@Jab said:
Is there a chance that app view would show timestamp (or relative time?) next to Started? I clicked restart, it was so fast that I've never noticed that it worked - visual confirmation like Started (10 seconds ago) would be pretty nice.
Good idea! I can get this data via the existing stats. Can also be useful to debug unstable containers.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! @Jab
Recommended providers: BuyVM - MXroute - LunaNode - Forpsi - IntoVPS
Contact me for all of your Mail-in-a-Box email hosting needs at AnyDomain. I am also a proud reseller of MXroute email.
@m4nu said: It wouldn’t be impossible to populate these settings during setup and start off with email working. Just a bit fragile and some work to set up. Limiting this to a few dozen emails from specific IPs and using a shared domain should be possible too.
Could you expose the .env or equivalent in the UI? Lots of custom work, though.
@caracal said: Could you expose the .env or equivalent in the UI? Lots of custom work, though.
For now I'm trying to keep all settings in env vars. For some apps you can pass settings with them and it's the best way for containers. In most cases the container will set up a config file based on env vars internally (which is lost when recreating the container).
If an important setting for an image isn't available as env var, I'd file it as enhancement with the image maintainer.
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@dylightful said: In my scenario, 100% of my client base is in Australia meaning EU & US aren't really an option for me.
Just ordered the first server in HK. 🤗 Should be ready in a few days.
BYOVM would mean to run custom Docker images in this case? This feature was much-requested in our survey, but I'll skip it for now because it would mean a totally different target market (people who can build and know what Docker images are). Currently the focus is on normal folks, who want to run FOSS apps in a simple way to escape from the usual data harvesting companies. The former market could be served in the future with a different brand.
I think what he meant was to bring his own server like what runcloud/serverpilot does.
If so, that would be outside of PikaPods's goals, right?
Negative, more like Cloudron or Elast.io
Yea, but the point is the same, to bring your own server, which is not the goal as @m4nu said.
@dylightful said: In my scenario, 100% of my client base is in Australia meaning EU & US aren't really an option for me.
Just ordered the first server in HK. 🤗 Should be ready in a few days.
BYOVM would mean to run custom Docker images in this case? This feature was much-requested in our survey, but I'll skip it for now because it would mean a totally different target market (people who can build and know what Docker images are). Currently the focus is on normal folks, who want to run FOSS apps in a simple way to escape from the usual data harvesting companies. The former market could be served in the future with a different brand.
I think what he meant was to bring his own server like what runcloud/serverpilot does.
If so, that would be outside of PikaPods's goals, right?
Negative, more like Cloudron or Elast.io
Yea, but the point is the same, to bring your own server, which is not the goal as @m4nu said.
Better you use solutions that you said instead.
It was just a suggestion - Avoids the need (and cost) of opening multiple DC's
I have tried it, they are ready-to-go within about 20 seconds. Love the environment variables settings on the apps before even starting them. With the automatic subdomain creation, I find it a pretty good alternative to the shared hosting auto-installers. One feature I would request is more questions for long-running apps like "Do you really want to pause/delete? This Pod has been running for x days."
Pause this pod. You will still be charged for storage or $1 per month, whichever is higher.
The ability to pause is awesome. And it is solved in a very convenient and intuitive way. I wish VPS providers had a feature like this.
@m4nu I just hope you can actually maintain the updates for all the docker images, because those seem to be the weakest link on many open source projects.
I think it is worth considering an additional environment variable for "private pod" which would set up a server with http auth in front of any web based Pod.
Does the Jupyter pod contain Jupyter Notebook or JupyterLab?
@Losifh said: One feature I would request is more questions for long-running apps like "Do you really want to pause/delete? This Pod has been running for x days."
There is already double confirmation for deleting a pod. Thinking of changing this from the slider to typing the name, as most other sites do. Stopping is pretty harmless, so no confirmation for now. Maybe I'm also misunderstanding the suggestion.
@Losifh said: I think it is worth considering an additional environment variable for "private pod" which would set up a server with http auth in front of any web based Pod.
Not a fan of basic auth, but there could be uses. You'd still end up with a double login.
@Losifh said: Does the Jupyter pod contain Jupyter Notebook or JupyterLab?
Should be Jupyter Lab. It's running the scipy image
@Losifh said: I just hope you can actually maintain the updates for all the docker images, because those seem to be the weakest link on many open source projects.
