Can the vps provider not read everything on your server, unless it’s explicitly encrypted?
I’m asking because I’m interested in self-hosting mainly as a way to get privacy respecting services where good hosted ones don’t exist. I’m not sure I really want to deal with running my own hardware
Yes. Yes they can.
Good companies will have measures to ensure customer privacy, all the way up to ridiculous level stuff like keeping servers inside electrically touch-sensing cages with biometrically locked entrances that can only be entered with a customer representative present.
So generally there shouldn’t be a cause for concern with any respectable provider.
Then again, running a server at home isn’t that bad. My dad did it, he still does it, and now I do, too. We are each others’ off-site backup.
The main issue is usually whether you have access to a suitable internet connection. If you want to access your stuff out-of-home, that is.
The hardware can be almost anything. Depending on what you want to run, you usually don’t have to be picky. My machine was built, and gets upgraded, using dirt-cheap parts off the used market, always a couple generations behind the latest hardware.
The only thing I buy new are the hard-drives.
I have an old laptop I tried using, though it had some keyboard issues and it’s wifi is near dead, so I’d have to buy ethernet adaptors at minimum
A laptop is a great place to start.
I like using desktop components as I’ve been able to incrementally upgrade the ram, CPU, and drives as the years go by. A lot of people also really like using single board computers.
The only thing I’d recommend against are pre-built NASes. Theyre proprietary AF and so overpriced for what you get if you don’t need the handholding of the consumer NAS software.
One thing I recommend doing, is keeping step by step notes on everything you set up, and keep a list of files and folders you’d need to keep to easily run whatever you’re running on a new system.
That way, moving to a new system, changing your config, or reinstalling the OS is so much easier. A couple years down the line you’ll be thanking yourself for writing down how the hell you configured that one thing years back.
Almost every problem I’ve had was due to me not accounting for some quirk of my config that I’d forgotten about.
And that would apply with a VPS, too, if you end up going that route.
Might just learn nix if I get to that.
But yeah, I have no interest in prebuilt devices