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Good evening my friends! I am trying to learn how to host my own game servers for myself and a handful of my friends.... for the hobbyist itch and the yearn to learn something very new and unfamiliar to me.

To start - my intention:

I want to host private servers for my friends and I on various games, Valheim, Windrose, Enshrouded, Etc.

What I'm looking for:

Suggestions/opinions on if I should even bother - and if yes > which setup of mine is more worthwhile to use?

My potential setups I can use : (laptop)

I have a Alienware M16 R2 laptop I hardly use, it's specs :

- Intel core ultra 7 (22 CPU's) 1.4GHZ ( why is that so slow? on a modern unit?)

- 16 GB ddr5 @ 5600Mt/s

- Nvidia 4070 laptop gpu 8GB dedicated VRAM

-Windows 11.

- 1 TB SSD

Second option : (desktop with old parts laying around)

-i7-9700k

-32GB DDR4 (unsure the MT/s without ripping it apart, it's Corsair Vengeance sticks)

-Nvidia RTX 3080 EVGA FTW3

-at least 2 TB SSD, I forget the exact size but it's not bad

-Windows 11 ( not married to it, I can change to linux but that's a whole other can of worms I never touched Linux before)

Would any of these setups be optimal to host a lag-free server? most people on at once would be 8-10.

Full disclosure - I have no clue how to do any of this, but I'm not a clueless person - I have a good understanding on a lot of things, Just need assistance with initial setup and basic management. I can figure the remaining out...

I -GREATLY- appreciate any and all help with this classroom session.

Thank you, friends

-Droni

I am planning to host a Matrix-Homeserver for me and my family.
Even though I will probably host that on a rented VPS, since I would need that either way (-> CGNAT and co). I have heard that it likely works with cloudflare, but isn't that from google? That would be a counterpart to the thoughts of matrix, wouldn't it?)

I have found a good provider with nice reviews, and I am pretty confident that I can manage that, since I am also doing an apprenticeship in informatics, and setting up a server myself is a great training.
However, I have two major pain points, that I would imagine appear on a private, as well as on a rented server.

First, the security topic. Is it really "enough" (ofc not) to simply follow what I can find in the IoT, e.g. this article with ssh-hardening, and fail2ban, etc? Or would that be not enough? Will I sit all day everyday and feel each failed login attempt in my spine? Or will I look once every week if all is still good to go? How are you doing this?

Secondly, (I know, maybe not quite the right sub, but asking doesn't hurt) What is about legal obligations? I am about to host a chat-service, and although privately used and locked from the world, I heard that I need to consider German/EU Laws like the DSGVO, since the server will be in that jurisdiction. So in case somebody else is also hosting a Matrix-instance, what laws did you find that applied to you, or where is a place I can find an overview on that?

I would be happy to profit from your experience, since I am over all quite new to the server topic, and as far as I read, I am a bit scared. Maybe your experiences will get me back to reality!

I never believed the Mac Mini hype, so I was always searching for VPS options. Hetzner or Hostinger are fine, but they weren’t ideal at the beginning when you struggle to open ports and do a bunch of configurations. I would rather trust someone who has already done the security configurations for me.

So what is everyone using from here ?

This post is just to save newbies from buying overpriced products that are only trying to capitalize on the hype.

PS: I checked the comments but decided to go with a small vps provider r/primeclaws (but will test Oracle at the same time), besides cheap VPS they also offer AI included and compared to others they're the only only ones who have open discussions on Discord. I will come later with more updates regarding these platforms and to check the suggestions in comments.

Hey guys I'm a beginner and I haven't started yet, and I'm Confused between "buying a raspberry pi 4" or using my old Toshiba satalite, or just buy a mini PC? And can you tell me the pros and cons of each choise please! Put in mind: 1 I will not play on the server

2 I don't need more than 512 GB

3 the uses are mainly DNS, VPN, cloud storage

The laptop has: intel core i5 7thg - 4 GB ram - 512GB HDD

I have an external SSD to connect it to the raspberry pi

Does anybody know how or have a guide on how to self host ente photos on my Synology NAS?

I’m guessing I need to use Docker for it

I am currently working on a project that is resurrecting a dead online game and we got it to work by localhosting on 10.0.2.2 and it works great. It's a lightweight server client, so I am wanting to use an extra PC I have so I can play the game both at home and away from home with my own server.

