After the arrest of Pavel Durov, I wanted to move from Telegram to something end-to-end encrypted. I know Signal is pretty good, but I think it is better to have our messages in my own server.

I have already looked in XMPP, but it required SSL certs and I did not have the mood to configure them.

Do you know any other selfhosted messaging service for a group of 4-5 friends, or an easy way to configure an XMPP server? Or shall I use Signal after all (I don’t really care that much about being selfhosted, I just thought it would be more privacy friendly)?

UPDATE: I managed to set up an XMPP server using prosody with the SSL certs. We have been testing it with my friend and it seems to go well.

  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websiteEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I have set up local DNS entries (with Pi-Hole) to point to my srrver, but I don’t know if it possible to get certs for that, since it is not a real domain.

    So long as your certs are for your fully qualified domain there’s no problem. I do this, as do many people — mydoman.com is fully qualified, but on my own network I override the DNS to the local address. Not a problem at all — DNS is tied to the hostname, not the IP.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Can confirm, I do this as well for my local services (especially important for Jellyfin), I just point my local DNS server at my local IP and everything works perfectly.

      • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websiteEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Another fun trick you can play is to use a private IP on your public DNS records. This is useful for Jellyfin on Chromecast for instance — it uses 8.8.8.8 for DNS lookup (and ignores your router settings), so it wants a fully qualified domain name. But it has no problem accessing local hosts, so long as it’s from 8.8.8.8’s record.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I suppose, but then you’re kind of screwed if you want to access Jellyfin outside of your network. I suppose you could use a VPN, but it’s probably easier to just not use the Chromecast (or just accept that it’s going to hit the WAN regardless).

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              Then you’re all clear.

              I personally want my Jellyfin to be on the WAN, and I have certain devices on my internal network VPN’d to my VPS, which exposes the services I want to access remotely. But if you don’t need that, using the local addr in your DNS config totally works. Getting TLS certs will be complicated, but you don’t need that anyway if everything is local or over a VPN.

              • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.websiteEnglish
                2·
                2 months ago

                Getting TLS certs will be complicated

                I just use Let’s Encrypt with a wildcard domain — same certs for public and private facing domains. I’m sure this isn’t best practice, but it’s mostly just for me so I’m not too worried :)