This is my first post on the forum, but I’ve been storjing and reading for many months. Happy to finally step up and join the community.
The reason why I’m posting is that Storj doesn’t have an Umbrel app yet, and I want to share the initiative to start researching and implementing a Storage Node app for Umbrel.
For those that are not familiar with Umbrel, It is an app store for decentralized nodes (usually a raspberry) although it is still young and beta, I see extreme potential for Umbrel.
I’m open to feedback, ideas and everything that would help. If we find that this idea is worth it pursuing I will be happy to implement it myself in my free time.
Although I agree that the official docker is the best technical implementation for experts, I also believe we are moving towards a mass adoption of self-hosting nodes (including non-techies) as web3 becomes a reality.
We will see solutions like umbrel oversimplifiying the installation of storj-like apps with one-click for people that are interested in Web3, but doesn’t have the time to learn the skills.
I know we’re not short of storj operators, so putting the efforts in implementing that is more about working towards a mature ecosystem where you have an oversimplified install option with his own kit of drawbacks.
I haven’t tried the OS, but I think they just made a linux distribution, in any case I also prefeer a real linux distro and installing umbrel on top.
The simplification of installer will not help the Storage Node Operator (SNO) to solve any issue which he/she may meet - neither port forwarding issues, nor networking/firewall issues nor configure a storage (one/many HDDs and so on).
As result the user of simplified installer will act as usual - in any complicated situation it will destroy everything and reinstall (this is will be easy, yes?) and lose money and time. For the network - a lot of repairs and losing money too.
We already have similar application for QNAP - it’s actually a wrapper around docker. And in most cases the outcome is removing this app and configure the node from the CLI than trying to make it work, if it did not work right away.
The node setup is some kind of exam to be qualified as a SNO.
So simplifying the installer, in my personal opinion, is not what is required.
But isnt the windows installer a simplified version though, So then you get the most inexperienced users joining the network just because they run windows. Right?
It still requires to generate and sign at least identity and you still need to make port forwarding. However this installer will not allow you to setup more than a one node anyway.
But I have to agree, if consider Umbrel as OS - it could have an installer.
But use another one wrapper around docker… How it would be different from the Portainer?
One could dream of having an All in one installed that does pretty much everything except forward the ports. One that can generate a 1 time identity so that you cant make any mistakes of using the wrong one, so then it would just go straight into starting up the node. I think the highest user error so far is reusing an Old identity to start a new node which equals DQ pretty much instantly without a real warning. At least if there is a setup that is all in one it could catch this fatal error before it happens. I think that would be nice.
I would like to see the application to connect the storage from the Storj DCS to that server and to the NextCloud in particular instead another-one-installer for storagenode
I dont disagree with you, nice to haves, for sure and being able to store data on storj is much more important. But also installing nodes without accidently making a mistake is important which were all human and we all make mistakes from time to time.
Agreed. And personnally I think it would be nice if satellites could detect when 2 nodes use the same identity so they can be both suspended and avoid DQ just because of a (common) mistake.
I dunno if that’s technically possible though
I agree that connecting a storj storage to nextcloud, photoprism, and similar apps has the potential to be a successful win-win use case.
A raspberry pi umbrel user starts with limited storage capacity, so getting 150GB of secure encrypted capacity looks like a superior next-step to the alternative of purchasing hard drives.
There is no much data to backup my claims, but on paper looks great.
Love the original idea of the storage node, of course, maybe we get even better ideas, but one thing is for sure, I’ll go with the most pragmatic one!
I am an SNO and an Umbrel LN node runner. I agree that listing STORJ on Umbrel app store will help to gain some publicity.
Here are some challenges.
I felt that running STORJ node behind Tor network is not practical. I am not sure if this is mandatory for all listed apps. I understand that people set up reverse proxy to overcome this when installing nextcloud or BTCpay server via umbrel app store.
Umbrel v0.5 changes the folder directory which doesn’t follow the conventional linux systems. This irritates many long-time users. I guess they want to consolidate the user data in “~/umbrel/app-data” folder. This will become another variant of STORJ to maintain.
Since most Umbrel users are running on rpi, do you also recommend them to generate their STORJ identity on another pc first?