For now I only use published upstream images. So the main effort is to run a few quick tests and see if the images still works in general and with our setup specifically. May hire part time help to support this part.
Also, some more apps added:
Filerun: light Dropbox alternative with basic support for photos and music (suggested by a fellow LETer)
Matomo: Our second web analytics app
WordPress: second blogging platform. Access to wp-content via SFTP.
Traggo: time tracking tool
And finally, Rocket.Chat got an update after the project cleaned up their image a bit. Previously their start command was a weird bash loop. They moved this into the app now and I hope it's more stable with that.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
@Losifh said: I think it is worth considering an additional environment variable for "private pod" which would set up a server with http auth in front of any web based Pod.
Not a fan of basic auth, but there could be uses. You'd still end up with a double login.
If Basic Auth is what I think it is then the 2 ways I would have used it thus far are:
Make an ArchiveBox index private. I was too dumb to figure out the config file and not determined enough to dig deeper.
As a temporary measure when creating a new pod that does not request admin credentials in the environment variables. I recognize that the chances of someone just guessing the pod URL and creating/updating the admin account before I get to it are basically zero, but sometimes I get a little paranoid, especially if I get interrupted.
I'll admit these aren't the best use cases. #1 is literally "I'm too dumb to do it the right way" while I would only use #2 for like 10 minutes per pod.
@fan said:
Just discovered pikapods while browsing some self-hosted threads, signed up but showing $20 in credit instead of 50, is the beta policy changed now?
Yeah, I reduce it to $20 a few weeks ago after the first test server got full. Still generous. Can't update the title here, so sorry for the confusion. Just found out that I can edit the title. The beta will probably finish next week when the US and Asia regions go online. So you were just on time.
Had to close the beta early after someone posted about it on a Chinese forum. 🙈
So it's $5 free starting credit and max 2 pods for free users now. And you can't use a disposable email or proxy to sign up (happened a LOT for those users).
What can I do with/for a thousand or so Chinese users? How many will ever pay? Trying to see this as opportunity, but it's an unexpected situation.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
@m4nu said:
Had to close the beta early after someone posted about it on a Chinese forum. 🙈
So it's $5 free starting credit and max 2 pods for free users now. And you can't use a disposable email or proxy to sign up (happened a LOT for those users).
What can I do with/for a thousand or so Chinese users? How many will ever pay? Trying to see this as opportunity, but it's an unexpected situation.
@m4nu said:
Had to close the beta early after someone posted about it on a Chinese forum. 🙈
So it's $5 free starting credit and max 2 pods for free users now. And you can't use a disposable email or proxy to sign up (happened a LOT for those users).
What can I do with/for a thousand or so Chinese users? How many will ever pay? Trying to see this as opportunity, but it's an unexpected situation.
So the old user also getting limit for 2 pods?
Yes, but you can add a payment method to increase that to 10. Or at least, it did such for me.
@m4nu said:
What can I do with/for a thousand or so Chinese users? How many will ever pay? Trying to see this as opportunity, but it's an unexpected situation.
Ha! You only think you have thousand of users - in reality it's like 10 guys and thousands of theirs multiply accounts.
Haven't bought a single service in VirMach Great Ryzen 2022 - 2023 Flash Sale.
I don't really like retroactive rule changes, but in hindsight maybe it would have been wise to make it harder to get/keep the beta credit. It's one thing if you got a thousand different people, but if they're all alts and one person is planning on jumping accounts every time they run out of credit...
The two systems I can think of off the top of my head are "Free credit is forfeited if you go six months with no pods, whether enabled or not" and "Get $5 for registering and $5 more when doing various tasks during the beta period, like deleting a pod or enabling 2FA." (Perhaps allow the same activity to grant credit twice, if performed before and after a feature is revamped)
The former would make it annoying to manage idling free credit on alt accounts for years and years into the future. It can be done via a calendar reminder, but how many accounts can you manage before it becomes too much of a hassle?
The latter would make it so it's harder to collect the beta credit on burner accounts in the first place because the user would have to automate a few tasks beyond the initial registration, but it might also let you collect more information if you triggered mini questionnaires after the credit awarding tasks are completed.
I already disabled all accounts that never even started a pod. Asked them to send in an email, if they still plan on using their credit. Only a few responded. So I assume those were mostly hoarder accounts. Some were waiting for other regions or didn't have time. Don't plan on going much further for now and generally happy with the interest the beta received.
