About a year ago, I started delving into the world of self-hosting services, things such as game servers, cloud storage and Netflix alternatives. The idea was to not be as dependent on SaaS providers, as I had a spare laptop lying around anyway, why not give it a go? So the first thing I did was install Proxmox, a hypervisor to separate out the different services I was planning to set up.
This is where my struggles started, as you might be aware, most servers run on a Linux machine without a GUI. I soon discovered that Proxmox also primarily uses a command line interface. For those not aware, a CLI is where you write code to make your computer do anything at all, an example would be “cd usr/home” this would take you to that folder.
While I got a grasp on the basics relatively quickly, the complexity increased just as fast for the things I wanted to achieve. This is where ChatGPT came to save the day, with 4o it could actively search the internet and scan through documentation to specifically create the command I required. Instead of needing to write in computer language, I could explain to ChatGPT what I was trying to do, and it would generate the exact commands I needed.
myservice.service – My Custom Service
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/myservice.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-10-02 12:34:56 UTC; 5s ago
Process: 1234 ExecStart=/usr/bin/myservice (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
It helped with reading these kinds of error codes as well, anyone familiar with these kinds of messages knows that they are completely unreadable if you don’t know all the documentation.
While you still need to be relatively tech-savvy to set up your services, I believe that with the increase in development of gen AI it will only get easier.
You may wonder what the advantages are of going through all these hassles instead of simply using Netflix, Google Drive, and One Drive. As we all know, a couple of tech giants have monopolized many of the daily services we use. They collect our data in massive quantities, creating many privacy concerns, furthermore they suppress innovation within the field. Hosting your services makes sure that you minimize the amount of data you put on the internet.
Furthermore, many SMEs use several services for which they pay massive licensing and hosting fees each year. If these new tools help SME’s set up their own servers, they are less dependent on third-party prices and can save costs.
All in all, I believe that the support LLMs provide to be able to set up your own services democratizes the internet and reduces the power of the tech monopolies, this should be celebrated by anyone who supports free markets.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com/vectors/command-shell-terminal-dos-input-97893
