Member
No. Is not. I know this, grandfather knew this, the packet radio people know this. But AX.25 stack in kernel 4.9 is what works with the TNC hardware. Newer kernel break the soundmodem driver. I firewall everything except UDP 10093 for AXIP and port 70 for gopher. Risk is mine.
This is the way. The scrap gods reward patience.
Fair enough. I've got a Debian 10 box still running for similar driver hell reasons, RTL-SDR stuff that won't compile on bullseye. Not internet-facing though, local shack only. Different risk calculation.
I have three Contabo boxes in Nuremberg that do nothing but receive ZFS snapshots from my home NAS. €4 each, 300GB disk. The snapshots go back to 2019. I have tested a restore exactly once in 2022. It worked. I will never delete them.
My wife asked why I pay for "ghost hard drives." I asked why she keeps her dead mother's voicemails. We do not discuss this topic anymore.
Member
Kkkkk this is me! My MUD server is ghost hard drive with feelings! The banco de dados is ghost but the players? They are real, even if only two login per month! Nossa, we are all crazy in this thread, ne? I like it!
Member
Self-hosted services for me. Matrix server on the smallest Hetzner VPS, €3.50. One user: me. Bridge to Telegram, bridge to WhatsApp, bridge to Signal. I talk to myself across four protocols to avoid giving phone number to Meta.
Is this mental illness? Maybe. Is it cheaper than therapy? Definitely.
Member
I administrate the servers for my association since 2018. We have one OVHcloud VPS in Gravelines, €5.52, that runs only the mailing list for retired members. 340 subscribers, maybe 12 messages per month. The list software is Mailman 2 because I never have time to migrate.
The association president asks every year "can we reduce the cost?" I say "find me another solution for less than €6 that handles bounce processing and digest mode." He stops asking. This is my strategy.
I boot mine over PXE from a Hetzner box — https://www.hetzner.com. The VPS is just the TFTP endpoint. €4.51 for the privilege of not having local storage. My router at home does the actual work. Is this efficient? No. Is it elegant? Also no. But it boots from the ether, and that is what matters.
How do you even keep track? I have 4 and I already forgot the root password to one. It's been running a Prometheus scraper for something I decommissioned in 2023. I think it's in Falkenstein? Maybe?
Password manager + custom dashboard that SSH-tests every box every hour. Green dot = alive, red dot = investigate, grey dot = I already know it's dead and I'm grieving.
The grey dots are the worst. I have 3 grey dots from 2022. Provider went under, took the snapshots with them. RIP little friends.
52 is actually down from 61 last year. I'm practically minimalist now.
Member
Dev/test for me. I run a small hosting reseller business in Mumbai. The smallest VPS I have is a €4 Contabo in Singapore where I test client WordPress migrations before touching production. If it breaks, nobody calls me at 3 AM. Worth every paisa.
I also had one in Mumbai datacenter but Contabo's Mumbai routing to domestic ISPs is... not good. Singapore is faster to Jio and Airtel somehow. Go figure.
