Servers & Self-hosting

Do any of you Lainons self host anything / have a home server? If so, what things do you typically host / use it for. The only thing I've personally self hosted was media using Plex, but I'm curious of what you guys do (if anything.)

I would like to host a nextcloud on an old PC, but I haven't found a good guide for a retard like me. Basically all I want is to dump files, use cloud things like calendar etc from my phone. Tried some guide and it told me to use mariaDB and mysql and all this stuff I don't understand. Any help is appreciated.

I have a raspberry pi that serves as a pi hole and a seedbox. I also ssh into it from my job when I want to soykafpost.

>>14970 >it told me to use mariaDB and mysql and all this stuff I don't understand Literally learn this, it isn't that hard. Basic DB managing is pretty useful.

==>>14970 Gotta agree here. DB management is a useful skill and can only help you in the long run. Although I agree having to do it a bunch can be an absolute pain.

>>14972 Do I really need to? I just want my own "cloud". Are there any scripts for setting up nextcloud?

>>14973 https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-nextcloud-13-on-ubuntu-18-04/ I followed this guide as far as I can, and got lost somewhere in the middle. I dont understand where I'm meant to get my server IP from in the end.

>>14972 >it isn't that hard It actually is pretty hard.

I mainly just host my own website+email. I have also written some DB programs, mainly for logging customer data back when I was trying to run my own business from the site. Don't need most cloud BS, but being able to upload/move large files is ok.

>>14968 I have an old thinkpad that is my home server. I installed yunohost as the OS on it because it's really a huge gain of time. I use it for my Matrix/XMPP servers, a small git and a pleroma instance to chill on the fedi.

right now I've got 3 main boxes: - a full-sized desktop that serves as a torrentbox + NAS + backup machine - a smaller ITX machine (literally just a motherboard + hard drive sitting on the floor) that I use as a general testbed, IRC and FTP server - an old Raspberry PI (I think a 2 B+?) that serves as a hardened gateway, the only thing on my network that has SSH exposed hoping to get into bare-metal virtualization soon, as well as set up a personal mail server, website, and possibly VPN server. the few times I've tried Pi-hole I had weird issues (in addition to having ublock origin on all browsers), but I'd be willing to give it another shot

rtorrent - for jav and hentai samba - for windows boxen and smart microwaves to play said porn http - serving said porn and mp3s to random web wanderers irssi - in the past anyway. thanks discord for getting me rid of that timesink, i guess

>>14978 >>14981 lol, sag. It's not hard if you know how to read and follow instructions, there're countless tutorials out there, and it's literally learning commands just as linux or other unix derivates. If you can't into commands you can't into tech and this is tech focused chan. >>14978 First google link. Literally do what it say step by step. https://websiteforstudents.com/install-owncloud-on-ubuntu-16-04-lts-with-apache2-mariadb-and-php-7-1-support/ In most cases you can copy and paste the commands into the console. This one's made for ubuntu, but if you have an old pc that you'd like to turn into a server, Ubuntu is a great place to start. And no, a "cloud" storage system is a kinda complex thing so there's no >easy< way to do it. You don't ask for a simple way to build a functional hadron collider, do you?

I've got a R400 running OpenBSD I use as a server. It hosts a FTP server using ftpd (base), a IRC server using ngircd (package), and a SSH server using sshd (base). I managed to get public facing without any cost to myself by using a free dot.tk domain, namecheap's free dynamic dns, and ddclient (package). I've been considering adding additional functionality but I can't really think of anything I'd want, other than perhaps email? but I hear that doesn't necessarily work well with a dynamic dns (I'd love to know if you've tried this). I have a single client device which even when I'm travelling isn't connected to a public network, I get my films from open directories, I get my books from libgen, I have a wrapper for a search engine I wrote but I run that on my local machine. Meaning unfortunately there just isn't a whole lot that I can/want to move to the server.

I have a small network appliance that serves as a pfsense firewall with openvpn, and my home network all behind that. Inside the vpn right now I have Nextcloud, Firefly III, A wiki, and Plex all running on an old Mac Mini. It's a little slow but I only use it for myself right now. I do plan on building a loaded-out microATX server, and then I'll expose some of the services to the internet and try and convince my friends/family to use them (Nextcloud specifically) >>14972 Just grab the docker-compose file and you don't need any setup at all. Docker is a technology that everybody should have at least a basic understanding of.

>>15018 >other than perhaps email? but I hear that doesn't necessarily work well with a dynamic dns. I hate to respond to myself but I decided to look around a bit on account of having not done so for awhile and I thought it might be helpful to others. It seems the following website resolves the problems specific to running a mail server on a dynamic IP address for sending: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/cablemail.html and the problems with receiving can be resolved simply by using TLS. The traditional problems of self hosting email can also be resolved by with DMARC, DKIM and SPF according to various people on the internet. The sending solution isn't set it and forget it but I might be able to write a script to deal with it for me.

this might be a dumb question, but are there any good ways to set up a thin/zero-client virtual desktop system as a traditional desktop replacement? like, your "desktop" computer is just a super light system that only handles i/o and everything else is done by a beefy home server running a vm in the basement. basically i'm wondering if there's something out there that sort of works like vnc except from the client side it's virtually indistinguishable from having the computer in front of you (support for multi-monitor, low latency for gaming, usb forwarding, etc.) ...it seems like no such thing exists, but i figured i'd ask here.

>>14978 If you've got a Raspberry Pi around, you could do this: https://github.com/nextcloud/nextcloudpi/wiki/How-to-install-NextCloudPi

rpi for small stuff like git repos scheduled cronjobs and for getting into my home network from outside. a couple vps's for nextcloud/fediverse bullsoykaf/seedbox. it is a whole lot easier to get soykaf going if you read the how-tos that hand hold you through the process, and hosting is cheap.

