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Comment by kennu | Hacker News Reader

This is not about how easy or difficult it is to issue TLS certificates, to configure SSH keys or to update the OS. It's about having to actively maintain them yourself in every possible situation until eternity, like when TLS versions are deprecated, SSH key algorithms are quantum-hacked, backward-incompatible new OS LTS versions are released, and so on. You will always have new stuff come up that you need to take care of.

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This is all trivial, and can and should be automated. Furthermore, all of your arguments can easily be applied to NodeJS version deprecations, React realizing they shipped a massive CVE, etc.

I will die on this hill: parent is correct - the ability to manage a Linux server should be a requirement to work in the industry, even if it has fuck-all to do with your job. It proves some basic level of competence and knowledge about the thing that is running your code.

I keep reading posts like this, but the people who say this never actually seem to enlighten the rest of us troglodytes by, say, writing a comprehensive, all inclusive, guide to doing this.

If it's so easy, surely it's no big undertaking to explain how one self hosts a fully secured server. No shortcuts, no "just use the usual setup" (we don't know what it is!), no skipped or missed bits. Debian to Caddy to Postgres, performant and fully secure, self upgrading and automated, from zero to hero, documenting every command used and the rationale for it (so that we may learn).

Or is it perhaps not as simple as you say?

The parent I responded to was discussing issuing certs, configuring SSH keys, and updating an OS. Those are all in fact trivial and easily automated.

What you have stated requires more knowledge (especially Postgres). You’re not going to get it from a blog post, and will need to read actual source docs and man pages.

The original claim was "People shouldn't even be in the industry unless they can administer a Linux server, even if that has nothing to do with their role." It is a very significant moving of the goalposts to now suggest this is all about "updating an OS". That's not a good faith claim.

This whole thing is merely cheap online snark masquerading as wisdom. No, not all SWEs know how to maintain Linux servers, and many (most?) SWE roles have all of zero overlap with that kind of work. If businesses could fire all their expensive server admins and replace them with some college kid and a $5 VPS, they would long since have done so.

If this is anything more than poseur snark, put your money where your mouth is and either write a comprehensive resource yourself, or at least compile a list of resources that would suffice for someone to be able to securely run and maintain a live server in production. No, not Hello Worlds, actual prod. Then, when next this comes up, link us to your guide rather than just spraying spittle on the plebs who lack your expertise.

Do something more constructive than low effort snark.

I intermingled the two claims, you’re correct, and was not intending to move the goalpost. I apologize.

Claim one: setting up unattended-upgrades, SSH keygen, and automating cert rotation is trivial and easily automated.

Claim two: you should know how to manage a Linux server. Here are docs.

https://tldp.org/

https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_all_by_section.html

https://nginx.org/en/docs/

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/index.html

They don't write the guide because by the time they've written the guide to an appropriate level of specification, the result they've produced is an off-the-shelf service provider not unlike the ones they're railing against.

I'm curious about this trivial automation. Let's say the new OS LTS version no longer includes nginx, because it was replaced by a new product with different config. How does the automation figure out what the new server package is and migrate your old Nginx config to the new format?

I agree with Node.js version deprecations being a huge problem and personally advocate for an evergreen WebAssembly platform for running apps. Apps should run forever even if the underlying platform completely changes, and only require updating if the app itself contains something that needs updating.

If an LTS of an OS replaced nginx with something else, a. it would be announced with great fanfare months in advance b. if you don’t want to do that, add apt / yum / zypper install nginx to your Ansible task, or whatever you’re using.

The things that you just described are not automation, but human activities needed to tackle the new situation by following news and creating new automation. Which kind of proves my point that you cannot prepare for every unexpected situation before it actually happens. Except maybe with AI in the future.

When AWS announces that they’re EOL’ing the Python or NodeJS version in your Lambda, or the version of your RDS cluster, etc. you also are required to take human action. And in fact, at any appreciable scale, you likely want that behavior, so you can control the date and time of the switch, because “zero downtime” is rarely zero downtime.

Yes, and like I mentioned in another comment, I consider this a major painpoint and problem with Node.js based applications. I have high hopes that eventually there will be an "evergreen" WebAssembly based Lambda function runtime.

The answer is to write your server in portable C++, and just rebuild it for whatever new OS you're dealing with.

The speed. Imagine the performance. There are plenty of mature C++ web server frameworks, it's really not difficult. If you're afraid of C++, you could choose something else. Rust if you're insane, or golang if you're insane but in a different way.

Anyway. Nginx is not going away, so the argument is a bit silly. "What if js went away". Same thing.

I self host my own server and this isn't something that takes much time per year. You're making it sound like a day job. It's not really. As long as you have a solid initial config you shouldn't have to worry.

Exactly. Also, being that my specialty is writing software and not server maintenance, no matter how much of an effort I put forth there's substantial risk of blind spots where holes can lurk.

I felt more comfortable maintaining a VPS back between 2005 and 2015, but at that point attackers were dramatically less sophisticated and numerous and I was a lot more overconfident/naive. At least for solo operations I'm now inclined to use a PaaS… the exception to that is if said operation is my full time job (giving me ample time to make sure all bases are covered for keeping the VPS secure) or it's grown enough that I can justify hiring somebody to tend to it.

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