this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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From reddit selfhosted: What do you wish you knew from the start (www.reddit.com)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I saw this post today on Reddit and was curious to see if views are similar here as they are there.

  1. What are the best benefits of self-hosting?
  2. What do you wish you would have known as a beginner starting out?
  3. What resources do you know of to help a non-computer-scientist/engineer get started in self-hosting?
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I would've wished

  • don't rush things into production.
  • dont offer a service to a friend without really knowing and having the experience to keep it up when needed.
  • dont make it your life. The services are there to help you, not to be your life.
  • use docker. Podman is not yet ready for mainstream, in my experience. When the services move to podman officially it's time to move. Just because jellyfin offers official documentation for it, doesn't mean it'll work with podman (my experience)
  • just test all services with the base docker install. If something isn't working, there may be a bug or two. Report if it is a bug. Hunt a bug down if you can. maybe it's just something that isn't documented (well enough) for a beginner.
  • start on your own machine before getting a server. A pi is enough for lightweight stuff but probably not for a fast and smooth experience with e.g. nextcloud.
  • backup.
  • search for help. If not available in a forum. ask for help. Dont waste many many hours if something isnt working. But research it first and read the documentation.
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Podman is not yet ready for mainstream, in my experience

My experience varies wildly from yours, so please don't take this bit as gospel.

Have yet to find a container that doesn't work perfectly well in podman. The options may not be the same. Most issues I've found with running containers boil down to things that would be equally a problem in docker. A sample:

  • "rootless" containers are hard to configure. It can almost always be fixed with "--privileged" or some combination of permission flags. This would be equally true for docker; the only meaningful difference is podman tries to push everything into rootless. You don't have to.
  • network filesystems cause headaches, especially smbfs + sqlite app. I've had to use NFS or ext4 inside a network-mounted image for some apps. This problem is identical for docker.
  • container networking--for specific cases--needs to managed carefully. These cases are identical for docker.

And that's it. I generally run things once from the podman command line, then use podlet to create a quadlet out of that configuration, something you can't do with docker. If you are having any trouble with running containers under podman, try the --privileged shortcut, see that it works, and then double back if you think you really need rootless.