nattukaka

nattukaka

nattukaka is a minmialistic web server that runs my stuff on the internet. It is designed in a highly personalized manner but you can easily fork this and run your own version. It currently runs on the cheapest VPS available on Linode.

features

• serve my personal page (vivekn.dev)
• serve my blog (vivekn.dev/blog)
• gated access to some parts (vivekn.dev/login)
• handle my todo list
• handle my notes
• send me the top 10 hacker news stories everyday at 7:00AM IST.
• store and provide insights to my financial data
• enable tagging on all posts (notes, blogs, etc.)

requirements

• Go 1.18+
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• supercronic (runs my without hassle in docker containers)
• Docker (which will take care of setting up all of the above requirements for you, so just have this at the bare minimum)
• nginx (optional but recommended, mostly managed by certbot). nginx would directly run on your host machine.

why this name?

nattukaka is a famous character in an Indian TV show called Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, who with his nephew, can get anything done for his employer. It sounds like a cool name for a do-it-all-for-me server!

why run your own server?

• I love doing it!
• I care about data privacy. Self-reliance feels good.

why not self-host existing open source software?

Good option. I considered them but they're too bulky for my needs. nattukaka is lean. It does just as much as I want and is not bloated with a dozen things. Running multiple open source software is not trivial either. It is much lower headache to have almost everything run under one server.

setup info

• .env file requirements (this must be available on your VPS before running docker compose):

PORT=
JWT_SECRET=
TELEGRAM_API_KEY=
DATABASE_HOST=
DATABASE_PORT=
DATABASE_NAME=
DATABASE_USER=
DATABASE_PASSWORD=
REDIS_HOST=
REDIS_PORT=

• the deploy.sh script which is run on every push to master branch:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Removing previous copy"
sudo rm -rf nattukaka
echo "Getting latest"
git clone https://github.com/viveknathani/nattukaka.git
cp .env nattukaka/
cd nattukaka
docker compose build
docker compose up -d

license

MIT