Falling off the Grid, Mk. II

[Aldryic C'boas]

In this thread I discussed my growing dislike of services that collect personal data, and the steps I've been taking to move away from them all. I've had a few requests to elaborate on the setups I use, so I figure I'll lay that out here then step off to let you guys share your own setups as well. I won't be doing any 'how to' or tutorials in this thread since.. hell, you'd be pretty hard pressed these days to not find a step-by-step on pretty much anything you want to set up. That being said... running into errors not explained by said tutorial can ruin your whole day. If anyone needs advice or pointers with an issue, I'd be happy to help.


It is worth noting that I _rarely_ use control panels (as was obvious by the prior thread >_>) - everything listed is installed manually, and pretty much the only panel I use is PowerAdmin (DNS records in SQL is a pain in the ass -_-).


Since my main goal has been self-reliance, I took at look at the services I did use frequently that I don't host myself, and found alternatives. For gApps (Contacts, Calendar, Drive, Email) - I went with a combination of Owncloud for the first three, and a dedicated Postfix/Dovecot for email. I've already been running my own DNS for years, so no changes there. To get away from Google Books/Music, I went with Calibre and Subsonic. Calibre is... well, it's pretty shitty. But I've yet to find any better alternative for an ODBC server.. if anyone has suggestions on this front, I'm all ears


For you Android users (especially those with vested interests in FOSS), you should have a look at

F-Droid. It's essentially "Google Market", but comprised solely of FOSS software. Anything you download will be pre-packaged .apk, but you can get the source of said file from their website (listed in the description of each app). This was a godsend for ripping out some of the more invasive Google crap from my phone.

Ladea

• Primary Backups (mostly cron'd perl scripts)
• Slave mySQL ('live' backup)
• PowerAdmin (pdns management)
• Mozilla Weave (Firefox Sync Server)
• Owncloud (w/ CalDAV and CardDAV to sync Contacts and Calendar for my phone)
• Tiny Tiny RSS
• RoundCube
• Squid
• OpenVPN

Nurvus

• Secondary Backups (same cron'd perl scripts as Ladea)
• Dedicated Primary SQL (live data)

Seed

• Webhosting (Apache)

Myst

• Postfix
• Dovecot
• Saslauthd

Zelan

• Primary DNS (ns1, reads data from local slave SQL)
• Slave mySQL, pulls data from Nurvus
• Squid
• OpenVPN

Kuran

• Secondary DNS (ns2, reads data from local slave SQL)
• Slave mySQL, pulls data from Nurvus
• Squid
• OpenVPN

Rika

• Subsonic (cannot stress how much I love this software >_>)
• Calibre
• Fluxbox (yeah... Calibre's CLI is a pain in the ass)

Now granted, several of these could easily be merged into larger instances. I'm just a fan of separation; it also helps that if I happen to botch a Calibre command and the damn thing fscks on me again, I don't lose vital services in the process. But anyways, that's most of my setup. What are you guys running?

 

[drmike]

Now Aldy you are getting into ADD tune out space for most of us  Complex and lots of stuff.

Can you elaborate on these?

1. Mozilla Weave (Firefox Sync Server)  --- what exactly does this do / facilitate?

2. Owncloud (w/ CalDAV and CardDAV to sync Contacts and Calendar for my phone -- what phone app are you interfacing with this?  Makes me want to give Owncloud a deeper look now.

 

[drmike]

F-Droid - that is a recommended "store" of open source apps for Android.  Found it accidentally a few weeks back.  A must have for Gapps free phones and those that are weary of sideloading everything.   Nice to find other, new to me apps with it also.

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

1. Mozilla Weave (Firefox Sync Server) --- what exactly does this do / facilitate?

So, Firefox lets you sync your browsing data, right? Tabs, history, bookmarks, all that jazz. Hosted on Mozilla's sync servers. Weave is Mozilla's alternative for people that want to host the data themselves. Full browser sync, but I'm the only one that can access the data.

EDIT: Here's the official link and instructions for running your own - http://docs.services.mozilla.com/howtos/run-sync.html

2. Owncloud (w/ CalDAV and CardDAV to sync Contacts and Calendar for my phone -- what phone app are you interfacing with this? Makes me want to give Owncloud a deeper look now.

CalDAV and CardDAV are the apps. They create accounts in the Droid system (same place you create Gmail, Facebook, etc accounts). Set them to sync with Owncloud, and your contacts/calendar will be sync'd between Owncloud and whatever Phone/Address Book/Calendar app you prefer (be it native droid, or GoDialer/etc)

 

[drmike]

Thanks again Aldryic!   I haven't sync'd Firefox ever.   Partial to Opera (aside from their javacript slowness --- which I don't see on my new workstation -- vroom).   

I use browsers as throwaways too since prone to leakage, tracking, printing, etc.  But, this might have me look at Firefox again

Good on the Owncloud piece.  Was wondering how the calendar was being used by most folks.  You seem to have solved that puzzle.   Seems good on a rooted, non calling home droid device.

 

[shawn_ky]

There's an app for OwnCloud on the iPhone also... just in case anyone doesn't want to do the work...

I never thought about putting calibre on a Linux distro.. Hmmm... Opening up all kinds of opportunities extra work for me now...   Could be an interesting distro, perhaps roll-your-own  Off-The-Grid Linux....

Perhaps this could be a commuity project as someone had mentioned somewhere before?