About your other suggestion, I already did a survey for $10 extra credit. 20% response rate, which is pretty good.
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different from usage & limits, please add estimated monthly cost summary in My Pods dashboard, so i know how much the total cost per month i spend for all the pods i have.
@umzak said:
different from usage & limits, please add estimated monthly cost summary in My Pods dashboard, so i know how much the total cost per month i spend for all the pods i have.
Already there under Account > Billing. But this view needs adding billing details (but NOT a payment method) to show up in full. I’ll probably add an option to skip adding the payment method or use a coupon instead to make this more clear.
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Seems like mailing went out, copy-pasting if someone still thinking
Hi Michał,
Welcome to our first monthly dispatch, bringing you updates about your account and new and featured open source apps.
This month marked the end of our beta period. Thanks again to everyone who tested and shared feedback! With more than 1500 pods deployed, PikaPods has grown up quickly.
We also added the first server in the US region, giving you a choice of where you want your data to be located.
Featured Apps
PhotoPrism »
One of the first apps we added. It allows you to organize and share your photo collection mostly automatically. By keeping the data in open formats and under your control, memories are preserved for the future. The Berlin-based project is fully self-funded and independent. In fact they just incorporated and are working hard to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project. Run on PikaPods »
ListMonk »
Another exciting project, this time from India. It's best described as a simpler open source version of Mailchimp. It includes scalable subscriber management for millions of recipients, a powerful templating language for dynamic emails and even support for SMS and other messengers. Being free and open source, the subscriber data stays under your control and you are free to add or suggest improvements. Run on PikaPods »
Rallly (yes, 3 Ls) »
This month's newcomer was published less than 3 weeks ago by Luke from the UK. It offers a free and open alternative to Doodle, the meeting scheduling tool. Simply suggest different meeting times and ask your friends or colleagues to choose one. Helps schedule meetings without distraction or upselling. Run on PikaPods »
Explore More Apps
Know of any app that should be added? Suggest it here!
Your Account
You are currently running 0 pods and your account balance is $19.69310. Log into your Account »
Haven't bought a single service in VirMach Great Ryzen 2022 - 2023 Flash Sale.
@Ryujin said:
I hope its supported in the future, i've only ever used paypal as my payment provider cause it works great with my banking protection provider.
I’ll probably add it for manual top-ups. The survey also showed some demand for it and on BorgBase it makes up about a quarter to a third of transactions.
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Would be awesome if there were some kind of usage graph (something similar to what you'll see on HetrixTools), and some more straightforward CPU usage (a.k.a percentage)
@sanvit said: Would be awesome if there were some kind of usage graph (something similar to what you'll see on HetrixTools), and some more straightforward CPU usage (a.k.a percentage)
Yeah, I'd like to have that too. Currently looking into using Prometheus or cAdvisor for this. Just don't want to add too much overhead.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
@m4nu, I don't think I will use my account and have no actual need for any pod services. I still have $59 credit in the account. Would it be possible that you use those credits to giveaway to someone else in this community instead of me hoarding it?
@AaronSS said:
I'm trying to add a .es TLD to a pod but it keeps saying the can see the CNAME. Bug?
Note: other pods have custom app.domain.net mappings are are working great.
Hey, just saw this. Still an issue? I disabled NS caching a few days ago. So even if you change nameservers, it should pick up the changes pretty fast.
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@m4nu said:
Hey, just saw this. Still an issue? I disabled NS caching a few days ago. So even if you change nameservers, it should pick up the changes pretty fast.
I put them in our monthly newsletter now. Together with featured apps.
Do expect the summer months to be a bit slower in terms of development. Mostly setting up and improving automation processes where they were missing. Then more new features again.
Also keep an eye out for upcoming posts on LEB.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
@m4nu I am testing it out. Quick question (and I couldn't find any support link hence asking here)
What is the IP address that the pods uses to connect? e.g. in Kuma, what would be the IP address for outbound traffic? think my firewall has blocked it (at destination being monitored)
@Asim said: @m4nu I am testing it out. Quick question (and I couldn't find any support link hence asking here)
What is the IP address that the pods uses to connect? e.g. in Kuma, what would be the IP address for outbound traffic? think my firewall has blocked it (at destination being monitored)
Each pod server has its own ipv4 and ipv6 IP. You could look it up using dig and your pod hostname.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Comments
Good idea! I can get this data via the existing stats. Can also be useful to debug unstable containers.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! @Jab
Recommended providers: BuyVM - MXroute - LunaNode - Forpsi - IntoVPS
Contact me for all of your Mail-in-a-Box email hosting needs at AnyDomain. I am also a proud reseller of MXroute email.
