#mysocalledsudolife — Public Fediverse posts

@dansup and my pursuit of a bridge between #joomla, #indieweb and the #fediverse just went down The Rabbit Hole of all rabbit holes.
#mySoCalledSudoLife #selfhostingistheonlyway

📣​ New post 📝​

"A newbie's guide to self-hosting: GoToSocial part 1 (installation and set-up)"

🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-gotosocial-part-1-installation-and-set-up/

Basically a visual guide showing how to install #GoToSocial via #YunoHost and set it up with some basic security.

⏱️​ From start to finish, it should take about 25-30 minutes.

It's my act of resistance against tech bros... I love the idea of teaching people how to self-host their own social media instance, connected to the fediverse ✌️​❤️​ :GoToSocial:​

Thank you @yunohost  and @gotosocial for empowering us all!

#SelfHosting #Fediverse #newbie #MySoCalledSudoLife #blog #resist

update on the pesky bug: it's still an ongoing issue, even after inspecting things under the hood with CLI (that was fun).

So my GoToSocial tutorial is still on standby, while this gets resolved. You would understand why, I don't want to give out the URL of my new test instance while registrations are open! (the setting is on "false" but the signup page is inexplicably active). More on it here: https://forum.yunohost.org/t/potential-bug-in-the-latest-version-of-gotosocial-open-registrations/42651/8

I guess that in the meantime I will work on the cover image and proofreading...

#MySoCalledSudoLife

#Signal troubleshooting - very odd support conversation

Yesterday afternoon I had a quick video call with someone using Signal and then I went to pick up my child from an afternoon summer program.

When I got home I realized that my phone wasn't receiving any new messages on Signal... but my computer was. Signal on my phone was completely frozen.

I followed a prompt and sent the most recent log to their support email. Then carried on with my life.

At some point, 2 hours later, I had a eureka moment: the last thing that worked was a call. Let's try the same thing.

So I called my mom and hung up (she was in the same room as me). After the call, all the Signal messages that had accumulated during the afternoon magically synched. Everything worked again! And then I found a new message by Signal saying "Welcome to the official Signal release chat!" Ok.

Glad I was distracted by my child and dinner because when I checked my email, I found a response from Signal support: "It appears the database is irrecoverably damaged. Unfortunately you will need to completely uninstall and then reinstall Signal. This will delete your message history. It cannot be recovered."

Say what? 😳​

So I wrote back to Signal that I had fixed my issue by simply starting a call and then all the messages started synching again. I thanked them for their speedy reply and said everything was ok.

I did the bedtime routine for my child and before bed I checked my email again.

Two identical emails from Signal:

"Hello. We understand your frustration. We feel it too" HUH?

"There is no specific timeline for a resolution at this moment." WHAT RESOLUTION, I SAID I FIXED THE PROBLEM?

"Please keep in mind we are a small team and have limitations as a non-profit organization. Uninstalling and reinstalling is the only action available."

I feel for you Signal and I'm super grateful for all you do, but maybe your LLM support system needs some tweaking. Because this has got to be some LLM that misunderstood my reply.

Thank goodness I didn't wipe 6 years' worth of messages, gaaah.

Signal has been working perfectly ever since. Still, I'm now compiling a list of people I message on there as a contingency plan, should thing go awry again.

I've been using #DeltaChat more lately and more and really love it.

one more tale for #MySoCalledSudoLife

#NoAI #LLM

File under: abandoned creative projects (hopefully just on pause)?

Nothing to do with #MySoCalledSudoLife, just my lifelong interest in gender and representation.

When my child was an infant I began working on a series of books to showcase positive role models from around the world. I reached out to agents but the thing never went anywhere and I set it aside.

I had written three short series: tales of Italian pioneers, tales of French pioneers and tales of American pioneers. All female role models, 10 per book.

I just found this file in my computer - an elevator pitch of sorts:

Introducing TALES OF PIONEERING WOMEN – a new series of children's books designed to inspire young readers with stories of courageous female pioneers from around the world.

Each book will take readers on a captivating journey to a different country around the world, meeting a series of inspirational women. An element that links all of them? Regardless of whether they were born in the 1500s or in the 1980s, they are all pioneers – they all faced and overcame adversities to break new ground in their chosen field.

Readers will be inspired and empowered by the stories of these intrepid women who achieved groundbreaking breakthroughs in science, politics, literature, the arts, and more.

Through these books, children will be encouraged and emboldened to follow their dreams and make a positive impact in the world.

It just occurred to me that I could find what I had written and read those stories to my child, who's now 5 and the target audience for this.

I'll let you know how it goes...

