at anachronauts.club we use freebsd + molly brown, with warp for feed aggregation. it works pretty well, no complaints and default config is sane. if you've got untrusted users, you'll need to restrict dynamic content.
I, erm, I'm sorry for talking about tech in a place that's meant for good ol' socializing and fun. Please forgive me -- it just looks like the best place to ask at the moment. The Gemini mailing list has a little too much drama for my taste...
So way back when I was running Smog, I used to run a Gemini server. Thing is, I'm a programmer, not a sysadmin. My knowledge about running a secure Internet-facing machine would probably be adequate if this were 2004 or so but it's not. Also, I haven't really enjoyed fiddling with Linux/Unix servers in a long time, and I would rather sodomize myself with a very prickly pineapple than put up with Docker's shenanigans again.
That being said, SDF's Gemini hosting is a little erratic, I'd say. That's okay, it's not like I'm paying for it, but I am considering... you know, paying for it, and running something with a little more uptime.
With that in mind, what's a good Gemini server these days? Smog used to run on Molly Brown -- is that still a good choice today?
What I need is basically:
I know there are many communities that offer Gemini hosting now. Thing is, I know these are volunteer-ran and with limited resources. I was a twelve year-old techie with no money to spend on these things many years ago -- I'd rather not take up a spot that a twelve year-old techie needs today, as long as I can manage to put up a box that doesn't become part of a botnet in five minutes. Plus I'm a foul-mouthed kind of fellow with occasionally unpopular opinions, I'm probably better off running my own server anyway.
Thanks and, uh, again, sorry for bringing up tech stuff in a pub!
at anachronauts.club we use freebsd + molly brown, with warp for feed aggregation. it works pretty well, no complaints and default config is sane. if you've got untrusted users, you'll need to restrict dynamic content.
On an entirely unrelated note I want to say that I didn't know about anachronauts.club and that I am now your number #1 groupie! IRL I've been nursing a small collection of old computers since way before you could get a heart attack looking at ebay prices, and I'm actually kind of professionally involved with retrocomputing, too, so you have no idea how happy I am when I hear about one of these places! Do you guys hang out in an IRC channel somewhere, or do you have a bulletin board, or...? I'd love to drop in some time and say hi!
aww shucks, that's kind. :)
we mostly use server mail, but we don't do smtp exchange with the internet. we might consider opening a whitelist to other similar servers so if you get smog up and running maybe we can peer up.
we don't have an irc set up right now, but i'm going to look into setting one up. i'll get back to you. :)
Oh, no worries, I've already bookmarked anachronauts.club so if any way to pop in and say hi shows up, I'm gonna find out about it and take it :-D.
Oh, cool, thanks!
I'd actually planned to go with FreeBSD for Smog, too, and eventually decided against it thinking that Ubuntu LTS would be a more common target and it would therefore be easier for me to set up a server for a technology I'd only used on the client side before. Big mistake...
Can I bother you with two more questions?
1. I see Molly Brown is not in the ports tree, but I hear it has good support for FreeBSD. I've noticed you have a port at https://anachronauts.club/repos/ports/tree/www/molly-brown -- is that what you're running?
2. Do you run it in a jail? Should I even bother with any of that for a server with no untrusted users (no users other than myself, in fact)? I'm super comfortable with jails, I use them for development all the time, I'm just not sure if this is something that's relevant for deployment in this scenario.
Thank you very much!
I like to talk about tech, it's something fun for me, ha! Even better if I'm having a cold beer 🍻 or a red wine 🍷
When I was 12 years old I was playing with HTTP, Visual Basic, IRC and some other stuff, but not with real servers since they were expensive and we used Dial-up at 56 kbps so having a home server 24/7 was difficult at that time. Now I can play with a VPS, Node, Django, Go, and some other languages/platforms/technologies for the sake of it, or even as a part of my job. So keep it up, I think is a nice journey!
Going back to Gemini, what are you trying to host? Static files... Something created by a script language?
Do you already have a VPS? Is it possible for you to spend 5 USD / month + a domain?
I have my personal domain + VPS for many experiments, so spending about 80 dollars a year is not that bad for the learning and amusement I get.
https://eapl.mxGoing back to Gemini, what are you trying to host? Static files... Something created by a script language?
Static files. The only thing created by a script language is an Atom feed.
I'm definitely OK with a VPS and a domain, I mean, I have both. Thing is, 15 years ago I'd have *so* spent three evenings doing some squeaky-clean OpenBSD chroot + <whatever Gemini server there is> setup. But that's not as fun as it used to be. Based on my last experience of setting up a Docker instance with a Gemini server, I'd say that I can fit tinkering with Docker again on my "fun things to do" list somewhere between "beating myself to a pulp with a small teaspoon" and "drinking cinnamon-flavoured sulphuric acid".
Obviously some amount of pain is unavoidable, I'm just curious if anyone has any advice on minimizing that amount :-).
I don't have any advice for you since I never created a Gemini server, sorry.
What I try to do is avoid Docker and setting up the VPS from scratch (Ubuntu LTS over here), and trying to learn the basics of Firewalls, patching, and such. I find that kind of fun, but boring when has to be bulletproof for public use.