I’m looking to create a space for a small subreddit that I moderate that has maybe a couple hundred active users at most. I feel like the documentation provided here leaves a lot up to assuming the reader has prior knowledge of hosting a web service. I don’t have any such prior knowledge so I’m hoping I can ask here. Please bear with me as I fumble my way through asking questions about a thing I’m doing for the first time.

I am thinking this is accomplished with a computer set up at my location, like a tiny little AWS in my bedroom running by the sheer force of my internet connection, and the hopes and dreams for my community. Or am I completely misunderstanding what it means to host an instance?

-Does the local machine store files like pictures posted by users? If yes I assume this means I should build a computer with sufficient storage to meet this demand.

-Does the lemmy install via ansible require the local machine to run an operating system? Or does ansible fill that role? I’m assuming the former based on the documentation for ansible, and that it should be a linux distro but I’m dense, so I’m asking.

-Is it required that the instance be federated to and visible to other instances? I would like for it to be isolated and somewhat private.

-The local machine would be connected to my personal business ISP connection. Could the instance be traced to my physical location? If so, what would be necessary to mitigate that?

-Am I entirely out of my depth? I can follow a guide real well, and problem solve, I just have no experience.

Thank you for your time!

      • rlyehfhtagnOP
        4·
        2 years ago

        Thanks a bunch for this! This actually does well enough to answer all of my questions in a way that will allow me to get started! Very much appreciated.

        • Arthur BesseA
          22·
          2 years ago

          hi, fyi i deleted the comment you replied to here because it was generated by an LLM. after seeing your reply, i considered undeleting it, but, after actually reading the whole comment I see (as expected) it is a useless mix of semi-accurate and inaccurate information. (if you want to re-read it, you can click ‘modlog’ on the sidebar - it will remain there for a couple days).

  • rglullis@communick.news
    3·
    2 years ago

    Does the local machine store files like pictures posted by users?

    Yes, your server will store all data produced the users on your instance - in the case of an instance that does not federate, this means the media files (images, videos), the content of the posts (which will be in the database) and other data like error logs.

    Does the lemmy install via ansible require the local machine to run an operating system?

    Yes, ansible is just a tool to automate tasks. The “recipe” of these tasks do are called “playbooks” in ansible. The playbook for installing Lemmy assumes that you are installing things on any server that can run docker.

    Is it required that the instance be federated to and visible to other instances?

    You can choose to close federation through the web interface, or you even set it up in a way that it never tries to connect to the rest of the Fediverse.

    The local machine would be connected to my personal business ISP connection.

    Not down to your street address, but a motivated malicious person could use the information about the IP address to find out the general location where you are, your service provider, it could try to find information about your business, etc. There are ways to mitigate ways if you use something that proxies your connection to the outside world.

    Am I entirely out of my depth?

    Honestly, it does seem so, but once you start the journey of running the services for you and your peers (self-hosting) it can be very rewarding. Perhaps it would be a good idea to hang out around https://lemmy.ml/c/selfhost and start with some other project (e.g, host your own music player with something like Navidrome , or a Wordpress blog which can be based on software that is more mature than Lemmy is at the moment).

    • rlyehfhtagnOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Thanks a lot for your thoughtful reply! I greatly appreciate it

  • Kaiser Of None@mesita.link
    2·
    2 years ago

    This may be late but here’s my besto shot at answering, but to start I feel you should not be running your own instance, you should find one you like and have your community there. Instance administration and moderation are two different jobs.

    • yes all text, images and video is stored within your server

    • Ansible is a program that allows for automation of server management work, you have two computers, your work machine and your server. Your work machine has Ansible and all the configurations you wish to have, and ansible tells the server what to do to reach the desired state. Lemmy’s playbook (the set of ansible commands and configs) assumes the server has Ubuntu installed.

    • instances are set to be federated to everything by default, you can manually change that in the configuration to defederate from specific instances, or even ONLY federated with specific instances. Note that your instance only pulls data from other instances after it has to interact with them (so someone on your instance subbing)

    • all IPs can be traced sort of to a location, this is called GeoIP (maxmind offers a general service for that, you can check a few for free on their site). So yeah be careful about using your own connection for hosting anything. You can host on an AWS EC2 instance which will completely remove your connection from the equation, but we’ll you gotta pay for those.

    • you are asking good questions, you could have it be a learning experience but if you want safety I’d go with someone else’s instance and just hack around to learn on your own

    Good luck mate!