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What got you into selfhosting and what was the first thing that you hosted?

For me, it was PhotoPrism. I used to be an idiot, and used Google Photos as my gallery. I knew that it was terrible for privacy but was too lazy to do anything about it. When Google limited storage for free accounts, I started looking for alternatives. Tried out a lot of stuff, but ended up settling on PhotoPrism.

It does most things that I need, except for multiple user support (it’s there in the sponsored version now). It made me learn a bit about Docker. Eventually, I learned how to access it from outside of my home network over Cloudflare tunnel. I’m happy that I can send pics/albums to folks without sharing it to any third party. It’s as easy as sending a link.

Now I have around a dozen containers on a local mini pc, and a couple on a VPS. I still route most things through Cloudflare tunnels (lower latency), only the high bandwidth stuff like Jellyfin are routed through a wireguard tunnel through the VPS.

Anyway, how did you get into selfhosting? (The question is mostly meant for non-professionals. But if you’re a professional with something interesting to share, you’re welcome as well.)

credics ,
@credics@kbin.social avatar

My own wordpress website to host recipes on a Synology NAS. Unfortunately, the built in NGINX server has some default configuration (from Synology) so that it cannot properly serve the Wordpress REST API. The NAS is (according to Synology) to weak to run a container, where I could easily run a separarate server. So I gave up and just recently bought a Dell Optiplex Micro, which I will turn into my new homeserver. Guess I will keep the Synology for storage though.

el_fredo ,
@el_fredo@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Around the 2000s I hosted a Shoutcast server that played a playlist of about 30 punk rock MP3’s on continuous loop. As far as I can remeber, it was running on a Win2000 machine. Yeah - Pirate Radio 😆

nx2 ,

Copyright?

Never heard of him.

apprehentice ,

I wanted to host my own website, so I got a VPS. After that, I got addicted to spinning up servers for various services.

nix98 ,

Mid 90s, my ftp server with music and warez over dial-up that wasn’t always online!

Jardincorenda ,

2003 I had a custom built full ATX tower with some parts from work running RAID for disk storage, and three cable capture cards. The box ran MythTV to record and serve shows DVR style to my modded Xbox that I had loaded XBMC on. From there I moved over to Plex for watching the recorded shows and ripped my DVD and VHS collection.

tehcpengsiudai Bot ,

2008/2009, learnt how to make webpages in school using Dreamweaver, so went home and found out eventually after months of trying, to host my own webpage using XAMPP. That kinda died and turned into a blogspot page instead.

Fast forward to today, piracy, privacy and posterity. Aka, Plex, Adguard and a bunch of tools for storing family photos, documents, ebooks.

thatguyadmin ,

2006 Our Highschool had “recycled” some of the older machines and it started from there.

A Dell Optiplex GX1 500MHz, with 128mb of ram, and a 80gb IDE HHD. Installed Debian Sarge, This was running a dial-up gateway for our home network as well as samba.

It allowed one machine to be the LANs internet connection, abet slow. Samba was so I could download installers once, and then pull them from the network drive.

2008-2012 that machine was a dedicated WordPress machine. Around 2019 I pulled it out of the closet and powered it up. The whole site was there, still ran without a hiccup. It was actually recycled shortly after that, Dell used to make great hardware.

notfromhere ,

I started off hosting UT2004 servers at LAN parties back in the day then Tremulus? servers, then coubter-strike 1.5/1.6/cz. Started learning VPS with CS:S.

neshura ,
@neshura@bookwormstory.social avatar

Started off with just hosting a permanent Minecraft Server on a Raspberry Pi. Later added stuff like Nextcloud or Calibre Web to it and now it’s just a teensy tiny bit out of control (I’m self-hosting a good 2 dozen services now).

Tagen_AllAss ,

Nextcloud the snap package. I was starting to get rid of google contacts and calendar

Crazyfrog ,

Off topic but could you explain a little on how you use a VPS to access your internal services? There’s a few services I want to open up but I don’t trust cloudflare and I don’t want to port forward.

madPorpoise ,

Not the OP, but my current solution involves a small instance in AWS with a wireguard server in docker. This is configured with a few peers. One peer is a container on my home server that can access my jellyfin deployment. This container is also running socat to redirect the traffic to jellyfin. Then my phone and laptop are the other peers and I have a DNS record pointed to the IP of the wireguard peer on the server, if that makes sense.

I’ve been using this image pretty painlessly. The only hiccup I had with setup was ensuring persistent keep alive was configured on the peer forwarding traffic to jellyfin.

SexualPolytope OP , (edited )
@SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Basically what the other guy said. I have a wireguard tunnel set up between my home server and the VPS, with persistent keepalive. The public domain name points to the VPS, then I have it set up (simply using iptables) so that any traffic there in port 80 and 443 is sent back to my honeserver and there it’s handled by nginx reverse proxy, and sent to jellyfin.

So, the only ports I need to open are 80 and 443 on my VPS to make this setup work.

qazwsxedcrfv000 ,
@qazwsxedcrfv000@lemmy.unknownsys.com avatar

Not quite related to selfhosting but modding routers and then DIYing x86 routers kinda got me into the scene.

notfromhere ,

Yea modding routers can be a lot of fun. Can be super unstable sometimes too. Are you still practicing? What’s your favorite custom firmware?

qazwsxedcrfv000 , (edited )
@qazwsxedcrfv000@lemmy.unknownsys.com avatar

No not anymore. I no longer find it necessary now. Things have become much easier. Many routers have out-of-factory OpenWrt support or are outright built with/on OpenWrt. Companies like GL.iNet has made the barrier to entry the lowest ever.

Gone were the days we had to spot the right hardware versions, find ways to access debug ports, tinker with das uboot (or it had to be added…), flush the official firmware, and flash the right OpenWRT image. And this often would set you down on a path to compile the “right” kernel to work with proprietary driver/firmware blob files so hardware acceleration (e.g. NAT or WiFi radio) could work properly… Indeed I have learnt a lot but honestly I don’t really miss those days lol

scrchngwsl , (edited )

Ever since the CS1.6 days I wanted to have a server, but it was only when I got a free Raspberry Pi that I actually started self hosting stuff 24/7. I put OwnCloud on it and a bunch of scripts to track and statistically evaluate my investments, and just took off from there. Like many others, my desire to disconnect and reduce my dependency on “Big Tech” was a big motivator, but so too was “fun” and having things exactly the way I liked.

In the beginning I rolled my own scripts most of the time, but now I tend to use more off the shelf tools as self hosting has gone more and more “mainstream”/accessible and docker has become ubiquitous.

I still do my own scripts tbf, like my DIY smart thermostat/heat pump controller. Ultimately it’s just a lot of fun.

Ori ,
@Ori@sacredori.net avatar

Some friends from high school and I were in an Cisco A+ class together. One night we ordered pizza, and after finishing it - we took the larger of the boxes, cleaned it out, and turned it into a server. We ended up running a few different game servers on there with the first being CS:Source, I believe. When that died, I started a 1&1 VPS that ran a Dark Age of Camelot freeshard for a while.

Crow ,
@Crow@lemmy.world avatar

It started with me running plex on my PC. Now I have a server room with multiple systems always running. It still feels like magic.

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