Self-hosting is getting so easy
Posted in Knowhow on #SelfHosting
Last week, the progress sync for the ebooks I read in KOReader on my various devices broke. No useful error message, just “Check your network connection”. The connection was fine. I assumed that the KOReader sync server was down, and decided to wait for a few days. It’s free software and a free sync service, no complaints. Last night, it was a few days later, and the sync server was still unreachable.
It was bedtime, but I didn’t want to keep reading on my Kindle Oasis without being able to pick up at the point I left off on my phone the next day. I went back to my computer, looked up my options for a self-hosted sync server, and not even 15 minutes later, I logged into my own KOSync instance.
Why did it go so quickly? Because of two things: One, the project is providing a container image and good documentation of the setup. Two, I already had a VPS running Podman containers and Nginx Proxy Manager. That investment is now paying dividends. All I had to do was create two small Quadlet files (one for the application and one for its data volume), assign a new subdomain to the server, and add its entry to NginxPM. Done.
Running your own services is getting easier and easier. It doesn’t require my decades of web operations experience any more. Which is awesome.