Hey, folks. The Jellyfin and Komga media servers running on my NAS are going great locally. I invested in a firewall and some managed switches, and from preliminary VLAN tests, I'm confident that I've got what I need to section off the self hosted services from my primary network. I was hoping to get a recommendation for the next couple of steps.
I've got a mini PC running Bazzite that had been a portable console/fighting game setup that I'm ready to retire from that role so that it can serve as a server and reverse proxy. I'm not sure what OS to put on it. If I have to manage it entirely by command line, it will take 10 times longer for me to do anything I want to do, and I'd really prefer a GUI. That said, I know it also takes resources to power a GUI that I won't be touching most hours of the day. I was curious what distro you folks might recommend for this purpose. In some of my research, I also came across Apache Guacamole, but I'm not sure if that requires a proper desktop environment to already be present in order to get that kind of remote access with a GUI. Am I overthinking this? Is this going to be just fine with a normal desktop distro installed on it? If normal desktop distros work just fine, I need something that can sit there without updating until I tell it to; since introducing snaps, this is something Ubuntu has been a pain about, so I might want something else.
The next thing I was curious about was order of operations for the reverse proxy. There are SSL/TLS certificates that are needed for HTTPS, but I need a domain for that, and a lot of tutorials just skip on past this step in the domain configuration screens where you "enter your DNS servers" as though I know why I'd need other DNS servers, where to get them, how to select them, etc. And ideally, I'd want to test that the reverse proxy is working locally with HTTPS and all before it's exposed to the internet in the first place, so I'm not sure what order to do those steps in: DNS servers, buying a domain, getting certs, configuring reverse proxy.
As with most things, I'm sure this is far less complicated than it looks to me right now, and once it's in the rearview, it will make a lot more sense, but I'd appreciate any advice folks here can offer.
I'm not happy with Bazzite for this purpose. Its previous purpose was to be a game console, but I'm reassured by the recommendations for Debian.
It will be more than just a reverse proxy, but I suspect it will still be more than powerful enough for the extras. Thanks.
Yes, just so long as I'm the boss. I don't want any downtime that I'm not in control of.
The tutorials I'd been looking at were showing them overriding the DNS servers at the domain registrar with servers from Cloudflare or elsewhere. Is that just because there may not be an automated way to update the IP dynamically with the domain registrar, but there is for Cloudflare?
Probably because those tutorials are using Cloudflare for DNS services. I actually use Amazon AWS Route53 for my domain (purchased through 123cheapdomains (yes - really)) and I update it through the AWS APIs with a small script.
But why use one DNS service over another? Sorry if you've covered this already and it's just not clicking yet or something.
Unless you have a specific need there is no reason. So long as the domain resolves then you're probably good. I use AWS so I can easily update the IP since I have a dynamic IP address. Some may use Cloudflare because it's necessary to use other services or because there's a 'free' option or something? I'm really not sure - I'm not familiar with Cloudflare but I see lots of people using their low-end free services for things.