Not something that would have to be on all the time, but more something that can be off overnight. This question feels like it has an obvious yes/no answer that I’m missing.

Edit: pihole was a bad example

  • Froyn
    link
    fedilink
    11 year ago

    It would make sense if you’re using your main machine to test the waters with to see if it’s worth getting invested.
    So your pihole as an example would work as follows:

    1. Install Docker.
    2. Follow the docs to install the container/image/etc. for pihole
    3. Change your home router’s DNS entries to now START with your main machine.
      --Your main machine goes offline for the night, your home router uses the secondary as does everything else that’s now been taught by DHCP to use your main machine for primary DNS.
    4. Make your call and break it all back to where it started.

    With the primary DNS being a “local”, I can’t imagine it taking that long to realize it’s offline and change to the secondary DNS on most devices. Make sure you set your “main machine” to a Static/DHCP Reserved IP on the home router, as a good general practice.

    Other things I self-host are media related. I like to watch media from bed instead of in front of the computer. I turn my computer off when I’m not at it.
    I could see if you were like hosting a local repository maybe. Like you want that whole “self-hosted” GitHub experience. That would be a decent use case for main machine hosting. Or VMs for testing different environments.

    • boothin
      link
      fedilink
      11 year ago

      Just fyi how a client handles multiple DNS servers might not always be you expect and just depends on how it was implemented. Some clients can just send a DNS request to all DNS servers at once and take whatever responds first, essentially randomizing which DNS server gets used

      • Froyn
        link
        fedilink
        11 year ago

        And a local will always respond faster than non-local, unless that local is turned off.