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Comment by dannyw | Hacker News Reader

> Self hosting will be possible only when there is a software which doesn't have setting and runs on a box which also doesn't have settings beyond wi-fi settings. Plug it into the wall and forget about it.

Buy a Synology DiskStation, and you get an easy-to-use yet customisable OS, that receives security updates for up to a decade.

Also comes with checksums/data scrubbing (btrfs; like zfs), Docker support, snapshots, E2E diff-based backups to your choice of cloud provider, an optional cloud-based NAT-puncher if you don't like/know to set up port forwarding, etc.

Sure, the hardware has a markup, but you're paying for a nearly-Apple-like experience that's still crazily customisable. I've had zero complaints.

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> Buy a Synology DiskStation

I did that, and I have to say it does NOT play with linux very nicely. I had to change the UID and GID on my desktop for my default user and all of my files because Ubuntu starts with UID 1 and Synology starts with UID 26, so after you figure out how to mount the disk as nfs it says you don't have permission to access it (because your UID does not match the UID of the device). Solving this was one of those problems where you go back 10 years and so many people have posted forum posts and the answer was always some weird hack, and Synology has never fixed it. Changing the UID of my user on my desktop was the easiest hack. Then I installed another OS to dual boot and had to change the UID for that one too, so I could access my files, and somehow the "easy" NAS option has made me jump through lots of hoops.

Turns out self hosting is not easy even when you buy a Synology.

Your choice of NFS is the issue here. I use SMB (with one or two shares where I remap UIDs and masks), and it has worked well for nearly 15 years across Linux, Mac and Windows clients.

I believe I tried both and had issues with SMB too. I found it all very frustrating. I bought a nice NAS. I bought a bunch of drives. I hooked it up and I expected I would be loading on files quickly. But it took all evening to get anything working. I tried SMB and NFS and I recall NFS was easier to get connected, but then I had the permissions issue, which took another couple of days to sort out.

I just did not find it plug and play. It took a lot of messing with it. And I am a relatively experienced linux user!

Sorry to hear that, that's frustrating.

For some anecdata, my Synology has always played perfectly with a vast assortment of Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS for many years, even a Chromebook!

I legitimately don't remember a single error, or ever having to do any debugging around supported services (obviously my own services and dockers have been a bit more involved)

I use SMB though

Not knowing anything about NFS but seeing that it supports ACLs, I wonder if your solution of changing account UIDs has something to with performance.

That seems weird you’d need to have the same uid/gid on both sides of a nfs connection.

I’ve been using nfs for years and apparently just got lucky because I only ever have one user on every machine I use.

Even my crazy hacked together Debian running WD My Book Live (or whatever it’s real name is) has given me zero problems over the years.

I've had tech savvy friends have good brand (don't remember if qnap or synology) NAS devices compromised. OS patches help but for example the 3rd party stuff you install might be a risk, or things that are patched too slowly in the os, etc. In the end you still need to manage and monitor it.

It seems a lot of guidance about securing your NAS (eg [1]) starts with "it's bad if it's directly connected to the internet". So if you want to use the internet, it may be a better bet to use a managed service (or maybe look for a more security focused product?).

[1] https://www.backblaze.com/blog/recent-qnap-and-synology-secu...

I usually turn off all "cloud" / Internet-accessible features of everything (and, where possible, even block things from Internet access), and then have a Wireguard VPN back to my home network. I think this is a better balance of security and usability than trusting that all of the NAS/camera/doorknob/printer/etc vendors are any good at securing these things.

The use of VPNs to mitigate iffy security in self-hosted stuff is common but comes with its own problems, simultaneously it makes your self-hosted services harder to access (or impossible from some contextx), and it hurts security by making your system more complex (harder to understand & manage & monitor). They're also seemingly going out of fashion as zero-trust/beyondcorp/identity-aware proxies gain mindshare. Of course if you (along with friends and family) are all-in on a overlay network like tailscale it can be a different story.