#life #bookpublishing #books #CreativeProjects

Peak #MySoCalledSudoLife today:

📡​ I set up my first #MeshCore repeater (and it's working splendidly)

🧱​ I created a custom-built case for it with LEGO (see: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/116912226996146067)

👩‍💻​ I installed #HomeBrew on my Macbook Air this morning and I'm currently installing #Meshy

🙌​ endless gratitude towards my Mesh guide @stereo who has the patience of a zen master and helped me through all this #GratefulForYou

Good morning Fedi friends!

On the agenda today: writing a first draft explaining to newbies how to self-host #GoToSocial with the help of #YunoHost.

Now, to do a step-by-step installation guide I need to create a brand new account, so I can document everything.

I'm a little stressed out thinking of which domain name to use and the fact it would be something like my 20th - yes TWENTIETH - ActivityPub account!!! 🫠

The things you do for the love of the fediverse 😅​

#MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting

European institutions seem to be all in when it comes to introducing age verification mandates for citizens in member states: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-sets-out-common-approach-eu-wide-age-verification-technologies

I now have daily anxiety thinking about the future of the fediverse.

So how do I channel this fear and turn it into something constructive? I'm going back to writing #selfhosting guides for newbies.

It's a great distraction, which gives me a bit of hope. Especially the next guide, which will cover my favorite fediverse software - #GoToSocial (which is powering this instance) - and how to install and configure it. Your own little home on the fediverse! Lightweight and features-packed.

Surely something like this would fall outside the scope of regulation. Right? Right?

#MySoCalledSudoLife #YunoHost #VPS #AgeVerification #privacy #EUBigTech

I'm officially one of you. Whenever I see graphics about digital sovereignty and moving away from Big Tech, I go: "well, actually" - especially when I see Signal suggested as an alternative to WhatsApp.

My first thought: Signal is pretty centralized, #DeltaChat would be a far superior alternative 🙈​🙉​🙊​

Disclaimer: I use both (Signal and DeltaChat) but I really wish I could move all my convos to @[email protected]. Slowly convincing one person at a time...

#MySoCalledSudoLife #BigTech

Good morning Fedi friends!

Monday morning ritual: doing maintenance on my #YunoHost systems (I have two separate installations).

I prefer to do things directly in terminal now... and I forgot how to run updates in tmux, so what to do? Oh I can simply refer to MY OWN blog post about this, LOL:

https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-with-yunohost-part-5-upgrades-maintenance/

Yes, I published a #selfhosting guide for newbies... but also as a reminder to myself 😅​

Wishing you all a great day / week. I'll be in Amsterdam later this week for #PubConf2026 - looking forward to it!

#MySoCalledSudoLife

👩‍💻​ My So Called Sudo Life - day 500: still a newbie edition 🆕​

Dear Fedi friends,

Today marks the 500th day of my self-hosting adventures and I'm celebrating it with... a slice of humble pie:

🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-so-called-sudo-life-day-500-still-a-newbie-edition/

Also: please remember to update your Linux system to patch the critical vulnerability that has been found.

#Linux #CopyPaste #security #MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting #YunoHost

@esplovago I have a separate feed for #MySoCalledSudoLife - the link to that feed should be in the post

👩🏻‍💻 my so-called sudo life - day 497: Mastodon stampede edition 🐘​

Dear Fedi friends,

You may remember how last year I was dealing with self-DDoS attacks every time I shared a link to my Wordpress or Ghost sites. Well, I solved the issue with Ghost (#VinylCache is brilliant) but I never found a solution for my Wordpress site... not even with #BunnyCDN. I guess I wasn't tweaking the right settings.

This is a pity because TBH the ActivityPub for Wordpress plugin is SO COOL and works flawlessly. I had to move my blog posts to Ghost and keep Wordpress as a static portfolio site. That being said, I never dared share links to my Wordpress site anymore because I would get about 4000 requests within 60 seconds and everything would freeze.

I just looked into #BunnyCDN's settings again and tried to tweak them. So please bear with me for an experiment, sharing an old blog post and seeing what happens.

Wish me luck!

From the archives:

https://elenarossini.com/2025/01/my-so-called-sudo-life-time-matters/

#BuyEuropean #CDN #DDOS #MastodonHugofDeath #MastodonStampede #Wordpress #blog #MySoCalledSudoLife

👩‍💻​ My So Called Sudo Life: Jailbroken Kindle edition 📖​

If you followed my #Jailbreaking adventures this past week, I'd like to add a final chapter on the positive effect it had on my reading habits.

Long story short: I used to be an avid reader and I had sadly lost the habit of reading books in the last couple of years (blaming tiredness at the end of the day). I had been looking for a system to encourage me to get back on track. When I found out about #KOreader and #SimpleUI I was totally smitten: an elegant interface that kept track of my reading stats? Sign me up!

In the photo I've attached you can see my reading stats for the past week - aka since I started using KOreader and SimpleUI. If you don't want to squint / find it harder to read: my daily reading average is about 40 minutes. Not bad! I'm just absolutely delighted by this.

