I have a USB stick with 32GB. However, I cannot hook an ethernet cable to the computer and router because all the router’s plugs are being used.
A switch
This. Get a cheap gigabit switch. Might even find some second hand for nothing.
I recommend looking at businesses that are closing moving or upgrading. I have a literal stack of old switches retired from work. 48 ports, gigabit, and free.
It says you have to connect it to a router
It says you have to connect it to a router
The switch is connected to the router. But if you want to go directly to the router, move other connections to the switch so you can put the instance directly into the router.
thanks!!
Okay, so Abuelo says:
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he will not rewire things with the router
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he wants me to find a way to create a Lemmy instance without Ethernet, just the regular Wi Fi connection without a router or anything.
If he wants you to do this, explain that you will buy a basic $10-20 unmanaged port extender (switch) and then take one plug out of the old router, connect to the new switch, and plug the cable you disconnected to the new one. You can always reverse those steps and reboot things if needed, but I wouldn’t expect this causing any problems given how often I’ve changed ports for things without any need to reboot.
The key here is making sure it’s an unmanaged switch, you don’t want a router doing Network Address Translation behind another router or you’ll have double NAT (which breaks certain port-dependent services unless ports are forwarded on both routers), but instead a simple switch doing Layer 2. If you have a spare router, many can be reconfigured in the settings to act as a dumb switch as well, but with an 8 port unmanaged Netgear switch selling for $17 that’s the easiest way.
Then tell him to do it himself, because he clearly doesn’t understand how basic networking works, and he’s not willing to adopt the easiest and most obvious solution.
He just want you to use your brain and try out stuff by yourself. Go on!
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Get a switch, a cheap 5 ports gigabit one is only like 10 bucks or 20 if you want a reputable brand (not needed).
Or just use WiFi…
You should be able to plug a small switch into the router and then you’ll have more ports available. I’d suggest 1gb or faster, depending on the speed limitations of the ports on the router you could go for a faster switch if you think you’d need it.
Yeah, I don’t think the lack of a free ethernet port is their biggest obstacle here.
My grandpa says we can’t, IDK why
It sounds like you and Grandpa have a bunch to learn before you touch hosting web servers. Just the right misconfiguration and you’re ruined.
Start here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/computer-networking
If my grandfather were still alive and tried to tell me literally anything about network maintenance, I’d say “ok sure grandpa, don’t worry about it”, and then do it anyways after he goes to bed, because I know how networking works as a component of having over a decade of devops and homelab experience, and he would never notice.
The issue here is the USB stick, not the router. Use WiFi no problem but self hosting on a 32gb stick is a disaster waiting to happen, specially with a write intensive task as lemmy.
Edit: go on and experiment. Even with an USB stick… Then after you make experience try with something more stable, like a small pi is well enough or an older PC too is fine.
If you can’t pull a cable and are dependant on wi-fi, but still want a cable at the end point, buy a wi-fi bridge. You can see it as a switch that you can connect your stuff to with cables, but the connection between the bridge and the router/access point will be wireless, wi-fi.
Your computers won’t know they are using a wireless connection.
Alternatively, if you have an extra, unused ethernet interface on a computer that is already connected to the internet, you can share internet through that interface, making your computer a bridge.
This can be accomplished with an android phone and a usb ethernet adapter too. Though you might want a usb hub or split cable for charging.
Should also be easy to acomplish on windows. At least it was on windows 7, when I last used it.
