I don’t know of any sftp programs specifically, but any file sync program should work.

It would be massive overkill for this one task, but I personally use my Nextcloud server to move files on and off my iPhone to my services as needed. I have the Jellyfin media directory, Calibre upload, and Paperless upload directories mounted in Nextcloud as external directories (as SFTP mounts, I think) and then access them from my phone from the Nextcloud app.

So wildly off topic question.

How are you seeing a reputation score?

Are you using some Apple or MS author account?

Google and Github SSO were the only options when I originally setup tailscale. There are a few more options now including what looks like every self-hosted OIDC provider I’ve ever heard of, and a few I hadn’t.

How did you config tail scale though?

There are a couple options depending on how you are using it. Most of the time I just use the tailscale command to configure each node.

Most systems were just sudo tailscale up --ssh to get it up and running, although I have one system setup as a subnet router to give me outside-the-house access to systems that I can’t put tailscale on. That was a little more involved but it was still pretty straightforward and well documented. Their documentation is actually very well written and is worth the read.

The way Tailscale works, you don’t need to worry to much about your local IP address. You can just use the Tailscale IP address and it will connect as if you were local using the fastest route. That’s the beauty of a mesh VPN. Each device knows the fastest route to each other.

Without more information I can’t really tell what issue you are actually having, but if your system has internet, you have a local IP and if the system is showing as up on your tailscale dashboard than it will have a tailscale IP. Not being able to connect using one or the other would be a configuration issue. Whatever service you are having trouble with is probably only listening to one of the interfaces but not the other.

I’m assuming you are running a linux or unix box, but try running the command ip addr. Assuming you have the package installed, it will tell you all of your IP addresses for the system you run the command on. The list may be quite long if you have a lot of docker containers running. The command tailscale ip will do the same but limited to your tailscale IP addresses.

Enforcement against Linux distributions, however, is likely to be problematic. Distros like Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo have no centralized account infrastructure, with users downloading ISOs from mirrors worldwide, and can modify source code freely. These small distros lack legal teams or resources to implement the required API, so a more realistic outcome for non-compliant distros is a disclaimer that the software is not intended for use in California.

I had forgotten how much I miss that style of website. Well written too.

Well, since I’m not doing that, that would prevent me from having to install the apps that every damned company seems to insist I install rather than having a website. Kinda makes me wish for this nonsense to come to the US.

Basically what you want is to turn the linux laptop into a router. Thats doable. I believe Ars did an article on a similar build a couple years ago.

And here it is: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/the-ars-guide-to-building-a-linux-router-from-scratch/

It’s an old build based on an almost 10 year old version of Ubuntu, but quickly glancing through it, I didn’t see anything completely out of date. Version numbers will have changed and perhaps some package names will have changed but it will give you a starting point for further research. You won’t want to cargo cult this build.

I think the main difference is that your internet would be coming in from the wifi interface and going out the ethernet interface rather than the other way around.

Well, I’ve been using Ubuntu for the last 20 years (god, it hurts to say that) and only started playing with NixOS, 3 years ago.

Between the two I like NixOS better, but if I had to choose only one it would probably be Ubuntu. When things break, I know how to fix it. Usually without having to spend 2 hours of reading and trying to understand the documentation.

Well, yes I looked at tailscale too, but that would prevent me from using my normal commercial VPN

You can split your devices traffic, Tailscale traffic through Tailscale, everything else through your masking VPN.

I’m trying to get the best of 2 worlds: using the VPN to hide my IP from services that i visit and my ISP, and a secure connection to my home server.

For that, what I would do is put the masking VPN (like PIA or whatever) on your router (not all routers can do this) and then have Tailscale on the devices or individual services. In theory, everything would still be able to talk to each other (even if your mobile device is not behind the router), but everything that is behind the router would enter and exit their traffic wherever you have the masking VPN set to. Downside of doing this is that EVERYTHING that is behind that router is also behind that VPN which can cause problems with some services, like banking and streaming.

It would also mean that the only way you could host a public service is to have an external VPS acting as a reverse proxy. Cloudflare might also have something that could work around this setup, but I’m not familiar with their offerings.

