Obviously if public the material would be important. But private, only over ssh or vpn? Free internet, power, and backup!
What specifically are you attempting to achieve, because right now, what little you have shared sends up red flags and rings the alarm bells … loudly.
I have a server in my school office. I currently only use it to backup important files. I am asking if running public or private containers on it would be safe and acceptable.
If authorized by the school IT department and policy, yes. Ask them, not us.
Yes, already have. It seems they don’t care.
It seems they don’t care.
Then get that in writing.
This. Get in writing the specific legally binding policies for personal use of their network resources. Not just the personal opinion of the IT people. They don’t write the legally binding policy that you are responsible for following.
If that’s how you want to run your server that’s your choice, but if it were me, I’d think long and hard about the legal implications of doing this.
So far you’ve not said anything about what you’re trying to achieve and that’s not helping.
Well, I am asking also security wise. I know most schools snoop. Can they somehow see traffic through ssh or VPN? Or just the protocols, logs, dates, etc
The SSH and VPN traffic is encrypted. Unless your private keys have been compromised, nobody can see what is going over the tunnel. They can log things like the IP addresses that are connecting to it and how much data is being transferred though.
Using public property for private usage likely fall on the bad side of acceptable use policies.
It is my own device, but yes utilities and security is their own.
If you are so sure of your indemnity because it’s “your device”, why are you asking on Lemmy?
because discussing such projects in self hosting is fun and why we are here. I wanted to hear what others thought. Ie we are in a forum.
Don’t be flippant.
This is like going to a car enthusiast forum and asking “any potential problems with driving a car that may or may not be stolen?”
You have indicated that you’re aware of the potential repercussions of running a personal project in a publicly-funded environment.You’ve already been told that this is unethical everywhere and illegal in many places.
I’ve worked for a university before and it was very common for staff to remote into their systems from home – usually with SSH for CS types or Remote Desktop/Team Viewer/etc. for less computer-focused folks. (The former usually didn’t have much issue – the folks using the latter mechanisms got compromised a number of times… -.-) There was also a campus provided VPN that was required to access certain systems with instructions to students and staff on how to use it, but other systems just got public IP addresses.
If what you’re doing is related to your work and campus IT doesn’t object, you’re probably fine to do it. I’ve run various kinds of websites and web apps for colleagues to collaborate on research projects. Being able to do things like that is kind of the point of the internet.
Having seen a number of students, uh, push the limits and find the boundaries of acceptability the hard way though… I’d strongly advise you not to install cryptominers, run TOR exit nodes, or torrent TV shows/movies/etc. That kind of thing tends to get your systems in hot water with IT or other parts of the bureaucracy…
It’s likely illegal. The administration would call it theft of service because it’s not authorized and they wouldn’t be wrong. I also don’t see why you would want to do it. You’re giving the IT department at your school complete access to your web history.
It’s definitely not legal, especially if your school is funded by the public. That “free internet and power” is paid by someone, and if it’s the public, it’s kind of a dick move.
They can’t see what’s in your ssh or VPN tunnels necessarily, but they can usually see where the packets are originating from and going to. So if you’re say, accessing it from home directly to the server via VPN or SSH, if you’re not doing so using a full VPN service like Mull, they’ll be able to see the origin IP of your SSH or VPN handshakes, and thus your home IP.
