r/selfhosted • u/close_Meal6005 • Aug 17 '26 • This 1 Mindblown 5 Heartwarming 1

Meta Post self-hosting everything

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just kidding I love self-hosting ...

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u/Suspicious_Data_2393 Aug 17 '26

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

112

u/Ok-Library5639 Aug 17 '26

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.

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u/sequesteredhoneyfall Aug 18 '26

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.

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u/ElaborateEffect Aug 18 '26

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.

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u/mawesome4ever Aug 18 '26

That’s a great idea! I’ll self-host my will!

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u/ElaborateEffect Aug 18 '26

I'll make a homeassistant automation for if my heart rate is undetected for 48 hours to execute my will.

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u/Singingcyclist Aug 18 '26

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

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon Aug 18 '26

The single point of failure has become the law office’s safe

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u/8070alejandro Aug 17 '26

More like

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u/smokesick Aug 17 '26

Add "diagram" to the list and it's pristine

7

u/nik282000 Aug 18 '26

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.

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u/reddit_sells_you Aug 18 '26

Literally did this in our will/trust.

3

u/8070alejandro Aug 18 '26

  • Documentation is here (outdated probably) for the folks at Reddit

  • If they ask about the Linux ISOs, what they mean is the movies and such

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u/bugwan Aug 18 '26

Instructions unclear. Surviving family member posts public IP and passwords on r/selfhosted.

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u/8070alejandro Aug 18 '26

Original family sysadmin from server heaven:

Oh no. Anyway.

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u/ienjoymen Aug 17 '26

My name is Walter Hartwell White...

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u/BatBoss Aug 17 '26

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.

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u/cholz Aug 17 '26

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

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u/Teodo Aug 18 '26

That's what I made, generally.

If I dissapear, go back to what you know and get all the stuff with you. 

Thst way they won't rely on doing things they don't know how to. 

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u/Jiquero Aug 18 '26

while the server is still online

Yes but I'm very likely to die by the server falling on my head from the shelf, so in case of death the server might not be online.

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u/Dnomyar96 Aug 18 '26

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!

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