Epicyon makes some interesting design choices for running a small personal instance for friends and family (user target 1-20). And it is easy to get an instance running on a RasberryPi or so.

But I think many people still face the barrier of not having a domain name and not wanting to rent a VPS which they then have to maintain etc.

While this problem can’t be fully solved, maybe a dynDNS domain service specifically aimed at small fediverse instances, that offers free sub-domains on a fediverse related domain (example.fedi.party or so) might be a worthwhile offer?

  • @Echedenyan@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    My problems here with Epicyon are that there is no SysVInit or other Inits examples and that they only show how to configure it for Nginx and Caddy.

    Replying to your question, I use FreeDNS.

    In order to configure it, you must add first your domain to FreeDNS, then go to your provider and change the Nameservers to the ones provided by FreeDNS. In the end, verify that the domain was changed in FreeDNS checking broken domains.

    FreeDNS also has Free subdomains if you don’t have main domain.

    Now, you just create subdomains, go to the Dynamic DNS config in the website, and check the link for Dynamic DND V2.

    Inside it, mark the checkbox to the desired domains and press enable Dynamic DNS.

    A Cron script will be pointed in the information of the domain to add it to a crontab.

    I usually put this cron script in the root crontab. The domain A or AAAA register will be upgraded in 5 minutes intervals.

    • poVoqOP
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      3 years ago

      Yes I am aware that there are free dyndns services :)

      I mean one that specifically caters to fediverse projects (with a nice sounding domain) and makes it easy to set up maybe even with support build into the fediverse app itself to update the IP.

      • @Echedenyan@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        Mmmm specific to the Fediverse?

        Well, there is a way to do that with FreeDNS.

        I or someone could buy a domain and put it as public in FreeDNS. Then, everynyan could use it.

        Ofc, a domain dedicated to the Fediverse.

        • poVoqOP
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          3 years ago

          I think you are not getting my point ;) Edit: ok I saw your edit. Edit: yes someone would need to host such a dyndns service and maybe make some patched for popular fediverse server software.

          I am talking about having someone being able to set up their own fediverse instance on a RasberryPi with minimal effort and knowledge needed. Epicyon (on freedombone or libreserver) does that with some good default security settings, but the domain name issue and all the steps to set it up with dyndns and so on are a major hurdle.

          I have done all what you are suggesting myself and yes it works fine. But I would not suggest to not as tech savy friends to do the same unless they are really interested in it.

          • @Echedenyan@lemmy.ml
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            13 years ago

            The problem was centric on something like dyndns for the Fediverse. So I was centric for it.

            By default you can select a free domain in FreeDNS and I added public domains in some ocasions so everynyan could use it.

            • poVoqOP
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              33 years ago

              Yes technically that works. But having a proper api or script in the fediverse server that just asks: “you can choose yourname.fedi.party” as a domain and it sets up everything including asking your router for a port forward via upnp.