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I've written a series of blog posts about a "hands-off" self-hosting setup intended for relative beginners.
(cyclicircuit.prose.sh)
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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That's reasonable, however, my personal bias is towards security and I feel like if I don't push people towards automated updates, they will leave vulnerable, un-updated containers exposed to the web. I think a better approach would be to push for backups with versioning. I forgot to add that I am planning a "backups with Syncthing" article as well, I will take this into consideration, add it to the article, and use it as a way to demonstrate recovery in the event of such an issue.
My experience after 35 years in IT: I've had 10x more outages caused by automatic updates than everything else combined.
Also after 35 years of running my own stuff at home, and practically never updating anything, I've never had an outage caused by a lack of updates.
Let's not act like auto updates is without risk. Just look at how often Microsoft has to roll out a fix for something an update broke. Inexperienced users are going to be clueless when an update breaks something.
We should be teaching new people how to manage systems, this includes proper update checks on a cycle, with appropriate validation that everything works afterwards, and the ability to roll back if there's an issue.
This isn't an Enterprise where you simply can't manually manage updates across hundreds or thousands of servers, and tens of thousands of workstations - this is a single admin, small environment.
I do monthly update checks, update where I feel it's warranted, and verify systems afterwards.
I don't disagree with any of that, I'm merely making a different value judgement - namely that a breach that could've been prevented by automatic updates is worse than an outage caused by the same.
I will however make this choice more explicit in the articles and outline the risks.
Don't expose anything outside of the tailnet and 99% of the potential problems are gone. Noobs should not expose services across a firewall. Period.
with properly limited access the breach is much, much less likely, and an update bringing down an important service at the bad moment does not need to be a thing
Well, you just saved me a bunch of time trying to figure out how to auto-update my humble little server. Granted, I only have Plex and Samba Share right now, but I like the principle. Hell, an update once blanked my smb config file for whatever reason
Now auto-backups are another thing; because I would like to use a .tar file, but then it leads me down a rabbit hole because I don't know how to repair Grub if needed for a restore, or what Grub really even is vs Bios... I've just been learning as I go
I'm a few weeks away from getting a couple parts for an upgrade, and then it'll be some fun. I want to redo it from scratch and maybe set up proxmox and change my file system to zfs, then start looking at docker, figure out Jellyfin and look at some ARR stuff... maybe tailscale or headscale. Idk, it's just fun cause it's a hobby. I just haven't had the storage or ram really, but soon
This is really the truth. Auto-updating is really bad form when you are getting into server management. The first admin position I had back in the day had the rule that no automatic updates are to run, a manual update can only be run after 1 month of that update being released, and it had to accompanying documentation confirmed before it could be approved. The one time we did not follow that we ended up having to re-image the server in question from backup (as that was the quickest solution to getting it back online).
Been in it since the web was a thing. I agree wholeheartedly. If people don't run auto updates and newbies will not run manual updates, You're just teaching them how to make vulnerabilities.
Let them learn how to fix an automatic update failure rather than how to recover from ransomware. No contest here.
spoiler
skdlj;asdkfit'll still cause downtime, and they'll probably have a hard time restoring from backup for the first few times it happens, if not for other reason then stress. especially when it updates the wrong moment, or wrong day.
that's the point. Services shouldn't be exposed to the web, unless the person really knows what they are doing, took the precautions, and applies updates soon after release.
exposing it to the VPN and to tge LAN should be plenty for most. there's still a risk, but much lower
Consider warning the reader that it will not be obvious if backups have stopped, or if a sync folder on the backup pc is in an inconsistent state because of it, as errors are only shown on the web interface or third party tools
Yeah I agree with the warnings. One of the things I'm trying to ensure I get across accurately (which will be discussed later in the series) is how to do monitoring. Making sure backups are functioning properly would need to be a part of that.
You say this as though security is naturally a consideration for most docker images.
Immich is still unstable. This shouldn't happen to a stable project.
What it tells me is that you need a regular backup
Your probably right, you can't catch each bug I guess
I use diun for update notifications. I wish there was something that could send me a notification, and if I gave it an okay or whatever it would apply the update. Maybe with release notes for the latest version so I could quickly judge if I need to do anything besides update.