[laydn]

A few months ago, I made an offer of $100 in one of the freelancing websites, for someone to set-up something like your configuration on one of my Digital Ocean instances. I asked for a few more apps to be installed (git, svn, etc). There were no takers :-)

I think a web site/service which lets you choose "apps" and spawns a VPS instance would be very useful and profitable (Think "ninite for VPS"). I started to work on this but never had the time to continue. With an Ansible/Chef/Puppet recipe, this should be relatively easy to do.

[riccardomc]

I believe there were no takers because 100$ for such a setup is completely out of market.

I wouldn't be surprised if a freelancer would charge 100$ per hour to do this kind of work spanning multiple work days.

[osivertsson]

Seems like https://sandstorm.io/ could be what you are looking for.

[js4ever]

Probably not, sandstorm is abandoned, most softwares are broken and unmaintained, gitlab version is from 2016 and full of vulnerabilities, same for WordPress version from 2018. Project is dead. I think the guy behind the project was hired by Cloudflare few years ago

[osivertsson]

I know that there was some work on reviving sandstorm after Kenton Varda joined Cloudflare, see e.g. https://sandstorm.io/news/2020-02-03-reviving-sandstorm, but it is very possible it never got anywhere. Sad but understandable.

[throwaway984393]

A lot of VPS providers have a catalog of apps to install for you and dump you in a web management console. Sometimes it's handy but usually the security is awful. Back in the day, Webmin was the go-to way to do that and configure your server in general from a web interface

[lbriner]

Although not exactly user-friendly, I created my first proper bash script the other day for setting up a postfix server on a vps. You have to create the vanialla vps first but then the script does all of the apt install stuff and then uses awk/sed/whatever to modify config files.

The nice thing is that it is mostly what you would do manually anyway and the commands are unlikely to change much/often since they will install latest versions of postfix etc. when you run the script.

I think this might be more doable since the scripts are easy to create and maintain so perhaps just a site with bash scripts for e.g. "Postfix + Sendmail" or "PHP7 + nginx"

[Tehchops]

Whether or not you classify it as “easy” isn’t relevant. You hit the nail on the head in the prior sentence: “time” is the issue, and you’re asking someone to trade their time for a pittance.

FWIW I’d charge way more than $100/hr for this work.

[nurettin]

I think they mean that if you already have the setup as a provisioning script all you would need to do is to modify it a little, run it and get cash in return.

[pedropaf]

Something like CapRover wouldn't work for you? Although it's not very up to date. And the one-click collection of apps, is a bit outdated too. You'd need to reference your custom docker images.

[indigodaddy]

Doesn’t DO itself have “apps” ?

Also see Cloudron. Not cheap but I’ve heard that people are very happy with their service. Basically you self host their “app as a service” platform so to speak.

Kind of like a super polished Sandstorm, but totally different sandboxing technologies (believe Cloudron uses Docker but not sure if they still do—- and I believe Sandstorm used Kenton Varda’s cap n proto technology which probably allowed for even greater sandboxing/protection than Docker, I would have to imagine..)..

[secfirstmd]

I used to be a Sandstorm user but yes it was abandoned. Have been a Cloudron guy since the start and have been very happy with it.

[erulabs]

This is what we’re building over at https://KubeSail.com :)

[anderspitman]

Take a look at cloudron.io. It's not open source but sadly sandstorm.io apps have gotten out of date.

[distantsounds]

year 2000 called, they are asking for cpanel back

[sillycube]

You can choose apps and spawn a VPS on DO already.

[stjohnswarts]

But can you install multiple apps on one instance?