Hey y’all,

So I keep having this intrusive though that I SO BADLY want to get my anti slop, anti corporate brainwash friends off of fb and start our own social area (with blow and hookers. Actually forget the blow).

My issues: most of them aren’t tech savvy and my setup would have to be solid with little issues. I never post on fb but I basically would Make 1 post inviting everyone to it.

I have a couple synology nas setups. Neither are open to the internet. I have some spare computers as well that could run the server fine.

I know I could potentially just make a server from one of the public instances of matrix but I don’t trust that and it’d be a nightmare if that one went down or something and we had to move again.

Realistically I’d probably get like 10 people to join me. Just a place for local community to hang out and share events etc.

I keep getting stuck on how exactly to go about it. Like I think I’d need tailscale and docker (still dont get what docker really is). I have used tailscale briefly on mobile and it seems to work. But idk. I would also be fine paying a modest sum a year for some pro to host it if that is smarter…

  • Spite_By_Design_LLC@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Same same but no VPS here. I use Tailscale to reach the self hosted XMPP instance, which is containerized. Clients can only reach the XMPP server (directly when on LAN, as white listed devices on Tailscale when not).

    It works. The bottleneck is Tailscale, weird issues with Android VPN automation switch over (something about my wife’s Samsung phone really does not like Tailscale. She’s also worried it increases battery drainage when left on) and the fact that using Tailscale instead of VPS is not the moral victory I had hoped for. There’s headscale I suppose, but then I have to deal with self signed certs and…then, and then and then…

    It never ends. Problems never end.

    I console myself with the fact I’ve made an E2E private family chat service that works without a public-facing server, yet remains accessible outside home with a click of a button. That’s a win.

    The problem is that I want it to work as smoothly as a commercial chat service on a shoe string budget, on a Raspberry pi sipping 2W. That and the fact that I’m bloody minded enough to work on it until it does, beyond the point of sanity.

    • CaptainShardmind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      47 minutes ago

      That’s a real win. A private family chat that never touches a public server is the part a lot of people give up on. I feel you on the Android side too. I ran AdGuard Home as DNS for my tailnet and chased a lot of phone issues back to Tailscale. The DNS override settings were finicky, and it never played nice with Android’s always-on VPN, so I ended up just starting the client by hand after every phone reboot. That’s a big reason the friends on my Matrix server don’t touch Tailscale at all and go through a VPS instead. If you want to chase the battery question, checking the phone’s battery stats for a few days would tell you whether Tailscale is really the culprit. And I relate to the “until it works, beyond the point of sanity” part more than I’d like to admit.

    • LewdLemon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      The problem is that I want it to work as smoothly as a commercial chat service on a shoe string budget, on a Raspberry pi sipping 2W. That and the fact that I’m bloody minded enough to work on it until it does, beyond the point of sanity.

      You’ve summed up the entire glory and insanity of this sub in two meager sentences. Compression is over 9000.