105
Ok, how do I start self-hosting? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by goddard_guryon@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been following this community for some time in order to learn about self-hosting and, while I have learnt about a bunch of cool web services to host, I'm still lost on where/how to start. Does anyone have, like, a very beginner guide that is not just "install this distro and click these buttons"? I have an old laptop that runs Arch (btw), but I'm not familiar with networking at all. So anything starting from "you can check your IP address using ip a" would be appreciated.

More specifically, I have a domain that I want to point to an old laptop of mine (I intend to switch to a VPS if/when I feel like the laptop is starting to lose it). How do I expose my laptop to the internet for this to work (ideally without touching my router, because I'll be traveling quite a bit with my laptop and don't mind the occasional downtime). I assume that once I'm able to type my domain name on my mobile and see it open anything from my laptop, I can then setup all the services I want via nginx, but that's step 2. I tried to follow a few online guides but, like I mentioned, they're either too simplistic (no I don't want to move to Ubuntu Server just for this) or too complex (no I don't know how DHCP works).

Thanks in advance

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] canitendtherabbits@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

I just wanted to thank OP for this post. I have the same question, as this is where I'm at. I also plan to run my server from a raspberry pi 4 on a 5T SSD for storage. Is this an adequate setup for a server?

[-] pezhore@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It really depends on what you want to run. I have a clusterHat (four Pi Zeros on a Pi4) that runs a Hashicorp Vault cluster with minimal usage.

The big thing about self hosting is what happens if you (or other people) start to depend on your service - what do you do about hardware failures? Maintenance windows for patching?

To start off, a Pi is fine, but you'll probably start maxing out your compute and memory (again, depending on workload).

[-] rentar42@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

For many, many things a pi 4 is a perfectly adequate server.

There are a few semi-common tasks where you will run into it's limutations:

  • it can't do real-time media transcoding, which only matters if you want to run plex/jellyfin and your playback devices can't playback the media types of your content
  • it's connectivity wrt. storage is limited. You won't easily be able to run 8 Hard disks with it (and if you do, they will be slowed down and less reliable since USB is in the mix)
  • compute-heavy tasks in general might be a pain (for example face detection/classification in an image manager)

This might sound like a lot, but that still leaves tons that you can do just fine on a pi, it's a great starting platform at least.

this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
105 points (95.7% liked)

Selfhosted

61003 readers
310 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world