#KindleJailbreak #reading #books #habits #MySoCalledSudoLife

Oh what a day!

Earlier today I managed to communicate via mesh networks with my friend @stereo in Germany... some 400+ km away.

It only took 6 hops... the third one in the chain was the iconic Jungfraujoch radio relay station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungfraujoch_radio_relay_station).

So exciting!

I can't thank Ralf enough for his help with this... I would have been completely lost without his guidance.

Let the fun mesh adventures begin!

#mesh #MeshCommunication #MeshCore #MySoCalledSudoLife

Forget trad wives, the new influencer trend should be #NerdWives.

"Hey honey, I turned our old computer into a server so I could set up a #fediverse instance for our child and her friends."

"Hey all, today I am showing you #NextCloud as an alternative to #Dropbox and #GoogleDrive."

"Get ready with me! Today I am showing you how I check in with my friends with off-grid mesh radio first thing in the morning."

How awesome would this be? I mean, finally a trend where people LEARN SOMETHING and are more empowered as a result.

(Forever grateful to my Fedi friends for all the inspiration and encouragement in trying new tools) ❤️​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

👩🏻‍💻 my so-called sudo life - day 490: #KindleJailbreak edition 🆓

Regarding yesterday's post on the Kindle jailbreak: it is SO WORTH it.

I hope I didn't discourage anyone by saying how much I struggled with it. Well, I had a 15 YEAR OLD device and the online tutorials didn't work with it. I finally managed to install KUAL after finding a Reddit thread that gave step-by-step advice for the Kindle 4 gen.

I was really bummed that highlighting didn't work for it so I bit the bullet and got my hands on the cheapest e-reader I could find yesterday: a Kindle 11 gen with ads.

Mind you, I'm in the Italian countryside at the moment and it's a miracle they had it in stock at my local superstore. I would have preferred a Kobo but it is what it is.

Jailbreaking a recent Kindle is child's play. I was happy to see that it was not on the latest firmware, so it was easily jailbreakable.

So:

1. jailbreaking it
2. installing a HotFix to prevent OTA updates
3. installing KUAL
4. installing KOreader
5. installing SimpleUI
6. removing ads
7. installing custom transparent wallpapers
8. transferring books to it

took a little over an hour. Easy peasy.

The backlight was great at 2:30am (I was woken up by my child coughing and couldn't easily fall back asleep). Very happy that I can do highlights in KOreader and now the ultimate test is how I can transfer the highlights to my computer / Calibre.

If you're on the fence, I'd say, go for it. This is the excellent guide I used: https://kindlemodding.org

For inspo: look up #KOreader and #SimpleUI homepages to realize what you could do

#MySoCalledSudoLife #Kindle #modding #jailbreak

👩🏻‍💻 my so-called sudo life - day 489: new experiments edition 🧪

A blog post that chronicles what I have been up to since December... namely: advocating for the Fediverse, creating #selfhosting guides for newbies and experimenting with e-reader jailbreaks and off-grid mesh radio communications

🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-so-called-sudo-life-day-489-new-experiments-edition/

#MySoCalledSudoLife #KindleJailbreak #KOreader #SimpleUI #meshtastic #blog #tech #resistance

👩‍💻​ My So Called Sudo Life: Jailbroken Kindle x Windows edition :Terminal:​

I just used a Windows PC for the first time in 20 years possibly?

Long story short, I typically manage my Kindle 4's contents with a Macbook Air from 2013 that still works wonderfully.

But! The old Air stayed behind in Paris, as I just arrived at my parents' in Italy with my Macbook Air M4. And the Kindle would not mount on it, no matter what I tried (even checking USB connections in Terminal). Last resort: I asked my parents if I could use their PC.

Dad got upset because with the first micro USB cable the computer wouldn't recognize my Kindle... so he launched #copilotai looking for help and I literally screamed "Nooooo I don't want any of that, quit quit quit immediately."

A different cable did the trick, I installed an earlier version of KOreader and it seems to be better... but the books aren't rendering yet, they're all gibberish, so I may have to install Calibre on my parents' PC and re-convert all the books.

Why going through so many hassles? Did you ever see how gorgeous Simple UI is for KOreader? A total game changer.

Sorry for the GitHub link, but it's either this or Reddit or YouTube, so choosing the "lesser evil" (debatable, I know):

🔗​: https://github.com/doctorhetfield-cmd/simpleui.koplugin

I'll share photos as soon as I get it to work... it already took me upwards of 6 hours to get KUAL and koreader to install on my ancient Kindle. Nobody is stopping me now, I'm super super motivated to get it to work 😅​

#MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI #Microslop #Kindle #KindleJailbreak #koReader #SimpleUI

A very #MySoCalledSudoLife day.​ This morning I:

1. Created my first cron job (I will look into systemd timers this weekend, just in case)

2. I bought a Heltec v3 kit - so I can try off-grid mesh communication when I'm at my parents' in Italy later this month

Thanks for all your help and advice with cron jobs! I really appreciate 🙏

About to create my first cron job. Wish me luck! 😅

#MySoCalledSudoLife #SelfHosting

#AskFedi: is there a script / way to automate the restart of dnsmasq every 24 hours… on a VPS that runs on Debian 12?

