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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.)

popekingjoe ,
@popekingjoe@lemmynsfw.com avatar

I like to tinker with things, and I had hardware lying around I wasn’t using. First thing I ever self-hosted was very basic: a Terraria server.

Then a Minecraft server.

And then a fully featured and defederated Matrix server with a fully functional telegram bridge, mostly as a test to see how feasible it was. Ran it for several months before shutting it down, deciding to wait for dendrite, since it’s supposed to be lighter.

Haven’t done anything since, but I’ll be looking to build a few more things in the near future.

neshura ,
@neshura@bookwormstory.social avatar

Of all the things I have or am self-hosting the Matrix server was the biggest pain in the ass. I seriously hope they streamline that process because as it was it’s too much work for what it does.

Tagen_AllAss ,

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

ThorrJo ,

holy crap, that was … … … … 25 years ago???

I don’t honestly remember the very first, if I had to bet I’d say it was Samba, likely on my 350MHz K6 (later snagged a K6-III+ for this board, fastest Socket 7 chip ever produced) so I could share files with my laptop, a Dell, 300MHz Celeron. Running all Linux at the time, not sure what flavors, although I first encountered a Debian derivative with Corel LinuxOS believe it or not, and have used Debian on servers about 95% of the time forever after.

My first self-hosting on dedicated hardware was a Samba share and DHCP/DNS server, since at the time routers weren’t always a thing, and in fact it was plugged directly into the cable modem … and for a while accidentally served competing DHCP to my neighborhood cable segment, causing intermittent problems for who knows how many users including myself, because the cable company didn’t filter broadcast traffic!!! When I finally found that config mishap, holy shit was it an awkward monkey moment … fix the typo and walk away slowly … wild west days!!

SexualPolytope OP ,
@SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Damn. I’m 25 years old lol.

TheHolm ,
@TheHolm@aussie.zone avatar

Heh, I did about same but on FreeBDS. Plus proxy server to share dialup connection around home.

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

Me too. I had a FreeBSD box that routed my dialup and ran a transparent caching squid proxy. Had a cronjob for scheduled downloads.

External? Apache and ftp. Once cable was available had an IPsec wan with a couple friends for file sharing and “lan” gaming. Used samba to span the subnets into a big windows workgroup called “biggroup”.

I used to tinker with php alot back then. Made sense to run my own web server.

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.

jimmy90 , (edited )

NAS, backups, matrix, home assistant, gitea, etc

vividspecter ,

Samba (and later NFS) on a crappy bulldozer-era AMD laptop combined with a set of USB drives as a ghetto NAS, so I could access data from any system without leaving my desktop on 24/7. It worked, but that thing overheated so easily that I had to undervolt and underclock it to get it to run reliably. I relatively recently switched to a affordable Terramaster NAS, and to using containers, and have been expanding pretty rapidly. The whole Reddit situation got me to start revaluating the services I was using. A kind of software/service spring cleaning if you will.

Fermiverse , (edited )

I ran a NSLU2 with custom firmware and a mumble server on it. We used it to talk during online gaming without the need for teamspeak etc.
Played BF3 mostly.

Those where the days

Edit: clarification

purpleball ,

A friend in high school helped me install a counter strike server on linux on an old desktop. From there, I experimented with hosting some forums and an upload script to save files remotely. In the days way before the cloud was a thing. That got me interested enough to start figuring things out and get into it.

LimitedDuck ,

At the beginning of the pandemic I looked into ways to de-Google and found Nextcloud. It wasn’t the easiest thing to start with, especially for a novice, but I had the time and the hardware, and I’m the type to not mind jumping into something difficult if it means solving a specific problem. I then found out about Bitwarden and had a great experience setting that up. After that I was confident enough to try hosting anything I could find. It’s been good times ever since 😀

ZebraGoose ,

I also started with nextcloud because of my degoogle journey 😄

LimitedDuck ,

Are you still using it? I went through many deployments before I finally thought I had it settled.

ZebraGoose ,

Yeah, im still using it. Started on a digitalocean server installed hardmetal but now i got a small home server where i installed it with docker

CaptainAniki ,

I started with gaming servers back in the quake 2 days, then got into doing web stuff, then I made a career out of Linux. Now I build systems for fun and for profit. I try and contribute to FOSS projects in any way I can and hope one day one of these stupid utilities I come up with is actually useful to someone.

brenticus ,

I’m surprised there aren’t more people listing game servers here. A good chunk of my networking knowledge just comes from hosting game servers and fighting routers in my teens and early adulthood.

CannaVet ,

A vague interest in taking my data away from “Big Tech” led me to get hosting a few years back and use a private email solution professionally hosted. Last year, I bought a pi then went through a breakup and didn’t touch it until recently haha.

I just had to rebuild from scratch but I’m running Flame dashboard, Vaultwarden, Nextcloud, Baikal, and a rickroll server disguised as a Docs app, because I’m a red blooded American. :P (and the boring stuff lol)

Abrslam ,

I got a raspberry pi and some wd red drives when Google photos went for a pay model. We use it to back up our phones and pc, and to run jellyfin and torrents. It’s not wildly different from doing things on pc, except it’s set it and forget it. Having something always on, reliable, and “just works” makes it worthwhile.

SexualPolytope OP ,
@SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I have my mini pc always on too lol.

i_lost_my_bagel ,
@i_lost_my_bagel@seriously.iamincredibly.gay avatar

My first Plex server was an old laptop running windows 8

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