This setup also doesn’t mask your traffic (origin and destination) from your mobile provider (just your home ISP), but that is a harder nut to crack as they can see, real time, where you are physically, and depending on your device, may have deeper device access anyways. I’m thinking prepaid phones and phones bought from the carrier (at least here in the US) or if your carrier has “asked” you to install an app to manage your account. My assumption is that my mobile provider can see anything I do while I have my phone or tablet with me, and just work around that.

You might want to ask in !privacy@lemmy.ml and !privacy@lemmy.world, as this is more up their alley.

Hosting for the public, it’s honestly going to depend on how many users you are going to have. Pretty much anything that is light on bandwidth should be doable. Websites, blogs, wikis. XMPP chat servers might work. Matrix might work as well. Adding to your seeding idea, you might seed torrents for any Linux distros you happen to like or build torrent seeds for projects with larger download sizes. I seem to recall a project that would enable you to seed peertube channels as well, though I can’t find the project right now.

If it’s just you and maybe a few family and friends,say over a mesh VPN, what ever you want, though video streaming may be a bit much for that bandwidth. Any other type of personal media should be very doable. Books, music, that sort of thing.

Lack of trust, for the most part. I’ve been screwed over a few too many times for me to rely entirely on someone else. Whether it’s Audible claiming I never bought an audiobook I knew damned good and well I did buy or seeing someone else getting their life made difficult by Google, Apple or Microsoft, or “friends” and family making life difficult, I’ve learned the hard way over the years I can’t rely fully on anything not under my control.

I would take a look at TeamSpeak or Matrix.

Of the two Matrix is probably the closest to Discord.

I’m sure there are flakes that can do that, but I just use the config file, adding things as I find I need them. Flakes weren’t really all that well documented when I first installed it so I never messed around with them. Out of box though, it was fairly decent for relatively simple needs. If I remember correctly, the graphical install could set you up with any of a half dozen different DEs out of the box.

One heads up. While NixOS is a Linux distribution, it is radically different design philosophy from every other Linux distribution I’ve ever used. In some ways better and far easier to setup and maintain, and sometimes, as headache inducing as Gentoo or Arch. Once you have it setup to your liking, though, it has proven incredibly solid and hard to break.

Here’s a redacted copy of my configuration.nix file. I really need to clean it up, reorganize, and remove things I’m not using anymore, but it’s what I’m running on my desktop. Basically hasn’t changed since KDE6 came out something like a year ago. I think the last change I made after that was when I finally added flatpak support.

https://pastebin.com/8G7Hv4y2

Might take a look at NixOS. Releases every 6 months and you can pick your DE.

Possibly. I don’t remember that being an option when I was setting things up last time.

From what I’m reading it’s sounding like it’s just acting as a slightly simplified DNS server/reverse proxy for individual services on the tailnet. Sounds Interesting. I’m not sure it’s something I’d want to use on the backend (what happens if Tailscale goes down? Does that DNS go down too?), but for family members I’ve set up on the tailnet, it sounds like an interesting option.

Much as I like Tailscale, it seems like using this may introduce a few too many failure points that rely on a single provider. Especially one that isn’t charging me anything for what they provide.

In my case, most things that I didn’t explicitly make public are running on Tailscale using their own Tailscale containers.

Doing it this way each one gets their own address and I don’t have to worry about port numbers. I can just type http://cars/ (Yes, I know. Not secure. Not worried about it) and get to my LubeLogger instance. But it also means I have 20ish copies of just the Tailscale container running.

On top of that, many services, like Nextcloud, are broken up into multiple containers. I think Nextcloud-aio alone has something like 5 or 6 containers it spins up, in addition to the master container. Tends to inflate the container numbers.

Nice! I hadn’t thought of that.

It’s kinda an ethos thing that goes way back, and Microsoft keeps giving us examples of why it can be a bad idea. Essentially, it boils down to the idea that YOU should be in control of what your system is doing.

Most distros can (including Raspberry OS), and many of them will check for updates automatically, but none that I can think of will install updates automatically unless you purposefully choose to enable that function.

Raspberry OS is, imho, is not really representative of the desktop Linux experience. It’s a bit like Gentoo or Arch. Great OS’s, for their intended use cases.

While RPis with Raspberry OS can be a decent desktop replacement in a pinch (I’ve done it), it’s more intended for learning and experimentation.

If you’re intending to use it as your primary computer, I’d recommend using Ubuntu or Fedora. And running the OS on an USB3 external solid state drive.