Interested in setting up an instance with a spare laptop
I have a spare laptop running Linux Mint. I would like to try running my own instance and sharing it with a few users to help out and for the experience. Below are the specs. Do you think it will be powerful enough, and if so, how many users would it be able to handle? I could restrict uploading of media if that would make a considerable impact.
Just keep in mind that if your server dies, or you stop running it for any reason, all the content and user accounts are gone. It doesn't really feel like something that should be taken lightly.
Why can't it just be a vanity instance that you use for yourself and friends, with most of your posting being done on larger instances? There's at least one I've seen like this which seems to be private.
I actually have an interest in doing this as well. One concern though. Wouldn't standing up a Lemmy instance on you own network and federating potentially attract unwanted attention to your IP? Would it be better to host on a VPS instead?
What exactly do you mean with "potentially attract unwanted attention to your IP"? Any public IP attracts automated bot probing, regardless of what you host on it... and the rest is pretty much FUD by VPN snake-oil vendors.
Small instances don't seem to require anything major, I'm running mine on a VM with 4c/6gb ram/256gb disk with no issues- it's just a few Docker pods. Just make sure you use a dynamic DNS provider if you're hosting from home, as valid SSL is required to connect to the federation.
I've got all my home services routed through ZeroTier to Nginx Proxy Manager on a cloud VM, so my home IP is pretty well hidden. As long as nobody is uploading illegal content to your instance you should be fine though.
A good frame of reference would be the VPS that lemmy.world is running on imo. Looks like they upgraded to a 4 core/16gb setup to handle the influx of users, so if your instance is running under 1k users, I believe those specs would be sufficient.
If it starts chugging, I wonder how well it'd work to run the server on the laptop and the DB on a VPS (or vice versa).
This probably informs me as to my idea. I had a Raspberry Pi sitting around on a shelf somewhere, and wasn't sure if it could handle an instance for a few basics. Sounds impractical.
I suppose it depends. An 4/8gb RPi 4 may be able to handle a smalll instance, keeping in mind that a 2 core/4gb VPS has sufficed for most instances until the recent influx. My concern with using one would be primarily with storage capacity and speeds, but iirc, there's a SATA hat you can get to connect drives directly (as opposed to external USB storage).
Probably a dumb question, but how does hosting your own instance work? I'd love to help but do I then need to provide content? Or is it more of an admin type situation?
No. You manage the server, and manage people registering. If it is enabled, they create communities (I.e. subreddits) and provide content. They can also use other server communities via federation.
You will need to fine-tune the database a bit, but generally speaking this hardware should be sufficient for a medium sized instance < 1000 members or so. What kind of connection do you have? Lemmy itself is not very bandwidth heavy, but image storage and remote access can be somewhat problematic if you have a very slow upload speed.
I am not sure how hosting your own instance helps anyone thought. It's fun and it let you own/host your data, but it's not something that help the fediverse unless you have a lot of users which would be too much to the other instances?