Hey everyone,
I’m struggling at this, and hence looking at your collective wisdom.
We are all selfhosting here (at least, willing to), so we know that it takes some time and skills.
But have you envisionned what your familly will do if the worst happen ? (e.g. you die in an accident)
Can someone take over, or all the setup will slowly fall appart and data be lost?
In my case, no one will be able to follow up. So all important documents and photos are mapped through nfs to all PC at home, so familly will still be able to access.
They know that everything important is stored on a NAS (hiwever, not sure they can identify and find it).
Same for all the passwords, a keepass file that is setup to be access easily and from all PCs. I have the plan to document in there an emergency way for them to secure the data.
And you, how do you manage that?
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Years ago I recorded a video saying “if you watch this and I’m gone, you’re fucked, export immediately right now all the passwords, photos and emails from the family cloud. Don’t wait, do it immediately right now, without maintenance everything will break within 2 years at max. Watch the instructions at home.domain.com/emergency the instructions on how to do it. They will be probably be outdated because hopefully several decades are passed, so you might adapt them to the new version. If someone in the family has computer skills, in the disk you there’s the ssh password for the home server”
Then I saved it on a DVD, I wrote on it “backup keys for the Bitcoin wallet” and hidden it in my drawer
backup keys for the Bitcoin wallet
Hahaha… I like that!!
“On a DVD”… 😅 in some decades that might as well be like saving your video to 8mm film. Gotta call some specialist antique dealer on the other side of the continent to find the right tech and right adapters to play it back on modern hardware
My wife has a laminated card which has the instructions to my KeePass vault, and an explanation of how the backup drives are encrypted.
Once the family photos are safe and she can login to all my accounts to finalize them, the server can be replaced with a WRT54G for all I care. Continuity will be impossible. Even a qualified sysadmin would probably struggle with it.
I like that idea, totally non-nerds friendly.
Will look into that, thanks :)
When I die, I will go to heaven. This isn’t exactly the worst.
The server itself will remain quite stable for a long time.
The others won’t be able to continue administrating/maintaining the server. They understand that, so they will probably copy all their files to their local devices, sooner or later, and stop using the other services.
Well, if you assume they are able to do copies of files, and in the end they are not, you will not go to heaven because you screwed up your familly.
Same as stop using the services, they might now even know they are using some @home services that are running in the background.
But I take the idea about having them making their own copy of files, and write down some instructions ablut what is where, and how do a backup they own.
you assume they are able to do copies of files, and in the end they are not
It’s my family, I know them LOL
Honestly, haven’t even though about it. Better make this my weekend project.
Someone mentioned having a static page with instructions (home.example.com/emergency or something similar) not a bad idea at all. Actually this might the route I take too. Thank you for talking about something I didn’t even know I needed!
You don’t need it, but your familly do !
And key point is : what is the most likely place for them to start searching such information?
In my case, they will never thought about looking for an “emergency page”. So laminayed cards mentionned by someone else seems to be a good option
As I started thinking about how to lay out this “emergency page” I started thinking “well in order for this page to be accessible, I have to assume that my servers are up and running for my family to even get to said page. If the servers are offline for any reason, this page would be useless.” So yea probably something physical or non “techy” is best for this
Buy a small safe. Write all your relevant passwords in a book and keep it in the safe. Write a sealed will which gives the combinations for the safe and deposit the will with a lawyer or trustee. Give instruction to the lawyer to hand over the will to your family if you died.
There’s nothing on my systems that anyone else needs to survive. They can wipe the drives and run a bunch of web servers that only serve up hamsterdance in perpetuity for all I care.
If I did need something like that I’d program some kind of dead man’s switch to email instructions with a master password to a trusted party if I didn’t log on for 2 weeks or something. Then hope I never end up in a coma or otherwise incapacitated but not dead. There are 3rd parties that do that kind of thing but I wouldn’t trust them and would roll my own.
I was thinking about such a system also, but it has some serious drawbacks:
- I need to connect to it regularly. Auto login is of course not an option, that defeat the purpose. So, which service/stuff am I using that could be this switch? I see any.
- time limit to send the message is also tricky. 2 weeks is too long imo, they may need some info about insurances sooner. And 2 weeks is already short, as you need to authenticate to the switch
So, as a farewell message why not, but I would not trust such system to deliver in a tilely manner information that they need.
All of my passwords are in Bitwarden and important ones are shared with my wife who has her own Botwarden and has shared her important passwords back with me. If one of us goes, the other will have access to everything. I don’t (yet) have any descendants to inherit anything of importance, so I’m not worried about anything beyond my passwords so that if something happens to me, my wife can manage all of the accounts for bills, banking, communication, etc.
If/when I have children, I will likely make a new plan that builds on what I already have, with directions to access my password vault that can be given to my brother and his husband and my parents, should they outlive me and my wife. With my passwords, everything else of import is accessible. Thankfully, my brother is very tech savvy, so if my wife and I both go, I can trust him to be able to log in to everything and pull important media down.
My wife and I share the same KeePass database for all of our passwords (synced across several devices via Syncthing).
Like me, she runs Fedora Silverblue and knows her way around a terminal well enough to follow instructions. I make a point to add verbose markdown notes to the vital KeePass entries; detailing how to decrypt the backup drives, restart services on our Proxmox server, etc. She also knows where the backup drives are located, both at home and off-site; and so does my son, in case anything happens to the both of us at once.
They might not be able to carry on exactly as things are now, but they’ll definitely be able to maintain access to our family photos, financials, etc., and that’s all that really matters.
I wasnt preparing for death, but trying to be ready in case I forget (which I do quite often). I made a book in bookstack with all steps I need to build that server from scratch together with all passwords, printed it on paper and stuck it next to a server