(Funny how this would have sounded like a foreign language to me a mere year ago) 😆

Update: THANK YOU for the cronjob recommendation. Now looking for a tutorial that’s easy to follow for a newbie like me 😅

I really appreciate all the advice, YOU’RE THE BEST 🏆

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Oh happy day!

First time in a week I can use GoToSocial without restarting dnsmasq 🥳​

This is not at all a problem with GoToSocial (to be clear I LOVE it and have zero complaints). It was just a matter of increasing dns-forward-max from 150 to 300.

The #YunoHost Forum is always a fantastic place to find solutions. :1000:​ recommended, thank you @yunohost     :YunoHost:​ 💖​

🔗​: https://forum.yunohost.org/t/strange-dnsmasq-logs-cant-post-on-gotosocial-unless-i-manually-restart-dnsmasq/41953

#MySoCalledSudoLife

@elena and next up in elena's #MySoCalledSudoLife: graphana

I've spent 3 days combing through system logs... 1000% NOT recommended as a way to have a nice day :FireDumpster:​

On the upside it's cool to see how comfortable I am moving around terminal. I always have a lot of fun with CLI :Terminal:​

Oh the highs and lows of #MySoCalledSudoLife 🥲

In 10 minutes I leave the house to pick up my little one from pre-school and I look forward to the next few hours away from my computer. Bliss!

New post:

"A newbie's guide to self-hosting with #YunoHost. Part 5: Upgrades & Maintenance"

Not exactly the most exciting post I have ever written, but system maintenance is so essential.

And spoiler alert: thanks to a botched #PeerTube upgrade I discovered the wonders of #tmux (thank you @teapot_ben and @drfyzziks for recommending it!)

🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-with-yunohost-part-5-upgrades-maintenance/

#SelfHosting #MySoCalledSudoLife #DigitalSovereignty

SUCCESS!!! 🥳​

I was finally able to upgrade my #YunoHost #PeerTube installation (thanks to the advice of Fedi people).

Long story short, yesterday I tried to upgrade using YunoHost's graphical user interface but I lost the connection to the server, my PeerTube installation broke and was automatically removed from my list of apps. I could restore to the pre-update backup but my PeerTube site was still broken, showing a "welcome to nginx" message. Thankfully I had taken a snapshot of my VPS, so I was able to restore everything within a few minutes.

Following my accounts of what happened, @teapot_ben and @drfyzziks recommended I install tmux and do app upgrades from terminal, inside tmux, so that server connection issues wouldn't interfere with app upgrades. So I did. And this time everything worked! (huge sigh of relief)

It's so much fun upgrading YunoHost apps from Terminal. I think this will be the way for me from now on 🤗​

#MySoCalledSudoLife

Oh happy day!

This newbie #sysadmin is VERY HAPPY because in less than 5 minutes I:

• installed tmux (thank you for the recommendation & instructions @teapot_ben and @drfyzziks)

• upgraded PeerTube from Terminal using tmux

now the stakes weren't super high because I did this for my second VPS which is running test apps... the real challenge will be to do this on my primary VPS and my in-production PeerTube instance.

Grabbing another coffee, taking a VPS snapshot and trying this.

As always THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT. I couldn't do this without you 💖​

Oh but the larger point in this message was to vouch for tmux - it really is super beginner friendly. I know NOTHING and I was able to easily install it and use it. So you could recommend it to your normie friends for sure ☺️​

#MySoCalledSudoLife #YunoHost

THIS IS A POST IN PRAISE OF SNAPSHOTS.

My PeerTube upgrade was a horror show: lost server connection during the upgrade and then PeerTube was automatically removed from my YunoHost server... the routine backup by YunoHost of PeerTube didn't restore... in short: bad, very bad outcome.

I hyperventilated for a few minutes and then... hit "Restore" on the VPS snapshot I had captured before the maintenance operation and... everything went back to normal.

Heart still beating a little fast but I am in AWE of the powers of SNAPSHOTS, ouf.

#sysadmin #MySoCalledSudoLife

Looking for an alternative to Microsoft 365 and/or Google Workspace?

Want to use and host @nextcloud, @matrix and/or Jitsi?

Meet the solution that I personally have deployed:

https://blog.gelbphoenix.de/open-source-alternative-to-microsoft-365-and-google-workspace/

#MySoCalledSudoLife #Nextcloud #Matrix #SelfHosting #Blog #LibreWorkspace