Rohit Farmer's test/play website in the tildeverse.

A roundabout way to say "by the way I run a pubnix now" Prologue (what is a pubnix?) I found a perfect quote that does better than I co...

_A roundabout way to say “by the way I run a pubnix now”_ ## Prologue (what is a pubnix?) I found a perfect quote that does better than I could: > A pubnix is, as the name suggests, a system with a UNIX-based distribution open to the public. The administrator usually manages SSH access, which can be obtained on request. > > A common practice is to provide free, open-source services to users/members, and sometimes even to the general public. Server members may therefore be granted an e-mail service, web page hosting (HTTP, Gemini, Gopher, etc.), pre-configured access to a server or an IRC channel. > > These servers promote important values such as open source, knowledge sharing, program creation/development, community project promotion, help, free access, privacy and more. Important values that are unfortunately tending to get lost. > > _Fromhttps://theobori.cafe/posts/pubnix/_ ## Why? The modern Internet is made to keep you sucked into it forever. I could post endless links about how every tech company has made their recommendations tuned to keep you looking forever. Whether you will scroll more seeing cute animals, high-quality art, the news, or things that make you upset (see: ragebait), whatever works best will be used to exploit your valuable attention. This has been said by me and people orders of magnitude more intelligent than me. I do not need to repeat both myself and others more than I already do. ## Ok, but why make a pubnix in 2025? _Why not?_ Coincidentally, I had a low spec VPS I pay very little for every year that I had stopped using entirely about a year ago stop booting entirely and it needed to be re-formatted. Instead of the smart thing to do and cancel it, I began to think of what I could do with it. When thinking of something to do with it, I had been recently looking at the tildeverse and thought what would be needed to make one. While the 1 vCPU and paltry 2.5 GB of RAM could barely ran Pleroma back when I first started my Fediverse journey, it was perfect for the “retro” lo-fi that a micro pubnix needs. ## Can you even be nostalgic for things that were popular before you were born? When I first had the idea, I immediately looked into what other servers did. I found the ctrl-c club and tilde.town. I learned all about Gopher, a precursor to HTTP and Gemini. I learned about the old `~/public_html` (something I remember seeing from my university days, where we had our own `~` pages. I installed Debian Stable (my server distro of choice, but I chose Stable instead of my usual Testing just so I would need to worry even less) and got started on making something stupid. ## Enter, the CHUNBOAN ZONE The last thing this whole ordeal needed was a name. As I _still_ do not have a job, I asked the lovely Grumb if he had any other domains lying around. Turns out, he did. With his blessing (and giving him an account), the CHUNBOAN ZONE was born. ### Random tidbits I learned * I spent the better part of a day trying to make a SUID program in Rust (Why Rust? It had to be compiled and I felt like writing Rust.) for users to create their Gemini capsules and have them linked to the main capsule before realising that Debian's amazing `adduser(8)` included `adduser.local(8)`, an optional script you can create that made my program entirely obsolete. * Part of the fun was getting the setuid to not explode horribly, which I managed to do, even though it accomplished nothing. * I learned that Debian includes a fully functional local-only mail system, and getting it to work only involved `apt install`-ing `alpine` or `neomutt`, so that was cool. * Writefreely has a Gopher server option, so if you want to read my blog over Gopher now you can. * Guess I have a phlog (what Gopher people call their blogs) now. * Now I have to run `setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep'` every time writefreely updates, which is not often, but worth it. * `/etc/skel` is very helpful for making new users. * Despite how obvious you make it, you cannot force users to read a `README`. * I have had an IRC server for years, and I hope this breathes some new life into it. * I have found the amazing lowdown(1) markdown translator, which is a great lo-fi alternative to heavier SSGs like Hugo (which I also installed on the machine as it is great) ## What do I plan on doing with it? I have a lot of things on my mind, I should put them to writing more. While I am working on writing longer-form blogs more and writing shorter-form Fediverse and Bluesky posts whenever I am able to, the weird medium of short thoughts that are far too short for blog posts and too long for something like a fediverse post. Some ideas I have had are: * A list of authors/feeds I follow * Reviews and thoughts on things * Opinions I do not want to spew on a blog or social media feed * (Grumb's idea) History * (also Grumb's idea) Trash reviews (I love garbage) I am still working on the whole offload thing, so it will wait until I finish (if I finish...) to write more shorter-length things. ## Want to join? Sound interesting? Contact me in the usual ways or fill out this form to join! We would love more members. Stress testing is fun :). — Part 68 of #100DaysToOffload ><> Follow this blog on RSS or on the Fediverse, @sam@blog.froth.zone. Alternatively, follow me on the Fediverse or Bluesky.

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