Starting from zero

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨gedaliyah@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I’m interested in exploring the world of self hosting, but most of the information that I find is incredibly detailed and specific, such as what type of CPU performs better, etc. What I’m really looking for is an extremely basic square 1 guide. I know basically nothing about networking, I dont really know any coding, But it seems like there are a lot of tools out there that might make this possible even for a dummy like me.

Right now, my cloud computing is pretty much typical I think. I use onedrive to sync my documents and old files. I need to be able to quickly access files on different devices, such as a powerpoint created on one device and presented on another. On my phone I use Android Karma and my backups of downloads and photos and other data are all on Google Drive /Google 1.

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poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Get an old laptop and install yunohost.org on it. Learning by dong is the best.

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z00s@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A: I found what looks like a pretty good guide here 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?

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Shimitar@feddit.it ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I am writing this wiki.gardiol.org feel free to take a look then ditch it and go your own way ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access

VPN Virtual Private Network

ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

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

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pete@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s a recommendation that I’ve seen a couple of times, and it looks promising. However I haven’t found any guide that really explains how to do it step by step, or what factors I should consider, or even really what I need to be able to do it. Do you know if there is such a guide for someone who really isn’t a “computer guy?”
  
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  - AustralianSimon@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Honestly, if you want small and cheap get a raspberry pi to play around or rent a VM.
    
    If you care about storage too you can get a Synology NAS which is pretty newbie proof and comes out of the box with different and photo sync along with support for VMs or docker.
    
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- phanto@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  My first step was Nextcloud as a snap on a Xubuntu desktop. Very old hardware but a big hard drive.
  
  That was eight years ago. I’ll let you know if it fails anytime soon.
  
  I have a bunch of other stuff now, but that was the start, and I still use it all the time!
  
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Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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.

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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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)

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aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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!

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- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Your “*arr” stack involves piracy and should just be recommended out of the blue. You can setup Jellyfin with Live TV from a HDhomerun and you can buy your own movies and TV shows as blurays so you can rip them into jellyfin.
  
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  - aldalire@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Eh it’s fair game
    
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garibaldi@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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: 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.

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Fewer Letters	More Letters
SSH	Secure Shell for remote terminal access
VPN	Virtual Private Network
ZFS	Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity