long hair. But Steven says it looks great. He would, of course! I made a better job of his.
Have a great weekend Elena!
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

I remember those early days with fondness (and a bit of exasperation as well). After decades of self-hosting almost everything I needed over time, I'm relaxing in retirement watching everyone else doing it now.
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

I love how you went from "hey this is a neat social media site" to running linux servers and stuff!

Are you mostly driven by the value of the Fediverse or do you just have plenty of energy fully dive into anything you get interested in?

in reply to calvin 🛋️

@calvin haha thanks! I talked about my motivation here: elenarossini.com/2024/11/the-r…
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

hey, congratulations! I used to be a big Varnish guy, in the pre-HTTPS-everywhere days. I know that magical feeling when you get the rules working just right and see performance take off like a cheetah. 🤠🍺👍
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

hi! That is great! I don’t think I’d have leveled up so fast by myself

If you ever find yourself in need of performance optimization, I put up some tips over here, and some of them might be useful:
github.com/GuillaumeRossolini/…

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

I love reading about your progress.
Going from dipping a cautious toe on the Mastodon beach to plunging head first into the Marinara Trench of Linux and Fediverse self-hosting.
And evangelising about it in such a great accessible way.
You have a lot of stuff to be proud of.