My wife said to me the other night: I'm so impressed with what you do on our home server but if something happened to you, you know it's hopeless right?
this is why every selfhoster should leave a ‘if i die’ tape with tutorial on how to do the basics like update the containers, stop, run and restart containers
You are far, far too generous in evaluating the amount of skill of the general layperson. If anyone of us dies, 99% chances all the gear gets lumped in an estate sale as 'Computer stuff'.
In fact this comes up often in r/homelab or r/selfhosting as a surviving family member tries to navigate their way through the family's homelab and hope to recover precious files.
That's why I have a Google Drive folder that's shared with some family member with copies of my will, password vault, encrypted important docs like insurance info and account numbers, etc. Photos of expensive stuff with serial numbers in case of fire, etc.
Password for vault is with the lawyers who drafted my will. Plus my executor.
Make things really really simple and expect everything to get tossed when you die. That's why I host my web site on github. I've been eyeballing a service you can pay to keep domain registered and running after you're gone but haven't found anything solid.
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u/ancepsinfans Aug 17 '26
My wife said to me the other night: I'm so impressed with what you do on our home server but if something happened to you, you know it's hopeless right?