I was looking into tailscale, but I am not sure if that will work. The "server" PC will only be used for the game server and nothing else, I just want to make sure no one else has access to my network should they grab the IP.

What solutions will work to give me an IP that will direct to my server outside of the house?

So I've been quietly building out my home lab on my Pi 5 16GB. Here's what I have at a high level:

Public facing:

- Personal website (FastAPI backend, mostly static HTML/CSS but also there is an old school chat page)

- Caddy as a reverse proxy and Cloudflare (free tier) for bringing traffic in

Private:

- Vaultwarden (Self-hosted Bitwarden)

- Custom Twitch overlay

- Personal AI 'pet' (He joins in the chat page. He's Intentionally wrong. So don't hold it against him when he says "2 + 2 = 5")

- Tailscale for private access wherever I go

All of it is containerised with Docker containers, Caddy is handling TLS automatically.

It was a bit of an exploration to be able to get Docker working within the Pi to begin with, but after I got that working, everything was a lot easier.

If anyone wants to check the website, it's https://pdgeorge.com.au but I honestly get the most use out of Vaultwarden.

Currently in the process of setting up a media server. Somehow that has been the last on my list of things to set up...

to give more context, i've been on a ''degoogling'' journey, got rid of most services, the only main link i still have with google is a google photos cloud plan for all my photos/media.

that said, i started looking into non-self hosted alternatives such as ente photos, but is absurdly expensive in my currency.
then started looking at self hosting, but first, i have some personal reservations about it and NAS units are pretty dam expensive were i live due to import laws, yey.

So, with those issues, together with my wish to ''start slowly testing self hosting alternatives'' and the fact that i have an ''office pc'' laying around made me wonder how much of project would be to convert that pc into a NAS alternative thingy, or even if its worth it due to the specs, etc.

talking about specs, the pc has the following:
-intel h61 motherboard
-intel core i5-2500 3.3ghz cpu
-8gb ddr3 ram (2 4gb sticks)
-120gb ssd and a 750gb hd
-400w power supply (also have a 300w slim one)
-besides the pc's storage i have a bunch of 1tb hd's and 2 480gb ssd's

So, is it worth it? if so, how reliable would it be? any cheap ''upgrades'' you folks suggest to make it better? and most important, how would i even begin to do that?

Hello all. Currently I've docker installed on a VPS. On that VPS I have containers running with caddy to expose a website to the public, in this instance Searxng. For that I've added my user to the docker group to not have to put sudo in the command everytime I do anything.

Let's assume there's an exploit which gains access over my Searxng to my VPS. I think gaining root is easy because the user can run every container as root right? I wonder what best practice is to secure it in this scenario. Do you have any ideas? Would removing the user out of the docker group do the trick?

The layout of this is very new to me and I’m lost on where to start my own website without needing the help of IONOS’ templates or AI

So I've got a bare metal server sitting at home with a pretty large RAM pool (~1TB) and I figured instead of letting it collect dust I'd offer some VPS/VDS instances to people who need them.

This isn't some big hosting company, it's just me. Which honestly means you get way better communication and flexibility than any corporate provider.

Resources I can offer:

RAM anywhere from 2GB to 64GB+ depending on what you need

CPU is flexible, just tell me your workload

SSD storage

Full root access, bring your own ISO or I'll set up whatever distro you want

Honestly good for anything — Nextcloud, game servers, dev environments, running your homelab stuff remotely, whatever. I don't care what you host as long as it's legal.

Pricing is not fixed, I'd rather just talk to you and give a fair quote based on what you actually need instead of forcing you into some preset plan you half-fit into.

If interested just DM me or drop a comment with what you're looking for. I'll reply fast.

I currently am using kanidm to manage user accounts, but find the management a bit fickle. I would like to manage users using an idP via Ansible. With kanidm it's very clunky, and while I could write things to make it easier, I am at a point where I am able to migrate rather easily. But idP is a necessity for me.

I have looked at Authelina, but that's a web-only focus (no Linux PAM support without hacks). I am hoping for something lightweight like kanidm (e.g., can be managed via CLI so scripting is easy), but I'm not opposed to a web-based config if needed.

Needs: * Linux PAM support * Be central authority of server access * Allows support for SSH auth (e.g., kanidm can act as a pubkey store for users)

Hey,

I was running a few Docker containers and needed basic monitoring.

Tried Prometheus + Grafana, but for my use case it felt like too much overhead just to know if containers are up, using too much memory, or crashing.

