another week working from home. And most of my last week was not only spent embracing remote working, but also simplifying this for others.
New Univention Appliance for Kopano Meet Link to heading
Main priority of last week was getting the Kopano Meet software appliance finalized so that its even easier to use it. One of the challenges was that Turn servers are still hard to figure out for lots of users, so the appliance now pre-configured a hosted turn service for all users.
The appliance can be downloaded from the Univention App Catalog. On wednesday there will also be a webinar where I’ll give a small tour through the appliance and how to use Meet.
Want to run your own Turn server for Meet? Link to heading
Last week I already shared shared a nice container to run a turn service locally. Another nice tutorial for this (for those not too comfortable with containers) can be found in the Hetzner Community.
Tools for “BeyondCorp” Link to heading
Another one for the remote workplace. While using VPNs to access otherwise private work resources is a safe and popular choice, there are other ways.
“BeyondCord” is the VPN of the the cloud age, where instead of allowing access based origin (known network location) all requests need to be done securely (https) and authenticated. Authentication is ensured on the service level, e.g. through a reverse proxy.
Pomerium is a suite of tools to achieve exactly this with ready to go examples for Docker, Kubernetes, and various cloud providers.
If you want to get a bit more minimal then vouch-proxy could be an alternative for you. It uses the auth_request module of Nginx to ensure an authenticated session through OpenID Connect.
Simplify provisioning of operating systems Link to heading
With netboot.xyz one can easily install new systems, either physical or virtual with a single medium, be it via PXE, iso file, or from a bootable usb stick.
The project even provides an Ansible playbook to self-host the backend service and storage.
Mistborn - A platform for easily managing your cloud server and Wireguard access Link to heading
Mistborn is a script I found last week. It automates setup of a network ad blocker, Wireguard for VPN and various applications that are useful in a home network.
The downside I see with it is that it pulls in a lot of other components such as Cockpit for system management.
Rest access to IMAP inboxes Link to heading
IMAP API is a lightweight way for client applications to access mailboxes and send emails without the need for lowlevel smpt or imap functionality.
Stuck on Windows? Use this nice terminal emulator Link to heading
There are plenty of terminal emulators, and there is also no shortage on them when it comes to Windows. In the last week I made the switch from Extraterm to the new Microsoft Terminal. While Extraterm is really nice it feels a bit heavy at times and this is where its new replacement shines. Its really light on resources.
On a sidenote: Also stuck on windows for better hardware support? You can use the command line package manager Scoop to easily install and update applications (and even quite some oss games).
Do you know of a project that should be featured here? Link to heading
I am always looking for new projects to try out! Just send an email to selfhosted-newsletter@9wd.eu.
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Stay safe! Felix