I am fairly technically savvy so I tried using it today and followed their installation guide.
1) I had to change their code to accept a release that is older than 30 days old.
2) It had me pick my domain, say it started, and gave me a sandcats URL to go to that doesn't work. Feel like something is missing from the installation instructions.
I wouldn't say its too hard for your dad to use, it's just poorly documented
2) This is kinda the hard part because it depends on where you are hosting it. If you ping your Sandcats address, does it return the IP of your server/location? Is there a firewall, router, etc. you may need to open a port or forward a port?
Agreed that the parent posts suggest this should be easier. It really probably should, but it's hard to do that securely without depending on some outside service. Sandcats and Let's Encrypt removes a lot of difficulty but CGNAT and port forwarding and stuff might be best defeated by autoconfiguring something like Tailscale or Cloudflare Tunnel.
I would have expected the installation page to at least maybe mention that port forwarding was required. I assumed you were using something like ngrok.
"The installer will offer you free dynamic DNS and valid HTTPS via sandcats.io, a service maintained by the Sandstorm development team. "
We have some ideas where to go on that, in general and especially for setup, though I am generally in favor of small community hosts, such that your dad should be able to use your server, instead of having to run his own.
I do like the federated approach for many services, but for many others I think it should be individual. Sandstorm needs to run on Windows and Android, and support tunneling for those behind CGNAT et al.
CGNAT is definitely a scary thing I don't presently have to deal with, but yeah, ideally Sandstorm should get some sort of solution for it, yeah.
I think it's important for self hosting solutions to not run Android or Windows: People tend to take those platforms out and about. But obviously the x86 server requirement is (currently) a big limitation for sure.
> I think it's important for self hosting solutions to not run Android or Windows
Not sure I follow. Those are the two most widely deployed operating systems. If you want people to be able to upcycle their old devices for selfhosting, I think that's where efforts should be focused.
Mmmm, you're thinking upcycling. My concern was you wouldn't want someone running their self hosted cloud on say, their phone or laptop which they might take with them out of their home.
I mean, technically we could probably eventually get Sandstorm and similar platforms on WSL? Android is radioactive garbage and nobody should go near it. Especially for an older device already abandoned driver-wise, you'd never manage to do anything secure or stable with it long-term.
You don't even have to use WSL (which requires Windows Pro I believe). Accelerated QEMU already has experimental support on Windows hosts via WHPX, on both Home and Pro.
Android doesn't currently support virtualization, but there's hope it will eventually, which should mitigate many security concerns.
