[Freedombox-discuss] Owncloud, Piwigo, Gogs, Matrix, ...

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Stefan,

Quoting Stefan Monnier (2017-06-21 15:33:26)
> I've been maintaining "home servers" for many years now, first using 
> OpenWRT and then Debian.
> 
> Maintaining those boxes with Debian is a lot easier than with OpenWRT, 
> thanks to the great job done by the Debian project: the 
> unattended-upgrades package takes care of the main work, and an 
> occasional "apt-get upgrade" takes care of the rest.
> 
> But there's always been a sore point: it seems that packages that I 
> could describe as "cloud service", like owncloud, piwigo, gitlab and 
> friends are rarely available in Debian, and when they are it tends to 
> be short lived (after taking a long time to appear).
> 
> IIUC this is due to the enormous amount of work needed to massage the 
> upstream package so that it fits well within the Debian system, 
> abiding by the various conventions, etc...
> 
> So, I'm wondering what do people do to maintain those services on 
> their private server (presumably running freedombox) with a minimum of 
> hassle?
> 
> I've seen indications that Docker is considered as a potential 
> solution, but the way I look at it, it's more a problem than a 
> solution: now instead of one server with N applications, I have one 
> server running N applications run inside N containers, so it just adds 
> N containers to the set of software that I have to keep up-to-date and 
> Docker itself doesn't provide much help in keeping all those things 
> updated.

You ask how to run code maintainable by Debian, but then dismiss a 
solution it becomes a big burden on yourself.

Well, I see no other way to run code that is unmaintainable by Debian, 
than either a) have someone else maintain it or b) run it unmaintained. 
Some upstream projects offer .deb packages - if you trust them to handle 
the task Debian would otherwise do then great for you.

Personally I most of the time choose to *not* run services that Debian 
cannot maintain, because I find the task Debian does real and not 
replaceable by upstreams or myself.

I notice your email domain is Montreal.ca - if you are around there in 
August, I hope to meet you in person: https://debconf17.debconf.org/ :-)


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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