When I first started this site around 2013, my intention was to create a tech news and reviews site, which was hosted on WordPress. As I worked on that project and shifted away from being a Microsoft backer, I determined I did not have a passion for the project vs. My core career as a systems administrator.

Towards 2018 as I shifted deeper into Linux and self-hosting various services, I pared down the complex site, shifted more towards a personal site approach, and migrated to a self-hosted Write Freely site. At the time, I was looking for a service that would focus on writing, and no tracking or privacy tech, and maintained the site there for several years.

In 2020, I fell for the lure of more complex appearance/theming of a tool like Hugo, along with the version control workflow of GitHub and the related tooling. This system worked for me while I was committed to Linux, and was a great tool for learning the process of Git, with some geeky article writing via console or VIM. That being said, I spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting and fixing GitHub actions for automatic publishing every few months, instead of writing. That actions process stabilized more recently, but following Digital Minimalism ideals, I realized recently that this workflow and it’s issues were not in line with my purpose or preference. In addition, while it has been a while, with the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub, I expect it’s a matter of time before even a basic Hugo site would end up with some form of tracking trail embedded due to the hosting platform, which is not in line with my own privacy statements.

That brings me back to this week. I spent time pondering over the Write.as hosted platform via the Pro subscription, with it’s related and included services, and remembered why I originally used the platform via the Write Freely option. Since I originally left the service, and returning to the paid platform, Matt and his team operating Write.as have expanded and solidified the service all while focusing on their ideals. With this service, I’m able to return to having the site @writing@techzerker.com">federated as @writing@techzerker.com, I can easily support discussion via the linking with Remark.as, and with a recent intention to explore Photography beyond a smartphone, I can display and discussion that via the included Snap.as. Finally, with the support for custom CSS, I’ve been able to do minor theming to my style, while keeping the site simple, reading focused, and free of unsightly graphical advertising or intrusive tracking technology.

I’m writing this piece as a fan and user of the platform, there has been no form of compensation or promotion, but I say, it’s worth checking out if your looking for a place to write with simplicity, no tracking, and no distractions handling administration.

Discuss...

#Writeas #Writefreely #Github #Writing #NoTracking

—Scott

That little VPS runs a few different services: – Minecraft server for a group of friends, which is the heavy memory user – Write Freely instances for a few subjects – Subsonic Music streaming server – Resilio Sync encrypted storage target – MiniFlux RSS Server/Reader In general, it ticks along without much need for attention. Usually it's biggest time demands are after each major Minecraft version update (11.x, 12.x, etc.) to adjust settings as it gets more and more resource hungry.

FYI: The best solution on 14.x now has been PaperMC

Given I work in tech and personally work with Arch Linux plenty, I make sure to run updates on the server weekly, and they almost always are pretty basic updates without much significance. Generally update with my AUR Helper, check the applications, and off I go.

This time around this past weekend, but only discovered last night, the updates included an update of PostgreSQL from 11.6 to 12.x. On this server, MiniFlux RSS uses PostgreSQL for it's backend, and it works well. However, in my past experience I have never had anything use PostgreSQL to have had much awareness about it's sensitivity in upgrading versions. As such, the update itself did not fail, but when I went to check my Android app which pulls from MiniFlux (via Fever API), it showed it had not pulled for several days.

A quick investigation showed that MiniFlux itself did not have an update, but PostgreSQL had indeed updated and the service would not start, according to systemd. A quick check in journalctl -xe, and the source was found as incompatible database versions for PostgreSQL.

From that point, it was thankfully not a hard fix, likely because the database for the RSS system is not that large or complex. Referring to the faithful Arch Wiki sent me through a few commands to migrate the data to a backup folder, initialize a new database set under version 12, and then use the pg_upgrade function to upgrade the database to that version. PG_Upgrade did it's job without fail on the first run, and I was able to then start the PostgreSQL service, followed by a restart of the MiniFlux service.

All in all, not a hard process or experience, just a good reminder to keep an eye on packages updating. It's ideal to be aware of what you are updating, but sometimes an innocent looking update breaks things. When it's a hobby server, keep good backups and be willing to research the fix, and you'll learn a bit along the way.

I'm not sure what my next project will be to add to my #Self-Hosted systems, but I've started catching up on the Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting, so I'm sure I'll discover something new!

If you don't yet #Self-Host and are looking for a project, I run my projects currently on Vultr, and sticking with plain direct referral link, you can help me out by giving Vultr a try with $50 worth of hosting, and it helps me out as well.

I have a About / Privacy page linked at the top where I talk about my privacy rules: Text only referral links, no cookies/trackers, no ugly banners or graphics interrupting the writing.

#Vultr #Linux #Arch #WriteFreely

—Scott