I’m just mildly curious. I know this isn’t the self hosting chan, but how many of you self host services as part of your efforts to retain your privacy, security, and anonymity?
I’ve been self hosting something for decades now. I got really started back in the PreNapster era. I ran an independent, selfhosted, fully licensed, internet radio outfit. That was back when music on the internet was a lot of cheap, tinny, geocities, midis. LOL I worked with a company called IM Radio Networks. They and Phillips, developed one of the world’s first bookshelf stereo, that was internet ready. Hook it up to the internet, and you could listen to AM/FM and IM radio. I’ve often mused that if it weren’t for Shawn Fanning, the music landscape on the internet might look a bit different as he forced the music industry to reevaluate how they did business.
Now, I self host a ton of stuff just for my own needs. It’s an enjoyable, purposeful, hobby, that keeps me busy. It’s also, so very educational, and I learn new things daily.
ETA: Man it does my heart good to meet and greet privacy minded users who also self host. It is an integral part of my privacy, anonymity, and security posture. If you aren’t already, or are thinking of self hosting, do it! You don’t need massive racks in the closet that dim the lights on reboot. A simple NUC or even RPi are quite capable of serving up services. You don’t need a Tier 1 feed from your ISP. Keep it simple and basic and work up from there to meet your needs.
Thanks again to all those who responded and shared their experiences.
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I have a local network for sharing files between my devices but I don’t open anything up to remote access. I might change my mind once I’m more skilled at networking but right now I don’t trust myself to be able to set up something secure. If I’m on the road I just plan what I’ll need and manually sync it across before I go
That’s totally understandable. I will admit, the first server I tried to stand up got ransacked in an hour. I received a nastygram from the VPS saying that my server was attacking other servers which can have serious consequences. Of course I shut it down right away. I had just the OS, nothing else on there, so at worst it caused a some other servers to implement a block on my IP.
So I sat down and started reading, and testing, ad nauseam. Learned about hardening a Linux server. Learned about UFW and Fail2ban, and other security deployments. Learned how to bash. It’s been a learning process that still thrives. I thoroughly enjoy the experience.
But yes, it can be daunting at first, I totally get that. Of course, you have a much broader resource to tap than I did at the time, but that’s what I really dig about the internet. It is the sum total of the world’s knowledge. Not necessarily wisdom, but vast repositories of information.
Have a blast bro.
How did you get into it? Any resources you’d recommend for a noob who wants to get into setting up servers?
Oh gosh… Well, first you should get a subscription to Byte magazine. LOL J/K but that’s how far back it goes. I’ll pull some bookmarks here in no particular order.
And of course right here
ETA: Me Skuzi…I did not answer your first question. I got into computers back with the original Altair kit. I saw recently there has been a revival of the old 8000. Wasn’t much you could do with it at the time, but it was super cool and I was addicted. After that, if memory serves correctly, I had a Timex/Sinclair. Had a cassette tape drive you’d use to load up an app. The TI 99 & 994a were probably my first real complete computer setups with drives, memory expansion, etc. You needed something like a kitchen table to lay it all out on. It sprawled all over the place, but was a decent platform for it’s time. After that, I’ve had at least everyone there after. LOL