Has docker compose file for deployment

Can be hosted on sub-path and not only subdomain

Can easily be integrated into SSO lime authelia

I totally disagree with the quote from hackernews. Having the option to use sqlite is nice to test it, but going with postgresql or mariadb allows you to have better performance if you use rdbms. Also, packaging with containers allows to have one standardized image for support if some third party packaging (from a distro repo) is bugging to test it further. To me, a good gui really depends on what service is provided. For kanidm (IAM), I don’t care this much of a web admin panel, the cli is really intuitive and if you need some graph views of your users, you can generate some diagram files. Considering OIDC/LDAP, I’d rather have OIDC implemented for two reasons : I can point my users to the (really minimalist) kanidm ui where they have a button for each app allowed. Also, the login informations are only stored in kanidm, no spreading of login password.

I saw a comment about not needing to rely on many third services but I partly disagree with it. Using nextcloud as a mixed example, using elastic search for full text search is better than reimplementing it, but the notify_push should not be as separated as it is (it is here because I understood, apache-php and websockets does not mix well).

All in all, the main criterias for me are :

• SSO with OIDC, but ldap is good enough
• Good documentation
• easy deployment to test, prod deployment can be more advanced
• Not reimplement the weel eg if you need full text search, meilisearch or elastic can do it better than you will, so don’t try to much (a simple grep for a test instance is enough)
• If you need to store files, having remote stores is nice to have (webdav or s3)

Ease of installation/use, I think, is the main big one, and one of the biggest obstacles.

People who want to give self-hosting a try aren’t going to be particularly fond of having to jump through a whole bunch of different configs, and manually set everything up.

They want something that they can just set up and go, without having to deal with server hosting, services, and all of that. Something you can just run on your computer, leave it be, and use it with relatively little fuss.

Second to that, would definitely be a case of better documentation/screenshots. A lot of self-hosted things, like Lemmy, didn’t provide much documentation of what the actual user side of it does, only what you need to do to set it up, which isn’t going to make me want to use the software, if I have no idea what it’s supposed to do, and how it compares to other things that do the same.

To me the number one thing is, that it is easy to setup via Docker. One container, one network (ideally no network but just using the default one), one storage volume, no additional manual configuration when composing the container.

No, I don’t want a second container for a database. No I don’t want to set up multiple networks. Yes, I already have a reverse proxy doing the routing and certificates. No, I don’t need 3 volumes for just one application.

Please just don’t clutter my environment.

Before even getting to documentation, I see so many projects that don’t have a short summary of what they do (and maybe what to not expect them to do).

As an example, Home Assistant. I can tell that it involves home automation, so can I replace Google Home with it? It seems like it doesn’t do voice recognition without add-ons and it can work with Google Assistant. Do I still need accounts with the providers of smart appliances, or can it control my bulbs directly?

None of that is very clear from the website.

I’ve seen plenty of other projects where it’s assumed there’s no need to explain it’s overall purpose.

A docker compose example with as few images as possible.

• Has a simple backup and migration workflow. I recently had to backup and migrate a MediaWiki database. It was pretty smooth but not as simple as it could be. If your data model is spread across RDBMS and file, you need to provide a CLI tool that does the export/import.

• Easy to run as a systemd service. This is the main criteria for whether it will be easy to create a NixOS module.

• Has health endpoints for monitoring.

• Has an admin web UI that surfaces important configuration info.

• If there are external service dependencies like postgres or redis, then there needs to be a wealth of documentation on how those integrations work. Provide infrastructure as code examples! IME systemd and NixOS modules are very capable of deploying these kinds of distributed systems.

Please be mindful of HDD spindown.

If your app frequently looks up stuff in a database and also has a bunch of files that are accessed on-demand, then please have an option to separate the data-directory from the appdata-directory.

A lot of stuff is self-hosted in homes and not everyone has the luxury of a dedicated server room.

Configuration by config file is preferred but not mandatory for me, but a docker image is mandatory for me to even try the app anymore. And the ability to backup and restore state is key, preferably in such a way that I can write my backup to a mounted smb share rather than writing locally and copying to the network.

I’m running everything on commodity or 2nd hand gear, so failures aren’t unheard of. I had one of my micro PCs cook itself this year, and the majority of my services on that box fit that mold (mostly), so I got them back up pretty quick. Though, I did run into issues with container backups not working (because they write the backup like a database, so it has to be a local write for a db lock) and had to start from scratch .

My points are totally in the other direction:

• stable, this is critic, if the app is not able to performs its duties with. 2 weeks uptime, then it is bad. This also applies to random failures. I don’t want to spend endless days to fix it
• docker, with a all-in-image, and as a nice to have the possibility to connect external docker composes for vpn, or databases
• a moderate use of resources, not super critic, but nobody likes to have ram problems

And then as a second league that lean the balance:

• integration with LDAP or any central user repo
• relatively easy to backup and restore
• relatively low level of break changes from version to version
• the gui / ease of use (in like with the complexity of the problem I want to address)
• sane use of defaults and logging capabilities

That’s all from my side

Not something so complex that it requires docker.

I disagree. Docker makes things a lot easier and I’m going to use it regardless.

My rule is pretty simple: not PHP. PHP requires configuring a web server, so either that’s embedded in the docker image, (violates the “do one thing” rule of docker) or it’s pushed onto the user. This falls under the dependencies part, but I uniquely hate dealing with standalone web servers and I don’t mind configuring databases, so I called it out.

I actually tried switching to OCIS from Nextcloud specifically to avoid PHP, but OCIS is even more complex so I bailed.

Give me an example configuration that works out of the box and detailed documentation about options and I’ll be happy. Don’t make me configure a web server any particular way, and do let me handle TLS myself. If you do that, I’ll probably check it out.

Good documentation.

I’ve turned down many self-hosted options due to the complexity of the setup and maintenance.

Do you agree with this?

Yes. If I have to spend an hour reading your documentation just to find out how to run the damn thing, I’m not going to run it.

I hate docker with a passion because it seems like the people who develop on it forego writing documentation because docker “just works” except when it doesn’t.

I archived one of my github repos the other day because someone requested I add docker support. It’s a project I made specifically to not use docker…

Not something so complex that it requires a docker

Docker is the thing that sandboxes your services from the host OS. I’d rather use Podman because of the true non-root mode, but Docker is still based. Plus, you can use Docker Swarm if you don’t want to switch to Kubernetes (though you don’t have easy storage integration for persistence).

Not something so complex that it requires docker. Not something that requires you to install a separate database. Not something that depends on redis and other external services.

This comment is a bit silly. Databases just make sense for many services, although many could just use sqlite which would be fine (and many do). Redis etc is usually optional and might increase performance in some cases.

I wouldn’t be a fan of something requiring docker, but it’s often just the easiest way to deploy these types of services (and the easiest way to install it as a user).

Anyway, I’ll echo that clear, up-to-date documentation is nice. I shouldn’t have to search through actual code or the bug/issues section to find current information (but I get this is very challenging). And I’d rather projects didn’t make Discord a source of documentation (especially not the primary one).

I’ll add that having a NixOS module is a big plus for me, but I don’t expect the developers themselves to maintain this.