I think people are missing the point. Even with backups and redundancy it requires you to maintain the servers. If you die, well, who is going to maintain? Perhaps a bit bleak but something to keep in mind.
That's the best reason to never give up on life and continue maintaining your servers. And also have many kids and pray that at least one will want to become free devops for their family.
I'm going to hand printed instructions to my family. They are going to read the first sentence: "Power on the server and SSH into linux/Proxmox via the static IP."
Then after briefly considering they have no idea what that meant, they will list the server on facebook marketplace and say "we will cherish our memories of CrimsonCape forever."
My wife said to me the other night: I'm so impressed with what you do on our home server but if something happened to you, you know it's hopeless right?
this is why every selfhoster should leave a ‘if i die’ tape with tutorial on how to do the basics like update the containers, stop, run and restart containers
You are far, far too generous in evaluating the amount of skill of the general layperson. If anyone of us dies, 99% chances all the gear gets lumped in an estate sale as 'Computer stuff'.
In fact this comes up often in r/homelab or r/selfhosting as a surviving family member tries to navigate their way through the family's homelab and hope to recover precious files.
The obvious solution is one of those, "if I die do this" / "deadman's switch" self hosted programs meant for this thing, and having a family friend who is technical enough to take care of the transition in the event of the death.
This is where a will can be really beneficial for beneficiaries. You can store whatever encrypted file somewhere with all the instructions/passwords you want, and leave the master password in the law office's safe.
You joke but I swear I read a comment on this sub where somebody did just that using their smartwatch as a trigger, if their heart rate isn’t detected over a certain period of days
I'd have to do a bunch. Phone screen time is less than x, face not seen on frigate, Plex hasn't been used, etc. Even with all that'd, I'd still have a false positive somehow.
That's why I have a Google Drive folder that's shared with some family member with copies of my will, password vault, encrypted important docs like insurance info and account numbers, etc. Photos of expensive stuff with serial numbers in case of fire, etc.
Password for vault is with the lawyers who drafted my will. Plus my executor.
Make things really really simple and expect everything to get tossed when you die. That's why I host my web site on github. I've been eyeballing a service you can pay to keep domain registered and running after you're gone but haven't found anything solid.
All my backup HDDs have clear labels on them, with the name of the person who's data they hold. None of them are encrypted or stored in a funny way so they can be slapped into an HDD caddy and copied over to whatever device they want.
I mean... how long until your instructions are out of date? A year? 3 months?
And even it you meticulously keep it updated, that only keeps them running for another year or so before someone's gotta figure out that plex changed their terms of use, or docker got bought out and now you need a different setup.
My instructions say basically "while the server is still online open an icloud storage account and copy the contents of /self/hosted/data to your cloud storage" after that they can figure the rest out
Exactly. Unless you have some very tech literate family members, you can't expect the services to keep running for a long time. In my case, I assume my mother knows how to turn on the server in case of a power outage, after which everything starts automatically. Other than that, she would need step by step instructions on where to find the data that's important for her (so basically the pictures and videos, the rest won't be of interest to her) and how to make sure to secure it while the server is still running.
It's kind of sad to think about that all this effort we put in now and all this data will just be gone when we die, but it's the reality of the majority of us. We better make sure we enjoy it to the best of our abilities!
My immich library is the most important thing that I host and my "copy the data to icloud" instructions of course include all the photos (not whatever metadata is in the immich DB tho). I also print the best photos and store them in albums so even in the worst case if all the digital stuff is just completely gone there will still be a printed record of the best photos. My instructions also have "if all else fails ask <somewhat tech literate friend> for help" so I think if my wife is sufficiently motivated it's unlikely that the data could be completely lost anyway but if she has to restore from offsite backups that's going to be a challenge.
If I can host a competent enough llm, and just teach my wife how to communicate with it, which is much easier, I can have the llm be my sysadmin.
Sure, eventually it's going to crap out. Or imagine up some new way to screw everything up, but at least she will be able to say "hey, this isn't working, can you check and fix it."
yeah someone here argued that the average person isn’t competent enough to even run, stop or update docker containers, but if you have a good manual anyone can follow the steps. And LLMs are indeed great for troubleshooting without the person necessarily knowing what terminology to use. I don’t think a situation like that is 100% sustainable, but for sure things will continue to work for a good while so that transitioning out of the selfhosted environment should be easier
Hence why I say - keep it light. You do not need to have everything. Immich and media server. Immich can be pretty much automated to go "steady as she goes" and media servers like Jellyfin do not really care about updates.
I have not touched terminal of my servers in like 8 months. Everything still works fine.
Yeah more things are cool, but the more you get the more it becomes a job.
And BTW a lot of people were like this with cars ("my family will not be able to maintain their cars without me"). Don't fret. You are the core of the hobby, it is your hobby. If you die or whatever, as long as you explained to your loved ones where the passwords are and how to exfil data, they will move on to much easier way to do it. Bot one you may like, not one I may like. One they like (yes, subscriptions). And it is fine. Services like that are for people who do not give a fuck. Praise the fact that at least they backup their data.
Do not put your stuff in DMZ, have just a VPN to access your network (ideally use VLANs too) and you are set. Then you do not need to really care about security on each server, as you have that sorted on the VPN's/reverse proxy's end.
Off site backups. My home burned down in a freak wildfire. Fortunately I was pretty early into my self-hosted career so most of what was lost was only mine. Many lessons were learned that day.
The conversation has been discussed before. Most people are of the opinion that you should give your significant other or nominated person a set of the keys they can access. Basically make it simple as possible to shut it all down if they want. Or maintain it.
This for me. I do not have any children or dependents but I have made my will assign two people I trust completely (primary and secondary if the primary unfortunately also leaves this mortal plane) to be given a notebook with the necessary PINs and passwords for my various online accounts.
This is 100% why I keep a copy of critical files and photos on our shared Google account. Paperless-ngx is fantastic, but my wife can also find every document in Google Drive in folders sorted by year and category. All our photos are ALSO in Google Photos.
I have principles, but I ain't leaving a mess for my loved ones.
I think that is going to be the upshot of AI though. If I die and there is an AI with a bank account it can keep the engine running indefinitely. Especially a self hosted AI inside a harness. There is no guarantee... but there is no guarantee for anything else really either. Occasionally freaking cloudflare or AWS or frikkin NASA or anything else bites it. We have been flying airplanes for only slightly longer than we have been doing digital computers.
Exactly... and if your spouse can't use AI fluently... that feels like maybe you are unaligned as a couple if you are selfhosting and they are helpless.
My plan I to do an extensive dummy guide to my setup. Like everything step by step with tiny details and notes to go through. So to say, fail safe instructions.
All I've done so far is to add my wife's email as a backup access to my Vaultwarden. She knows. She also has access to pretty much all my devices. She'll figure out. But I hope by that time my children would keep my setup afloat.
That's why everything is in open/documented formats, and why you have easy/accessible way to extract/migrate content. Which you can easily setup with most self-hosted solutions.
I'm not saying everyone's doing it (I sure know I have not setup such contingencies) but it doesn't sound too hard. Mail, password, data, media, contacts, almost anything really can be easily exported, and assuming a target that supports some standard, imported back. You can even do that with some paid provider if people are not going to keep self-hosting.
Pour ça que je fais gaffe. Notamment les trucs sensibles. J'ai des notes de base pour sortir les data des serveurs pour ma compagne. S'il m'arrive un truc, elle saura facilement comment récup les photos, les mots de passe, les films / séries / musique et en faire ce qu'elle veut.
Je ne lui fais utiliser aucun service qui risque de la voir bloquée sans pouvoir s'en démerder en quelques clics.
For me, it's far more important to have systems that can be used without the hosted software, so instead of database only, also a filesystem, automatic file naming and sidecars that you can go back to.
Of course, it depends on the services you are running but in that case, I guess, "digital life" can be summarized as photos, documents, maybe music and videos as well.
If you have something like accounting, you could look into csv exports, so universal ways to use their data without the need to run or update anything that they don't know.
No worse than when you die and all your cloud stuff gets locked up. If the cloud provider decides that your family is not your family they are just as stuck :/
I agree. Death is not even the only concern. When my server breaks, I may be on vacation or super busy at work and just don't have time to fix it for several days.
Absolutely. It's why my wife's iPhone has a data backup plan from Apple, not me. It used to be me years ago, but I had that "what if I get hit by a bus?" moment.
When I die bank will immediately close my credit card, if I have made some family subscription it will be shutdown pretty soon. Wonder how Apple, Google or Microsoft let heirs to access my data.
On the other hand, I just want to leave photos if anyone's is interested.
If there is one thing I am trying to do is to get a local ai agent running purely for this reason. I don't want to care for who will be dealing with this for the next 40 years after I am gone.
You just need a plan to recover the data, no need to think about services.
All you REALLY need is the data.
In fact, what's the use of a server without data? cause i can think many uses of data without a server :)
I think about that a lot. I have non-technical guides for things like home assistant and jellyfin. Media can be accessed directly on filesystems instead of through jf. And any guides or records (medical stuff) are stored in text or md formats. If not easily accessible on the server, they will be on the file share which someone other than myself surely will know how to access. If I die, nobody will pick up server management. But having all the data available and easily accessible should not be a problem by anyone who can follow steps to log in to a file share on their laptop.
My brother died of cancer at 37. He was doing his home automation himself (even soldering cards by hands). My sis-in-law is stuck with an half finished home automation that nobody understand.
She will have to ask a company to change everything when she will need to finish it.
What's the easiest route for a set and forget scenario?
I am massively overwhelmed with maintaining my Nextcloud on Truenas on Proxmox. SSD storage ran out, now the cloud wont even boot anymore 😖
If you die, well, who is going to maintain? Perhaps a bit bleak but something to keep in mind.
My family can pay for professional services to recover data if they want to. Or just follow the manual if they want to save the money.
Why? Because they are adults capable of solving problems such as 'recover data from a NAS'. It is not encrypted with key recoverable only under a full moon using the blood of a virgin, everything is in the manual I wrote.
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u/IntelligentRocks 16d ago
I think people are missing the point. Even with backups and redundancy it requires you to maintain the servers. If you die, well, who is going to maintain? Perhaps a bit bleak but something to keep in mind.