Actually, I find that a simple wireguard tunnel giving boring old IP routing to my home network is a far simpler setup than every device having its own opaque tunnel back to its vendor which I have to use a vendor-specific method of connecting to. Tailscale is also more complex, though a nice product. So far I haven't encountered any context where I couldn't connect to my wireguard tunnel, but YMMV.

That's not self-hosting, that's giving direct access to your LAN to yet another corporation. Self-host ought to be 100% owned by you. (Yeah, it can be harder like this, I know)

I love my Synology NAS, enough that I now have 2 for different use cases.

My only issue with them was when I emailed them to confirm that I could have it connected to my network but not have internet access (people calling "wifi" or "ethernet" internet still drives me up the wall) since I was going to block its internet access on my router.

First I had issues getting support to understand the distinction between "network" and "internet". Second once I finally did get someone who understood I was asked "Why" or "what was I trying to accomplish". It almost put me off purchasing it that I would be asked why I would want a device like a NAS to have zero internet connectivity.

That aside I would agree and it does feel like a very apple like experience (maybe a bit more technical). I mean it isn't as easy as the time capsule was years ago, but its up there.

Asking "why" or "what are you trying to accomplish?" is standard and good practice - a good person (technician, manager, or many other roles) wants to get at the root of the question so they can provide a genuine solution. I'm sure we've all experienced times where someone asks you an odd question, you ask what they're trying to do, and you come up with a much better solution (or better/more accurate way of asking the question) than what would have been provided in simply answering the first question.

Granted, it's frustrating when you are a well-informed person that knows exactly what they're looking for. I just accept it as a cost of dealing with other people.

TBH maybe it was the fact that it took a few emails to get there that it felt annoying?

I mean I recognize that they may be dealing with far less technical people and maybe that is a valid question.

I get what your saying but wouldn't "I don't want my NAS to have an internet connection but I want to make sure it still works locally" be mostly self explanatory?

Maybe that is me putting more faith in other people than I should, like obviously it won't be able to update, sync with a cloud, or any other number of things. Maybe thats not obvious?

But also to be clear the bad taste it gave me was seeing products that should have no need for an active internet connection and yet are paper weights without it. So when a company seems to be pushing me to connect something to the internet, especially something as sensitive as a NAS... it sets off alarms.

>Buy a Synology DiskStation

Synology doesn't update their Kernel. Only the latest release model in 2023 comes with 5.10. The others are on 4.x, and if you bought any before 2020 you may be on 3.x. On the 2023 model You would have thought they would at least be on 5.15, no.

All Entry level model doesn't come with BTRFS.

But apart from that, it is still the best in the market right now.

Does the $200 model still support all of that? I know I need to get my ass in gear and fix my storage and backups. I’d also like to start replacing my Wyzecams with and IP NVR.

But I’ve been in a frugal mood lately, I find it hard to spend over $500 on an item like this.

They all run the same software.

However, the cheaper models don't necessarily have all the features.

I believe the $249 DS223 does indeed support all of the features I mentioned above.

But does it do them all at once with its available RAM? I got bit by this by buying a low-end QNAP NAS that only had a gig of RAM and found that it was non-upgradable and severely limited the number of services it could run at once.

I run a bittorrent client, a light web service docker, Video Station, Photoprism, and a VPN on a 2GB Synology fine; along with HyperBackup, data scrubbing, snapshots, etc. The official Synology services are pretty RAM-optimised.

It does get pretty tight, I probably wouldn't want to be adding any more services, but it's fine for my use cases.

you can run synology software on generic hardware

https://xpenology.org/#What_is_Xpenology

having said that i bought the $200 model (220j) with a steep discount with points on amazon and it works fine but is a little slower than the others. i just use it for rsync (which never-deletes by default) and as an SMB server.

note the 220j unit doesn't do btrfs. the nas software seems pretty good but i don't use much of it. it takes some configuring to setup proper user home directories to rsync with but it only took me a few minutes of googling to figure it out. also their macos backup agent software kind of sucks but if you're using it for rsync or as a NAS volume it seems to work great. i don't use any of synology cloud or public cloud features.

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