Nice, thanks for sharing! Mine looks like this atm:

• HS: Mainly Docker containers and VMs
• VPS: Wireguard to relay traffic (NAT) to the HS (SSL termination on HS)
• UPS in case of power outage
• Pi4 for backups within the local network. It also has a disk station for regular air gapped backup.
• Pi3 for off site backup
• Fire extinguisher nearby in case of emergency ^^

Been there, done that. Volatility is something you learn pretty early, yes. ^^

First: Good for you, enjoy the journey! Second: Just as others already pointed out, Mastodon is not really a beginner project. You want to understand what you are doing, not just make everything work no matter what. Some reasons why I’d not start with Mastodon:

• Complex deployment stack (for beginners)
• Needs regular maintenance
• Security considerations (if you haven’t managed/hardened a server before)
• Long term project

So instead: Have a look at awesome-selfhosted for ideas. A personal dashboard, photo gallery or a PiHole/AdGuard is a good start.

About Docker; it’s a bit more than just dependency separation. It’s a kind of virtualization, but without each container running it’s own kernel. Advantage is: Docker images run (with some configuration) relatively lightweight out of the box. So there’s no need to install the applications natively. While I’m a great fan of Docker, you’d probably learn more installing things natively in the beginning. Or maybe do both, it’s up to you. However, if you decide to use Docker, be sure to understand what’s going on under the hood. That’s where the fun begins. Everyone can pull and start images, but not everyone knows how to customize or build them themselves.

No matter what you decide to do, have fun. And if you’ve any questions, there’s plenty of documentation online or just ask. The selfhosting community is very welcoming towards new members ;)

Don’t worry, nothing is easy in the beginning and yes, some docs are not up to date because Lemmy has such a steep development curve and therefore frequent changes.

[…] i think i might try to do it again tomorrow after the frustration of failure of today is gone and i have some more motivation.

Do have any other self hosting experience? Maybe a software that is a bit more easy to handle would be a good starter. With that, you can experiment and learn a bit, before starting a (long term) project that requires proxy, database, frontend, backend and configs to make them work together. Not to speak from the maintenance.

Is it okay if i just ask my questions to you directly in this thread?

Sure thing. I can recommend the Lemmy admin matrix chat as well (if you’re a matrix user).

Do you mean DynDNS with the automatic updates?

What I mean is: best case is your provider offers an api which allows you to update the DNS records by running a simple script. What I would not recommend is using something like mylemmy.dyndns.org (or similar services) for a Lemmy instance.

Since your question is quite basic and general, I’ll try to answer equally.

1. Hardware: For a single user instance a Pi 3B+ is sufficient. Still, Lemmy can take up some storage space over time because of the images. So make sure you don’t take the smallest SD card you have lying around. I assume you know how install an OS and get basic things running.

2. Get a domain; there are many providers out there. Consider using a TLD of your country (e.g. .de, .fr). Domains are usually relatively cheap. You’re most likely running your Pi at home, so check if you have a static IP address or if you have a dynamic one. First one? Great, go ahead. Second one: Check if your domain provider offers an API to automatically update the DNS record; example provider api.

3. Have a look at the Lemmy administration docs. Depending on your experience, it is relatively easy to setup. Make sure you understand what you’re doing, i.e. first get to know Docker for example, then follow the commands. If you don’t understand something, just ask or search online. Lemmy is not very complex to operate, so for every part of the deployment you should be able to find information online.

4. Set up port forwarding in your router for ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS). You can find information for your specific router online, but for some routers this cannot be done.

5. Get a SSL certificate for your domain. You can get one for free with Let’s Encrypt.

6. Once you have your instance up and running, I would recommend setting it to “private” first. This way you can play around with your instance or reinstall if something goes wrong without having to worry about federation. Once you’ve federated (communicated with other instances, e.g. by subscribing to communities of other instances), you really shouldn’t reinstall!

I hope this helps you with the first steps. Decide for yourself if you want to deal with maintenance and administration “long term”. It’s perfectly fine to use other instances and not host Lemmy yourself if you don’t feel up to it. After all, there is also a security aspect to consider. If you do: have fun with self-hosting!

That’s an interesting question. At the time being, I think the only way is to do regular backups and store them at a friends for example. That way an instance can be restored after the server has been taken.

Really the only way is to not save anything, or perhaps some sort of blockchain for all the comments and posts?

Blockchain is an interesting thought - or maybe something similar to Matrix. All instances have their own copy of a post and sync with each other. That way it doesn’t matter if one instance disappears. Though, that would probably not comply with the Fediverse idea? Interesting thought experiment non the less!

I get your point. Then, why not start your own instance with rules that you approve? I know, easier said than done, but that’s the nice thing about the Fediverse. Next to the general purpose instances, there are many “themed” ones with focus groups such as musicians, journalists and so on.

You lying to yourself or have unfounded expectations.

Nobody mentioned any expectations hm…

Everything on Mastodon is in plain text, there is no encryption, and servers get mirrored.

That’s 100% correct, and I think it’s important to explain that to non-techy users.

It’s only the login info that stays with the instance […]

Technically yes, but I’d cut the “only” because login info includes the users email. So in case of a raid or data breach, I’d like to know about it.

The entire point of why Mastodon was ever started was censor evertbody that has the wrong opinion. Twitter wouldn’t delete people because of what they believe, so Mastodon was developed to ban IP address so only approved speech could exist on the internet as far as they are concerned and can avoid ackniwledging the real world. A high number of people on there, especially the admins, live in cult

I don’t know what places on Mastodon you’ve visited, but that’s not the point of Mastodon or the Fediverse in general at all. But we don’t have to start a discussion about that since you seem to already have made up your mind about it.

As far as I know they seize everything if there’s a warrant. No matter whether it’s relevant for said warrant.

Edit: Sorry, misunderstood your comment; Don’t know what the reason for the warrant was.