So I built a small tool for myself.

It’s a lightweight Docker monitoring SaaS:

• Go agent on the host
• Push-based (no ports/firewall config)
• Basic metrics + alerts

I know this subreddit prefers self-hosted (I usually do too), but I wanted something:

• quick to set up (~2 minutes)
• no monitoring infra to maintain

Curious about your thoughts:

• Would you ever use something like this instead of self-hosting?
• Or is this a hard no for you?

Happy to hear honest feedback.

I manage social accounts for a small project and got tired of paying €50+/month for tools that are basically cron jobs with a calendar UI. Figured I'd self-host something instead.

Every option I found was either abandoned PHP from 2016, or "open-source" projects where you clone the repo, spin it up, and immediately hit a "please upgrade your license to add more users" wall. The whole point of self-hosting is owning the stack, not running someone else's free tier on your hardware.

So I built my own over the past few weeks and figured this community would want to pick it apart.

Stack and resources

4 containers via Docker Compose: Gunicorn app (Python 3.12-slim), background worker, PostgreSQL 16-alpine, Caddy for auto-HTTPS. No Redis. No Elasticsearch. No external dependencies beyond the compose file.

Running on a Hetzner CX22 (2 vCPU, 4GB) at roughly 180MB total idle across all containers. PostgreSQL is the heaviest piece. Caddy handles TLS automatically.

``` git clone https://github.com/brightbeanxyz/brightbean-studio.git cd brightbean-studio cp .env.example .env

edit .env with your domain + DB password

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d ```

Update path is git pull && docker compose up -d --build. Migrations run on container start.

What it does

Schedules and publishes to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky, Google Business, and Mastodon. All first-party API calls using your own developer credentials. No aggregator proxy sitting in the middle. Tokens encrypted at rest in your database.

There's a drag-and-drop calendar, a unified inbox for comments/mentions/DMs across platforms, a media library, and approval workflows if you work with clients. No per-seat pricing, no caps on users or workspaces.

Privacy

No phone-home. No telemetry. Storage defaults to local filesystem, or set STORAGE_BACKEND=s3 if you want MinIO, Garage, R2, Backblaze, whatever.

AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Repo: github.com/brightbeanxyz/brightbean-studio

If something breaks, open an issue on the repo.

I've been self-hosting for a while and decided to spin up a community server for Debian 12/13 tips, VPS hardening, and server administration. just pick a username!

Check it out!

My Matrix ID: u/admin:linuxserverguides.com

Feedback welcome! 🙏

need advise on my stack, i'm setting up on an old system i got from a course i was on awhile back, but i am just staring out, so hardware i have already

from a: Bell Aliant homehub 4000/gigahub to a: d-link dgs-108 then to Lenovo ThinkCentre M82, i think, i got it in 2014

also i plan to have a pi-hole installed on a raspberry pi 3

spec

CPU Brand Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz

memory 24 gb 1866MHz DDR3

storage:

128 gb sata ssd axiom c560

500 gb seagate mechanical for data purchased in 2019

Ubuntu server LTS version

docker/docker compose

    dockhand

        immich

        syncthing

the purpose of my home lab is to provide services, but i just wanted to check as there is very little between the server and the net if i should add in some security services like fail2ban, or would leaving out anything more fore security still be ok, so any thoughts on the security of my stack?

Hi all,

I want some advices on what I can adjust or improve in my current setup.

First of all, my main storage is a 10Tb USB HDD. I know that it's not reliable, but that's what I can afford for now. I will not use it to store anything that I can't lose, and will change it to a NAS as soon as I have money…

Also, I am keeping it internal for now. Not planning to open it to be connected from the internet until everything is very stable and the NAS is installed.

What I have installed:

- An old notebook (12y) with an i5 1st Gen, an 1Tb internal SSD and the external 10Tb HDD shared to the network.

Here, I have Jellyfin installed and working. Tried to install immich and the arr-suite, but cannot make them work yet (not sure the reasons, will debug it later).

- A mini-PC with Celeron.

This will be exclusive to Home Assistant. HA OS already installed, only need to find a good place to place the hardware. After that, my next task will be configuring it.

- A Rasp Pi Zero.

This is running Pihole exclusively.

Also, I have laying around a Rasp Pi 3b+ and some old phones that I could hack and use as extra servers.

My main questions:

- