this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
194 points (97.5% liked)

Selfhosted

40383 readers
679 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:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

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

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've ended up with a number of machines on my network, and a need to name them all in a somewhat logical way. For several years I had them named after the planets, which worked well until the PCs for myself, my girlfriend, servers and Raspberry Pi's quickly summed up to more than the eight planets. I've broadened it somewhat to include any Greek/Roman mythological figure, but the system is definitely not as clean as it used to be.

Do you have a coordinated naming theme for your machines?

(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I name mine after different places or ships from anime shows I watch. My laptop is Bebop from Cowboy Bebop, my desktop is goingmerry from One Piece, my Kali VM is senku1 from Dr. Stone, and my NAS server is amaterasu from Fire Force.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

My brother and I started off a tradition when we named our first family desktop computer 'Kraid' from Super Metroid. Since then every device has been named after an equivalent mob. My personal gaming computer was named 'Phantoon', our 3 phones were named 'Eticoon 1/2/3', our first tablet was Tatori, etc.

Was fun and our dad got behind it very quick as a Super Metroid fan himself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Games from my childhood. Moon Patrol, Galaga, Zaxxon, Twin Bee, Xevious, Gradius, etc.

Yup. I'm that old.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I usually name mine after songs that I happen to be listening to at the moment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Words from the jabberwocky:

  • Tumtum tree (plex)
  • Vorpal (Linux laptop)
  • Bandersnatch (MBP)
  • Jubjub (gaming PC)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Science fiction spacecraft - Enterprise, Nostromo, Tardis, Falcon, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Russian spacecraft and rockets.

Currently I have N1 as my home server and my desktop is Energia. I've previously had Proton and Soyuz etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

All of my servers are named after characters from the Dragon Ball universe.

Don't recommend doing an 'obscured' naming scheme,, hate having to refer to a spreadsheet to know what server does what because I tend to spin up a lot of random stuff. Highly recommend using functional names that are easy for your brain to remember, like an acronym for whatever service or types of services it's running.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

For my clients, we just use company shortcode+role, IE Northern Energy Exchange would be NEE-DC (domain controller) NEE-FS (file server) NEE-APP, NEE-DT-1 (desktop #1), NEE-LT-1 (laptop #1) etc. At home, my network is called Asgard and each device is related to that in some way, all themed appropriately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Just stupid puns that come to mind when I set it up. Synology NAS is "Rainy" since the box had "be your own cloud" written on it. M1 MacBook is "Apple Pie" because being ARM it's just a big Raspberry Pi right? Etc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I recently switched to using the periodic table. I made myself a nice little spreadsheet to keep track of it all. I used to name hosts after random stuff like cereal, snacks, or just plain old [my first name]-desktop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Fun fact: When AOL was still operating in Germany, internal servers in their network were named after characters / things from Asterix comics, like Asterix, Obelix, Idefix, Miraculix and even Hinkelstein (menhir). When Telecom Italia bought them up they unfortunately got rid of all these and replaced them with standard corpo server names. Source: I worked there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I’ve used Star Trek names before, but in general I’ve just started naming them what they’re used for (ex. Dev-Mint, StorageCore)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't have a very consistent naming theme. I've used various names related to music, science, and art. I have a decomissioned machine named "numbers" for example.

However, I would like to point out we have plenty more than 8 celestial bodies of interest in the solar system if you include Eris, Ceres, Pluto, Makemake, the moons of Jupiter, and more. It might not be indefinitely extendable, but may help in the short term.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I name devices after Greek Gods / Goddesses. My main server is called Olympus.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Same Greek or Roman gods and mythical creatures. loki, hades, medusa, cerberus

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Star Trek ships at home. And Game of Thrones characters at work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I use the names of chemical elements, but with two twists: I assign them in the order in which they appear in the song "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer, and I use the German names. So I have (or had), among others, Wasserstoff, Sauerstoff, Stickstoff, etc ...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Domestic no Kanojo is an anime that people describe as rubbish. Maybe it is, depending on where you're coming from, but I was invested in it, and so decided to honour the anime/manga by naming my servers "Hina Tachibana", "Natsuo Fujii", "Rui Tachibana" and "Miu Ashihara".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've been doing birds. So far I just have Cardinal, Bluebird, and Sparrow

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Started with Evangelion Magi naming and now I just use the pet name generator in Terraform.