Could you expose the
.envor equivalent in the UI? Lots of custom work, though.HetrixTools - Highly recommended uptime monitor [aff]
For now I'm trying to keep all settings in env vars. For some apps you can pass settings with them and it's the best way for containers. In most cases the container will set up a config file based on env vars internally (which is lost when recreating the container).
If an important setting for an image isn't available as env var, I'd file it as enhancement with the image maintainer.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Yea, but the point is the same, to bring your own server, which is not the goal as @m4nu said.
Better you use solutions that you said instead.
It was just a suggestion - Avoids the need (and cost) of opening multiple DC's
Few new apps added today:
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
I have tried it, they are ready-to-go within about 20 seconds. Love the environment variables settings on the apps before even starting them. With the automatic subdomain creation, I find it a pretty good alternative to the shared hosting auto-installers. One feature I would request is more questions for long-running apps like "Do you really want to pause/delete? This Pod has been running for x days."
The ability to pause is awesome. And it is solved in a very convenient and intuitive way. I wish VPS providers had a feature like this.
@m4nu I just hope you can actually maintain the updates for all the docker images, because those seem to be the weakest link on many open source projects.
I think it is worth considering an additional environment variable for "private pod" which would set up a server with http auth in front of any web based Pod.
Does the Jupyter pod contain Jupyter Notebook or JupyterLab?
There is already double confirmation for deleting a pod. Thinking of changing this from the slider to typing the name, as most other sites do. Stopping is pretty harmless, so no confirmation for now. Maybe I'm also misunderstanding the suggestion.
Not a fan of basic auth, but there could be uses. You'd still end up with a double login.
Should be Jupyter Lab. It's running the scipy image
For now I only use published upstream images. So the main effort is to run a few quick tests and see if the images still works in general and with our setup specifically. May hire part time help to support this part.
Also, some more apps added:
wp-contentvia SFTP.And finally, Rocket.Chat got an update after the project cleaned up their image a bit. Previously their start command was a weird bash loop. They moved this into the app now and I hope it's more stable with that.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
If Basic Auth is what I think it is then the 2 ways I would have used it thus far are:
Make an ArchiveBox index private. I was too dumb to figure out the config file and not determined enough to dig deeper.
As a temporary measure when creating a new pod that does not request admin credentials in the environment variables. I recognize that the chances of someone just guessing the pod URL and creating/updating the admin account before I get to it are basically zero, but sometimes I get a little paranoid, especially if I get interrupted.
I'll admit these aren't the best use cases. #1 is literally "I'm too dumb to do it the right way" while I would only use #2 for like 10 minutes per pod.
Just discovered pikapods while browsing some self-hosted threads, signed up but showing $20 in credit instead of 50, is the beta policy changed now?
BTW is it possible to add Outline? https://www.getoutline.com/
Yeah, I reduce it to $20 a few weeks ago after the first test server got full. Still generous. Can't update the title here, so sorry for the confusion. Just found out that I can edit the title. The beta will probably finish next week when the US and Asia regions go online. So you were just on time.
Already working on Outline, but it has many dependencies. Doing simpler apps first.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Had to close the beta early after someone posted about it on a Chinese forum. 🙈
So it's $5 free starting credit and max 2 pods for free users now. And you can't use a disposable email or proxy to sign up (happened a LOT for those users).
What can I do with/for a thousand or so Chinese users? How many will ever pay? Trying to see this as opportunity, but it's an unexpected situation.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Overall, great project.
This is why we cant have nice things.
So the old user also getting limit for 2 pods?
Yes, but you can add a payment method to increase that to 10. Or at least, it did such for me.
Ha! You only think you have thousand of users - in reality it's like 10 guys and thousands of theirs multiply accounts.
Haven't bought a single service in VirMach Great Ryzen 2022 - 2023 Flash Sale.
Correct. Just add a payment method to show you are a real person. No actual payment needed.
Will add a third EU server today and US should go online any day now. Just missing its data drives.
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I’m ready 🙂
I don't really like retroactive rule changes, but in hindsight maybe it would have been wise to make it harder to get/keep the beta credit. It's one thing if you got a thousand different people, but if they're all alts and one person is planning on jumping accounts every time they run out of credit...
