Hi!§

Hello there!

I have decided to start self-hosting my website! My current plans after this is to start donating to Codeberg, starting July. The reason why I decided to self-host is page load. My website, despite being a static website, is slow to load because of Codeberg Pages. Codeberg Pages is fine actually, but at some points in time it does a bit weird. This is probably because the data centers are in Germany or somewhere in Europe while I am in the Philippines.

The self-hosting provider I use for here is Linode. But I plan to change after a month. I think I am looking at Contabo next. More reasons why below.

About Linode§

Linode. Hmm. I can't give much opinions about it. This is my first time trying out self-hosting after all.

The pricing is in my opinion, could be better? Not sure. Now that I found out about Contabo, I plan to ditch this instance and move over.

Documentation is actually there in Linode but most of it is either outdated or possibly wrong? I have a lot of things I read from the docs that did not work well for me so I read official sources instead aka the documentation of the software I am going to use. They could have done it better I guess and they lack docs for openSUSE too 😢.

I plan to have two compute instances in Contabo because I plan to use the other instance for a database, and also self-hosting Woodpecker CI. Possibly I will add other services as well such as

• NextCloud
• VaultWarden (Bitwarden basically) or I just use password-store.
• Collabora Office

I might share one of these services to my family or friends I guess.

The reason being, for experience and it's also very fun.

What I learned so far§

Experimenting Forgejo§

It would be a waste to not use the remaining compute resources so I decided to give Forgejo a Go. 😉

Forgejo is available now in openSUSE. Although, I am quite confused by the systemd service but now I understand the implications for why it was decided not to use the home directory of whatever invokes the forgejo binary. This was discussed in the https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Security_Features#Systemd_hardening_effort.

Anyhow, I had a lot of hiccups configuring Forgejo but I just decided to just use whatever that systemd script has and just edit the file to point to a custom config by running

EDITOR=kak systemctl edit --full forgejo.service

specifically, I edited the line containing ExecStart=.

EDITOR=kak is so annoying. openSUSE does have a way to set this by adding that to /etc/profile.local. Local configs or those that are suffixed with *.local is unique to openSUSE. Users are encouraged to edit the local configs rather than the defaults. This is how I got so confused at first when trying it out the first time. Also, this explains why I also edit the apache config at a different file instead of the httpd.conf file. Specifically, by editing /etc/sysconfig/apache2 🥴.

Anyway, the site is up at https://forgejo.uncomfyhalomacro.pl. Feel free to take a look around. However, registrations are closed so if you want to make an account, you are not able to unless we are friends. ⚠️ If you are my friend, do keep in mind that this is experimental and still possible that I will kill this instance. Once I get the hang of it, I will start putting my projects to the self-hosted vm.

Another issue I have is setting the [mailer] configuration. Because it seems to be not working to be honest and I am not sure why. I filed a ticket to my mail provider if MTA is part of their service because I might be mistaken.

Nginx§

To manage redirects and subdomain URLs, I tried my hand at Nginx. I read it as ngeenx and not like 'engine X' or like how I read Lynx.

First Impressions§

The language looks like KDL. I actually do not know what Nginx use but whatever. The syntax confuses me a lot to be honest and I really don't like how it looks when configuring. Some of you might find the language simple. But what really confused me a lot is doing redirects. I guess I didn't read enough documentation 🥴.

Certbot Integration Impressions§

Certbot integration is nice. The pressing issue is when certbot rewrites files for Nginx. This causes a lot of confusion to me because the rewritten configs to point to the SSL certificates are faulty and can cause misredirects. I have to manually edit the files to be honest.

Apache§

I am not sure why but after the onslaught of trying Nginx, I decided to use Apache.

First Impressions§

I got pampered by openSUSE because it contains templates at /etc/apache2/vhosts.d. At first, I was so confused because when I read the default config at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, the documentation from Linode and other sources conflict because openSUSE's default config has a lot of comments to discourage the use of it. Instead, I have to edit /etc/sysconfig/apache2 and add a new file /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.local. This file is added to /etc/sysconfig/apache2, specifically, APACHE_CONF_INCLUDE_FILES. Here is a snippet of the updated sysconfig.

# Here you can name files, separated by spaces, that should be Include'd from 
# httpd.conf. 
#
# This allows you to add e.g. VirtualHost statements without touching 
# /etc/apache2/httpd.conf itself, which makes upgrading easier. 
#
APACHE_CONF_INCLUDE_FILES="/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.local"

Better syntax, plugins, and tooling§

I am not saying that I did not have difficulty using Apache. But as I roamed around the Internet, I just found out that it uses utility tools that helps installs plugins. As of writing, I have added the filter and deflate module. The latter was already added by default but the filter module was not. This was to enhance page loads (yeah I know it's a static site 🤣) but a small speed up helps 🤪.

It's also easy to just add additional subdomains as well in /etc/apache2/vhosts.d. You just have to configure if what you want is a reverse proxy and a redirect or serve directly the directory specifically those in /srv/www/vhosts.

Certbot Integration Impressions§

I am just going to say that the integration with certbot is amazing. Even as to correctly configure my configs. Running certbot --apache -d mydomain.com -d other.mydomain.com is a breeze. It will add a new file corresponding to the config name with -le-ssl.conf suffix. I just add a small modification but so far only to the one that contains www.mydomain.com.

DNS§

In regards to DNS, I have some issues configuring it. I manage to learn more about A/AAAA and CNAME records. So far, it's all good and working.

I am just surprised that I don't know how long it will really propagate. One hiccup I made before was a mistypo of configuring spam reputation for a mail provider I use for my custom domain. And yes, it did propagate the domain and because of that, I have or had an ephemeral URL domain autoconfig.mydomain.com which points to my atuin instance. It's gone now.

Closing Thoughts§

Self-hosting is a fun idea. Although, I might be looking at other hosting solutions like Contabo. I heard they have a good price over ratio but I also heard mixed reviews from different communities e.g. they lower the quality of network bandwidth (?) but I can't seem to see what's the issue yet so I might have to experience that myself.