Random_pet

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My main machine is Suckup (Second Universal Cybernetic-Kinetic Ultra-Micro Programmer), my laptop is Tuckup (Third Universal etc), my phone is Keitaichan (keitai being Japanese for mobile phone), my tablet is Tabbuchan (from Japanese taburetto for tablet), my NAS is Shinochan (from shinorojii, Japanese for Synology), because I am absolutely insufferable and unimaginative and I crack myself up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You gotta have the concepts the machines are named after change as the nature of the machine changes (and bonus points if the nature of the concept is analogous to the nature of the machine). E.g. if my main machines were planets, then when I added servers they would be named after space hardware (hubble, webb, iss, etc). Raspberry Pis can be ceres, eros, vesta, juno, etc. It actually genuinely helps by distributing around within your brain the placement of which machine corresponds to which concept or which name, and also it frees up more names when you start having tons of machines in different categories.

I've had tons of naming schemes over the years (chemical elements and classic video games were two that I used for different banks of machines) and I've done that system with good results.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

US states. If I have more than 50 different host names to manage, I should re-evaluate my hobbies. And then lazily move on to US state capitals.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have a weird one: years ago I called one machine "nudl" (like using one's noodle but with a weird spelling). Now I've got a few different nudls, a strudl, a dudl, and I think there's a pudl in the closet somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

On my labs cluster they are named after famous physicists

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

cakes then a different type of cake. ie cakesFlan

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

At my first job/internship it was fish names (they were dev/qa servers so wiped almost daily): Crappie, Bluegill, Walleye, Marlin, etc.

Current job is medical so it's all professional (i.e gr01sec02, gr02sccm01)

At home I've got a couple of naming schemes for different device types.:

Phones: i-telleuwat(last 4 of the number)
PCs and Media centers: playon(last octet of the IP)
Servers:gimme(service thats hosted)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Bird species, most of the time. I look for a bird that seems to have some connection with the intended purpose of the box, then use that. e.g. my work computer's hostname is cormorant.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My Raspberry Pi's are named after planets and large bodies on the Solar system.

My servers are named after The Expanse characters and ships.

VM's and CT's after their usage with a tag in Proxmox for the OS used.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I give them weird syntax names so if someone was to hack in the names wouldn't give away what they are immediately. I don't reuse numbers so that if I rebuild something it gets a new num.

Location-Ordinal-NetworkNum-Counter Eg AU-01-01-01

Containers are just their application name except where I have more than 1 then its Application01,02,etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I do Reboot characters, since I'm old! Kind of running low now but I call each of my phones Glitch and it makes me very happy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I used to work in the GRASP lab at Penn, and my predecessor there was John Bradley of xv fame. He had started naming all the machines after fish.

When I got there I continued the practice, naming some tiny computers being used for mini robots after different types of goldfish.

In my current job, years ago, I managed a group of Linux servers, and I named them after Demons (Lucifer, Asmodeus, Azrael, Beelzebub, etc.).

At this point, there is a specific naming convention in use where I'm at, and the name is limited to identifying organization, application, and server type.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lowercaps Dwarfplanets. chaos, orcus, ixion, ceres, haumea, makemake, etc. DHCP/router is named sol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Scientists/inventors for me - bonus points if I can find one related to the machine's purpose (Kodi machine named after a contributor to the TV for example)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

WoW places. Since some of my servers died, I'm currently only sitting on dark portal (Firewall), and the Stranglethorn Valley server with Gurubashi Arena (Plex), Booty Bay (you can imagine) and wild shore (shared file system VM)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Pretty much same as you: If it works for NASA or it's a heavenly body, it works for me. Main PC is called SATURN V (SATURN for most things). Laptop is called HYPERION. Currently saving up to replace SATURN with ARTEMIS. Might throw in a GAIA NAS/virtualization server at some point, if cash flow allows for it. I'm not as picky about my family's devices that I've set up, though... They'll keep their randomly generated names, mostly out of laziness.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Names of Greek letters.

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Star types, stellar objects, planet names, etc...

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›