The two systems I can think of off the top of my head are "Free credit is forfeited if you go six months with no pods, whether enabled or not" and "Get $5 for registering and $5 more when doing various tasks during the beta period, like deleting a pod or enabling 2FA." (Perhaps allow the same activity to grant credit twice, if performed before and after a feature is revamped)
The former would make it annoying to manage idling free credit on alt accounts for years and years into the future. It can be done via a calendar reminder, but how many accounts can you manage before it becomes too much of a hassle?
The latter would make it so it's harder to collect the beta credit on burner accounts in the first place because the user would have to automate a few tasks beyond the initial registration, but it might also let you collect more information if you triggered mini questionnaires after the credit awarding tasks are completed.
I already disabled all accounts that never even started a pod. Asked them to send in an email, if they still plan on using their credit. Only a few responded. So I assume those were mostly hoarder accounts. Some were waiting for other regions or didn't have time. Don't plan on going much further for now and generally happy with the interest the beta received.
About your other suggestion, I already did a survey for $10 extra credit. 20% response rate, which is pretty good.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Hi, my colleague signed up for PikaPods, and he seem to have access to US region as well, while I don't. Is there a way to enable U.S.?
I enabled the new US region for everyone about an hour ago. You should see it enabled after reloading the site. Enjoy!
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Can confirm that U.S. is enabled
Thanks!
BTW, which part of the U.S. is it? And do you have plans to expand to other locations as well?
It's in Boston, MA. Same DC that already hosts BorgBase.com. Hong Kong will follow shortly. Server is already ordered, but waiting for parts.
Those 3 regions should cover most users pretty well. So no plans to add more for now.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
different from usage & limits, please add estimated monthly cost summary in My Pods dashboard, so i know how much the total cost per month i spend for all the pods i have.
benchmark score of the vps I've ever had
Already there under Account > Billing. But this view needs adding billing details (but NOT a payment method) to show up in full. I’ll probably add an option to skip adding the payment method or use a coupon instead to make this more clear.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Seems like mailing went out, copy-pasting if someone still thinking
Haven't bought a single service in VirMach Great Ryzen 2022 - 2023 Flash Sale.
Paypal not supported?
Maybe later. Not a big fan for different reasons. So trying without at first.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
I hope its supported in the future, i've only ever used paypal as my payment provider cause it works great with my banking protection provider.
I’ll probably add it for manual top-ups. The survey also showed some demand for it and on BorgBase it makes up about a quarter to a third of transactions.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
One feedback after using it for a few days :
Would be awesome if there were some kind of usage graph (something similar to what you'll see on HetrixTools), and some more straightforward CPU usage (a.k.a percentage)
Yeah, I'd like to have that too. Currently looking into using Prometheus or cAdvisor for this. Just don't want to add too much overhead.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
@m4nu, I don't think I will use my account and have no actual need for any pod services. I still have $59 credit in the account. Would it be possible that you use those credits to giveaway to someone else in this community instead of me hoarding it?
No worries. You can use it later. They don't expire. If someone wants more testing credits, they'll get it anyways.
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Pods should be sortable. Alphabetically, Date Create, Date Update, Location, etc.
Agree. Will be added.
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I'm trying to add a .es TLD to a pod but it keeps saying the can see the CNAME. Bug?
Note: other pods have custom app.domain.net mappings are are working great.
Hey, just saw this. Still an issue? I disabled NS caching a few days ago. So even if you change nameservers, it should pick up the changes pretty fast.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Sadly, yes.
Overall - really nice service you are providing
Some more exciting news to share:
And some notable new apps added this week:
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Any updates?
I put them in our monthly newsletter now. Together with featured apps.
Do expect the summer months to be a bit slower in terms of development. Mostly setting up and improving automation processes where they were missing. Then more new features again.
Also keep an eye out for upcoming posts on LEB.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
@m4nu I am testing it out. Quick question (and I couldn't find any support link hence asking here)
What is the IP address that the pods uses to connect? e.g. in Kuma, what would be the IP address for outbound traffic? think my firewall has blocked it (at destination being monitored)
Also, can you add Google Pay? Its fast and convenient
I already have an open issue to add wallets at some point. Maybe later in autumn.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com
Each pod server has its own ipv4 and ipv6 IP. You could look it up using dig and your pod hostname.
Simple and secure Borg Backup hosting from $2/month: BorgBase.com