Selfhosted

I have an old laptop running Linux to play around with and a fast and stable home internet connection.

That's pretty much all you need!

When I started self hosting things, I literally ran the thing off my one and only laptop. Young me was getting into web development and I was fed up with the available free hosting options, so I was like, I've already got Apache running for development, I'll just open the port and point a domain at it. My friends would check if I'm online by checking if my website loads. Sometimes I had to turn it off because I wanted to use my computer and they kept hogging my connection.

Your old laptop will run NextCloud and Samba/NFS just fine even if it's a Core 2 Duo. Sure there's Plex/Jellyfin and they require a lot more power for live transcoding and stuff, but to start off, you can just play your stuff over a simple network share.

Then when you're happy or want to expand you'll have a better idea of what kind of hardware you want. I've ran my NAS of a Raspberry Pi 2B for several years, but ultimately always wanted at least one real server.

As for setup guides, I have none. But don't let yourself get too overwhelmed: there's so much stuff you can do with a server and just as many ways to set it up. One thing at a time: get the server set up, make sure you have SSH access to it. Then pick a thing you want to run on it, and try to figure out how to run it. Don't get too ambitious, you don't have to do VMs, or containers, or anything at all. Get something done, play with it, experiment with it, see what you like.

Docker containers are pretty good, they do make setting up some services pretty easy. Sometimes they also add additional complexity. It's okay to install things directly on the host.

There's no hard rules and everyone have their preferences. When the time has come you will know and you will be seeking solutions of the likes of Proxmox or maybe some cloud servers.

It doesn't have to be perfect from the first try. You will fuck it up a couple times, and that's okay, that's called experience.

Get an old laptop and install https://yunohost.org/ on it. Learning by doing is the best.

I am writing this https://wiki.gardiol.org feel free to take a look then ditch it and go your own way.

Its a bit of different take to today's trends (docker and such).

I'm not in IT and had no prior experience.

I bought a used Dell Optiplex for cheap and used installation guides provided on the websites of the services I wanted to install (pihole, jellyfin, home assistant etc)

This is by far the easiest method to get started. Learn by doing.

Make all your services LAN only to start; don't open anything up to be accessed outside your home network until you know a bit more, as making it secure requires a bit more time and knowledge.

Hot tip: use chat gpt to help you. If something doesnt work, feed the error messages to it and it will explain why and give you the commands to fix them.

A: I found what looks like a pretty good guide here https://piped.video/watch?v=xBIowQ0WaR8

It covers setting up a virtual server on AWS, as well as Setting up a Linux server with Docker and FileCloud or Netxcloud. It discusses some of the pros and cons of each. The only coding involved here is some copying and pasting json files, which is pretty beginner friendly if you ask me.

What you you folks here think? Is this a reasonable guide? Do you see any red flags or major oversights that beginner should know?

Myrecommendations is probably to host a next cloud instance. Does all the standard 'cloud stuff'. File, contact, calendar sync, plus a bunch if other stuff if you want to add it via plugins. If you're patient, and a single use you can host it on basically anything. If you decide you want to add users or have a faster site, you can go down the route of sorting out faster hardware or better specs and suck.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

[Thread #530 for this sub, first seen 21st Feb 2024, 03:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Unfortunately for you OP, you're going to have to become at least decent at networking. The good part is that it will happen naturally as you learn, break and re-do your homelab.

Incidentally, I'm interested in any guides you might have regarding CPU performance metrics and cache. If you can recollect where you got them from.

So, essentially you want a File server and a media server, yes?

I think the parts to something like this would be:

1. DNS, so you don't have to remember IP addresses. Most people use Pi-Hole/Adguard home, but the idea is the same.
2. A platform to run your services. A lot of people run containers bare-metal, but a lot of people also run their containers on top of VMs using a hypervisor. Some people just run VMs. For a beginner, containers will be a little more of a learning curve compared to plain VMs but it will pay off very soon. I tend to suggest Podman since it's binary compatible with Docker and I like it more philosophically.
3. Some way to acquire media. This is where the payoff really starts showing up since you're running about 10 containers or so already. Imagine running 10 VMs on restricted hardware. If you're going to torrent, I'd suggest looking up Sonarr and going from there.
4. Actual media and file servers. Since you like GUIs, try Jellyfin and (this is not a favourable recommendation but here we go) Nextcloud.

Have fun!

I have never used it but https://selfprivacy.org/ looks pretty interesting. The way it supposedly works is that their app sets up a VPS for you in a guided manner. They set up the services you want (i.e. Nextcloud and Bitwarden) and configure things like backups and HTTPS for you.

The technical foundations are sound (NixOS) and they're funded in part by NLnet.

They Might be worth trying out if you want control over your data but don't want the responsibility of setting up and maintaining your services while still ultimately being in control of everything.

Recommend doing a jellyfin server with an *arr stack! Prowlarr, radarr, sonarr, plus qbittorrent. Bonus if you can integrate i2p in there so you don’t have to rely on a VPN :)

there’s also Nextcloud AIO docker. I use it to sync my photos and escape Apple’s 5gb max free-tier backup

Maybe add some assorted services like an invidious instance, Searxng instance?

Welcome to the self hosting rabbit hole!

I've been meaning to write a guide like this but haven't had a chance to complete it yet. In short, I'd recommend setting up an Ubuntu Server instance on some old hardware and using incus with ZFS to setup a separate container or VM for each service you want to run: https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/introduction/

This way, if something doesn't work out, you can just delete the container or VM. It also makes it easy to make snapshots or backups before you make a change (e.g. perform an upgrade) so you can easily roll back.

You can even try incus online (see the above link) to get an idea of how it works.

What ever you do make sure it will scale.

I personally would recommend Proxmox right out of the gate as it will scale very nicely. I run docker and podman in a few VMs on my dedicated cluster and I have a virtual desktop that I use for gaming (USB and GPU passed via vfio)