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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?

#71

Post by fredski42 »

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…

+1 on vaultwarden. I use 2 rpi’s: one in my own house and one in the house of family. I run regular backup’s using BorgBackup. I run OpenWRT on my router with WireGuard on it. I configured my mobiles/laptops to auto-route over WireGuard to my home.

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by waynesonfire »

jve wrote: post #38
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…

> - photos: NextCloud If you don't mind horrible experience viewing photos/videos via nextcloud, go on. In my case this was unusable. Thumbnails not pregenerated even after trying (Yeah, didn't spend whole day on that issue) and generates on the fly. So viewing larger directory is... rubbish. Videos don't play as nice not to say they don't even have thumbnails. Feels like "guest book" from 2000 - no features that aut…

works fine for me

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

#75

Post by Jhsto »

I'd recommend to take a look at OPNSense and pfSense. One of the challenges of learning networking properly is that many consumer devices go into great lengths to try abstract the details away from the user. OPNSense and pfSense bring some level of openness into the situation, by letting you to SSH into the networking equipment and generally providing a web user interface with more knobs than any sane person needs. This way, you can learn by try and mistake what does what, and you'll be exposed to all kinds of abbreviations of protocols you've likely never heard of. My point is that this gives more control into how you're connected to the Internet, which serves as a great way to also start thinking about networking more holistically from the viewpoint of individual computers in your home. And you cannot really do that unless you first control the router properly.

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

#76

Post by kickaha »

lambdaba wrote: post #5

Well, with Tailscale you have your own private network, so anything you run anywhere you can access on any device. You could DIY it a bit more using something like WireGuard directly (Tailscale uses WireGuard under the hood), but Tailscale makes it much easier, particularly with managing adding new devices, using DNS, etc. I don't see much downside to sticking with Tailscale indefinitely, what are your reasons?

Exactly why I asked for pointers to tutorials: I have only the most superficial, decontextualized comprehension of words like WireGuard, tunnel, (virtual) private network, etc. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions.

> I don't see much downside to sticking with Tailscale indefinitely, what are your reasons?

Tailscale and Bitwarden both fall into the same category: they seem like good actors, they have generous free tiers, and if I come to rely on them at scales that aren't free I would be happy to pay. However, I want to understand them enough to be able to know that I could host them myself if god forbid they go out of business, are subject to attack, or whatever.

As I've succeeded at on the desktop, the hobbyist gratification is both the fun of tinkering mixed with the confidence that if it need it I have packed my own parachute.

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

#77

Post by breakds »

I have been there. The progress was rather slow until I started to use NixOS. The learning curve is a bit steep but is very rewarding. It is not specific to self-hosting stuff, but as a side effect it makes self hosting super easy (declarative, readable, etc).

For most of the services that you would like, you just write a simple configuration and deploy it. For example, to run the service shiori (https://github.com/breakds/nixos-machines/blob/main/machines...), or to host a game (terraria) server (https://github.com/breakds/nixos-machines/blob/main/machines...), or tailscale (https://github.com/breakds/nixos-machines/blob/main/base/tai...). Since Nix is also a very good package manager, you also do not have to deal with installing packages and managing their dependencies.

With my NixOS server I am running all the services you mentioned.

> But I have no clue about networking,

My router is just a bunch of services running on a NixOS box (with this you have absolute control over the firewall/gateway, and it is also good experience to learn the networking stuff with NixOS). Note that before this I know nothing about the networking stuff as I skipped the class in college ...

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

#78

Post by rramadass »

You are asking too much :-) Essentially you are looking to setup a "Private Cloud" with the required services on your own hardware in your own "Homelab" location.

So you have to approach it top-down i.e. a) What services do you want? b) What are the SW and HW involved? c) How are they put together? d) What solutions/frameworks are already available for the above?

You start by reading up on "Cloud Technology/Architecture" and understand terms like IaaS/PaaS/SaaS and how the three fundamental cloud resources i.e. Compute, Storage and Networking are virtualized in the above layers. Any cloud tutorial/book will give you a good overview. I can recommend Cloud Computing for Science and Engineering by Ian Foster et.al. (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262037242/cloud-computing-for-s...).

Now you should be able to understand products/Jargons like GitHub/BitWarden/Tailscale/FreeNAS/VPS etc. and where they fit into the overall picture. The final step is to buy the hardware and go to town installing/configuring services.

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

#79

Post by kickaha »

jrockway wrote: post #60

My thought on networking is to make sure you only expose SSH and HTTPS; firewall everything else off. SSH seems like a constant source of problems for people new to running servers; within seconds of your server coming online, people will be trying to guess usernames and passwords. Configure it so you can't log in as root, and you can only authenticate with a key. These folks will never guess your key in a billion ye…

Another example of just the kind of concrete answers I was hoping for.

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

#80

Post by windexh8er »

dcdc123 wrote: post #21

https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/ is a great community with lots of resources as well. Check the sidebar and wiki there. Also, if you are into Docker, I love the images hosted by these guys. https://www.linuxserver.io/

I came here to literally say the exact same thing. These two resources are likely some of the most valuable things you'll find. I know some others have said "use the official docker images" and I'd say for selfhosting: don't. The folks who run LinuxServer.IO are awesome and the consistency of their documentation and container images is some of the best, in one place, that's out there today.

I would add two things to the mix here - the first is there are a bunch of blogs who cater to selfhosting as well as on YouTube. The ones on YouTube are much easier to find. I'd say one of the more active bloggers though is Jeremy who runs Noted [0].

The other thing I'd take into consideration is if you want to manage your selfhosting, and if not there are options there as well. One popular option as of late is Umbrel [1] and there's also some like Sandstorm [2] that have been around longer. Yunohost [3] also seems to have some traction in this type of self-hosting realm.

[0] https://noted.lol/ [1] https://umbrel.com/ [2] https://sandstorm.io/ [3] https://yunohost.org/

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