• 0 Posts
  • 301 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
cake
Cake day: February 15th, 2025

help-circle





  • If you have one of those cars that can be used as a boat. And you only ever use it in water and never on land, it doesn’t really make sense to me to exclusively call it a car. Even though it factually is one, it acts as a boat. At least call it carboat.

    If I have a VPN, but it’s sole purpose is to take all the traffic that knocks on it’s network-adapter and shove it down a dev/tun and vice verca, why can we not say (with the goal of clear communication and precise descriptions) that it effectively acts as a proxy ?


  • Hell the ability to access the internet via the tunnel, called Split Tunneling, is also controllable.

    It’s that ability to control where the tunnel terminates that allows consumer VPNs, like Proton, to be used the way they are.

    you can do the same split tunneling via proxy servers

    while private individuals absolutely do use VPNs as an ersatz replacement for Proxy Servers they are nowhere near the whole use case for VPN

    I agree. That also means that for certain usecases they are equivalent. It’s sometimes worth checking all options to find the best one for that specific case.


  • You’re correct.

    Most people only search for “VPN” because thats the term that got marketed for decades.

    But the problem can be solved by using a proxy as well.

    The intent of my comment was just to point to a second term - “proxy” - that can be used to find more valid, alternative solutions to the problem of making your homelab hosted services publicly available. And I think you agree with me, that proxy is the term closer to the usecase, even though we both correctly state that a VPN can be used as a proxy.

    To make a bad analogy (it’s the first thing that came to mind): It’s like people buying a wok, even though they really just need a pan. And so they only search for wok, because every company says wok all the time, even though they will never use the wok as a wok, but just as a normal pan.

    Even by your definition that should be a VPN, right?

    … in my case, I have a homelab, a VPS and a user of a service that runs on my homelab. The VPS is just a proxy for the homelab. The user (client) talks to the homelab (server), through the VPS (proxy) so not, not really a VPN, even if I’d set up openVPN between VPS and homelab. They are not two clients.



  • I think thats up to debate.

    Wikipedia says:

    A virtual private network (VPN) is an overlay network that uses network virtualization to extend a private network across a public network, such as the Internet, via the use of encryption and tunneling protocols. In a VPN, a tunneling protocol is used to transfer network messages from one network host to another. Host-to-network VPNs are commonly used by organisations to allow off-site users secure access to an office network over the Internet. Site-to-site VPNs connect two networks, such as an office network and a datacenter.

    So my argument is, if it is not used for private communication between multiple clients, it’s not really a VPN.

    Lets say, we both connect to the same Proton VPN server - our computers would not see each other and would not be able to connect to each other via that service. It has effectively the same function as a proxy - making your public internet traffic appear to come from the IP of the proxy server instead of your home IP.

    Whereas if you set one up yourself with openVPN for example, we could make it so that we both get a VPN internal IP that we could use to directly connect and idk, play minecraft or something. Instead of connecting through the public internet, we would connect through a virtual network that is private for the two of us.







  • We know you’re not looking for a backup solution. But at least I fucked up by being in the same situation as you a long time ago and it resulted in hours of agony over lost project files, personal photos and months of restoring access to hundreds of accouns. Trust me, you don’t want to go through that.

    What happens with your data and backup if:

    • your drive dies?
    • someone breaks in and steals the pc?
    • your house burns down?

    How will file history help you get back those files?


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup#3-2-1_Backup_Rule

    The idea that a minimal backup solution should include 3 copies of the data, stored on 2 different types of storage media, and one copy should be kept offsite, in a remote location





  • HelloRoot@lemy.loltoLinux@lemmy.worldLaptop uptime - since suspend
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    15 days ago
    journalctl --list-boots
    

    If you see multiple entries without reboots, those intermediate boundaries are suspend/resume cycles.

    you can get the last resupe time with either

    journalctl -b -1 -g "PM: suspend exit"
    

    or maybe

    journalctl -g "resume from suspend"
    

    I don’t have my laptop with me rn, so it would be nice if somebody can confirm whether this works