>>15027 you could use ssh with X-forwarding and maybe a .xsession to start the ssh session with your wm. A low enough latency for gaming might be a problem depending on the type of gaming you do, and how your network is configured.

>>15027 They exist but I don't know of anything FOSS that's anywhere near as complete (out of the box anyway) as the enterprise stuff that Citrix and VMWare sell. I would look into a NX based solution rather than plain X11 if you want full capabilities. X2Go seems to be the only alive one.

I want to build meself a NAS and I'm kinda lost at what technology to use. I was going for a software RAID 5 with zfs but I'm not so sure anymore (I will only use it for data, the system partition will be on another disk outside the RAID). Any advices ? I kinda want to make it one time for years to come. Oh and to be able to double the numbers of hard drives when I need/have the money.

>>15027 I think you are looking for something like the 812 window manager from plan9: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/812/ It has a really interesting and seemingly simple architecture, something you can not claim for xorg. However, noone really cared for it so only the paper remained. There are some unofficial implementations, but I was not able to find a working one. Maybe you will have more luck.

>>14970 Just use Docker. Nextcloud and fpm are a pain in the ass to maintain.

I have a question: On large servers such as WhatsApp and Google, how is the connection to the client made from a network point of view? I mean, is there only one computer to receive the millions of connections per second? This network would be a bottleneck. Or are there multiple computers on the same IP?

>>15284 Google has many different architecture variations for their various services. I am going to throw in here that I hate the company but admire their engineering. Same goes for Facebook. They have a ton of home-grown tools like BigTable https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs/overview The Google / Facebook engineering blogs are a good resource and search on cloud container architecture to find more. To answer your immediate question, it is hundreds of thousands of servers behind load balancers, hosting millions of containers that spin up and die on demand.

>>15286 In a hypothetical scenario: I have a single server, let's say from a simple game. For the client to connect it needs to know the IP, let's call it (A). All the information in the game will have to go through this network card (A), does not this generate a bottleneck? Or should I have a mechanism for only one server to receive the connection request (A) and then redirect the connection to another network card with another IP: (B), (C), etc?

Anything is possible lainons.

>>15290 Technically, it is a bottleneck. It is like having a 4 lane highway go down to 2 lanes. But, the amount of cars matter. Also if you have 4 interstates converging down to 2 lanes, that is problematic as well. WhatApp and Google queries are small amounts of data. Gaming data is larger, you will have to take measurements and design your server and network accordingly.

>>14970 NextCloudPi is really nice. Very easy. https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/

>>15286 > I am going to throw in here that I hate the company but admire their engineering. I disagree, personally. Certain software by Google has succeeded because it was better than everything else, but by and large google's business model is to just do the bare minimum necessary to keep people hooked on their stuff. They have the capital to pour energy into a service until it beats the competitors, and then they stop improving. For instance google search is barely better than it was 5 years ago, but Chrome seems to be getting faster in competition with firefox

i host a tor hidden http server on my cellphone from time to time. amazingly simple to do and very handy.

I host a teamspeak 3 server that I use with some friends, along with an FTP server with any games we might be playing at the time if they're FOSS or abandonware

I started by buying a single used enterprise server from Ebay, because I wanted to learn some Linux. I now have 4 that I use regularly. Server 4 is currently on standby until I find something fun to use it for. Thinking of some kind of OpenBSD server, any ideas are welcome. Server 3 run FreeNAS with plex and Transmission, with 10 TB of storage, 6 usable due to ZFS setup. I use it to share Movies with my family. Server 2 runs Windows server, with Visual Studio for creating an ASP .NET MVC app using a local MSSQL server, because school thought that would be a cool project (it isn't). I remote into it when school work requires Windows. Server 1 runs Proxmox and docker. I mainly use it for LAN services like Organizr, Traefik and Portainer. I also have a Raspberry Pi 3 B for running Pi-hole and serving as my DHCP server. My routers DHCP server has some issues with DHCP option 66, 67 and 150, so had to run it seperate. I'm thinking about hosting a TOR hidden .onion site, but not quite sure how to get started with that. I tried drawing a network diagram in yED for anybody interested.

>>14979 Log into/SSH into your server and if it's running linux or *BSD type: >ifconfig If it's running Windows type: >ipconfig And not to be rude but you could have figured this out with a simple google search: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Get+IP+address+Linux

My home server mainly does internal stuff: NAS, Firefox bookmark syncing, ZNC, and VPN so I can access my home LAN remotely. I made a lot of stupid decisions when building it, though (mainly wanting to use a mini-ITX build yet also going with a budget of $300ish), so as a result it has a godawful Celeron soldered onto an equally-awful motherboard. Somehow it's not under full load all the time, so maybe it's not as bad as I thought for home tasks, but I still want something I can throw, say, a Mine(craft|test) server or something onto in case my friends and I feel like playing together. I think what I'll do is ditch this mini-ITX form factor entirely and just go get a used desktop somewhere. I was considering getting one of those Poweredge T30s that my boss likes to get for our clients, but I just remembered that it uses a nonstandard power supply connector (fuarrrking Dell).

>>15702 >very handy How so?

>>15863 The build you have sounds perfect to be honest. As someone who made the mistake of overbuilding a home server, you don't want the waste of power and excessive noise. Something low power like that is perfect as a file host and network hub for your various LAN services. Get a second server if you want to run Minecraft or whatever. That way you have the power when you need it but you can shut it off without losing your VPN and file hosting.