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Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

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Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#61

Post by abracadabra_ »

Larrikin wrote: post #30
Xeoncross wrote: post #16

It depends on what direction you want take. You could purchase a $5/mo digital ocean server or a $5 raspberry pi and start by installing https://pi-hole.net , https://nextcloud.com , https://syncthing.net , https://www.plex.tv , or some other software to get the first (largest) thing you want resolved. Then move on from there and install the next package you need. Ad blocking for your phone? VPN for work? Self hosted…

Why is the self host advice to always buy a Raspberry Pi, use an old crappy computer you have lying around, etc? I have a very beefy desktop for the first time in over a decade (maxed out Mac Studio) and I am wondering is there any real downside to having these services run on it?

Mostly energy usage. A raspi is going to use a lot less power than most crappy old computers and a hell of a lot less than your beefy desktop.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#62

Post by kickaha »

alexktz wrote: post #53

Self-Hosting has been my most passionate hobby for the last decade+ and all of the resources below are aimed at people like you . Good luck sailor! If I may be so bold as to self promote: * Podcast - https://selfhosted.show * Website(s) * My blog - https://blog.ktz.me * Perfect Media Server - https://perfectmediaserver.com * Github - https://github.com/ironicbadger/infra * Linuxserver - https://linuxserver.io Finally…

Thank you! I listen to Chris and Alex religiously (and all the Jupiter Broadcasting shows), and learned a lot. But never heard mention of a beginner's reference there. Maybe I'll send this question into them.

Joe, Jim, and Allen on 2.5 Admins is also informative, but veers back and forth between English and Greek to my ears. :-)

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#63

Post by fud101 »

moritonal wrote: post #41

* Buy a domain as Domain * Buy a Asustor AS5304T as NAS * Setup CloudFlare on Domain * Setup services as docker containers on NAS * Setup CloudFlare tunnel into NAS docker services with auth in CloudFlare * Enjoy services. Note, if any of that sounds hard I must kindly point out that you're playing a risky game trying to do all this yourself securely and should evaluate whether it's easier to just pay a service for a…

Can you explain your second last star?

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#64

Post by nickstinemates »

irusensei wrote: post #25
nickstinemates wrote: post #8

The term you're looking for is Homelab. There are so many YouTube videos. And a subreddit.

I'd say more like selfhosted. Homelab is more about people building discarded server racks and populating with power hungry and noisy second hand equipment. Its their hobby more power to them but they seldom focus on what's those monsters are running instead of how they put RGB lights on old R710s.

All of the tech that the op is asking about running is in under this banner on YouTube, aesthetic aside. If they want to get tutorials on how to do this and see other software people are running this is a resource.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#65

Post by leejoramo »

> In short it’s all about control, privacy, and security, in that order.

I am going to strongly urge you to consider changing that order and move *security* to the first priority. I have long run my own servers, it is much easier to setup a server with strong security foundation, than to clean up afterwards.

As a beginner, you should stick to a well known and documented Linux server distribution such as Ubuntu Server LTS or Fedora. Only install the programs you need. Do not install a windowing system on it. Do everything for the server from the command line.

Here are a few blog posts I have bookmarked over the years that I think are geared to beginners:

"My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers": An quick walk through of how to do basic server security manually [1]. There was a good Hacker News discussion about this article, most of the response suggests using tools to automate these types of security tasks [2], however the short tutorial will teach you a great deal, and automation mostly only makes sense when you are deploying a number of similar servers. I definitely take a more manual hands-on approach to managing my personal servers compared to the ones I professionally deploy.

"How To Secure A Linux Server": An evolving how-to guide for securing a Linux server that, hopefully, also teaches you a little about security and why it matters. [3]

Both Linode[4] and Digital Ocean[5] have created good sets of Tutorials and documentation that are generally trustworthy and kept up-to-date

Good luck and have fun

[1]: https://sollove.com/2013/03/03/my-first-5-minutes-on-a-serve...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5316093

[3]: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve...

[4]: https://www.linode.com/docs/guides/

[5]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#66

Post by sowbug »

Larrikin wrote: post #30
Xeoncross wrote: post #16

It depends on what direction you want take. You could purchase a $5/mo digital ocean server or a $5 raspberry pi and start by installing https://pi-hole.net , https://nextcloud.com , https://syncthing.net , https://www.plex.tv , or some other software to get the first (largest) thing you want resolved. Then move on from there and install the next package you need. Ad blocking for your phone? VPN for work? Self hosted…

Why is the self host advice to always buy a Raspberry Pi, use an old crappy computer you have lying around, etc? I have a very beefy desktop for the first time in over a decade (maxed out Mac Studio) and I am wondering is there any real downside to having these services run on it?

You could do it. But it's not a good fit. Workstations are more about customization and personalization. Servers are more about consistency, reproducibility, and reliability.

E.g. you can't restart your desktop while your roommate is watching a Plex movie. Or your VPN stops working because your roommate's cat walked on your keyboard while you were on vacation.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#67

Post by dotBen »

Learning to manage a self hosting environment is a great skill to learn but I would point out there are plenty of people on HN who have these skills but prefer to rely on managed providers.

Even including people who manage infrastructure professionally I would guess that the vast majority of them don't fully self host their own file storage, email, calendar etc.

Obviously you may have your own unique reasons to want to do this but just know that those who know the full extent of what is required to do this safely and resiliently don't feel it's worth the hassle or effort.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#68

Post by poisonborz »

What you shouldn't do, is go bare metal (as in: install linux on some machine and start hosting). Begin with some virtualised solution like Proxmox or some Docker-based platform. This way you can quickly bring up new machines with any OS, and quickly recover mistakes and failures. Yes, steeper learning curve, but anything else will make you miserable as problems would cause long recovery phases.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#69

Post by kickaha »

dotBen wrote: post #67

Learning to manage a self hosting environment is a great skill to learn but I would point out there are plenty of people on HN who have these skills but prefer to rely on managed providers. Even including people who manage infrastructure professionally I would guess that the vast majority of them don't fully self host their own file storage, email, calendar etc. Obviously you may have your own unique reasons to want…

>plenty of people on HN who have these skills but prefer to rely on managed providers.

Yes! I want to learn enough to know the difference!

E.g. Fastmail has been rock solid for me for years now and I am delighted to pay them for email and calendar.

Re: Ask HN: How can a total beginner start with self-hosting?

#70

Post by distortedsignal »

fallenhitokiri wrote: post #7

I do not know of an opinionated beginners guide, but would recommend browsing r/selfhosted and r/homelab a bit. Lots of these and similar questions are answered on a regular basis. Some starting points - photos: NextCloud - git: Gitea - BitWarden: Vaultwarden (even if you deploy this locally you want a SSL certificate as clients will refuse to connect otherwise) I'd suggest using official docker images to get started…

It looks like r/selfhosted even has a wiki with some tips on getting up and running: https://wiki.r-selfhosted.com/

I've gone through some of it and it seems like a decent primer on where to start, but I'm not sure that it has all the required info that OP would want.

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