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2021-08-28

Less Server, but Better?

I think I've mentioned that I'm planning to downgrade my server from a Raspberry Pi 3B to a Raspberry Pi 1B. It's a great opportunity to re-examine the configuration choices I've made in the past, and try to find better solutions. Maybe you can help me?

• I run a bunch of services and usually give each its own user. This gives me nice separation, but I'm actually the only one handling them so it doesn't necessarily make sense. The services I'm thinking about are my blog, Wobbly, Antenna, and the Garden Gnome Society. I'd be better off running these from my own home directory (while keeping the URLs the same) and having the webroot and gemini root in a folder there too. Is apache really good for this?
• I run CGI scripts on my gemini server as well. Which is admittedly a bit crazy because gemserv has no suexec capabilities and runs them as its own user. Wow. Ideally they should run as my user, but the server process should be another.
• I haven't figured out what the best practice for developing and installing/running python programs is yet. Should each program have its own virtualenv? Right now I have to install all the needed packages once for each user that needs them, since installing with pip as root is a Bad Idea (tm). Having to install them in every virtualenv seems somehow even worse. Duplication much?
• The Lounge is the only app I run that is a) in Node.js, which I'd very much like to not need, and b) an app server that I had to configure apache to be a proxy for. Is there a web-based IRC client that is smaller, not Node, and... I dunno. Better? I'm not sure how demanding The Lounge actually is, but I don't want to install it on a 1B only to see that it's too hungry.

If you have tips to share about how to handle an increasingly sprawling set of projects on a tiny machine, please tell me 🙂️

Something else entirely unrelated that's been on my mind lately is "permacomputing". I'm not sure what I can do in that space, and I don't really have any well-formed thoughts, conclusions or opinions on it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Links

https://thelounge.chat

http://viznut.fi/texts-en/permacomputing.html

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/gemlog/permacomputing.gmi

-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal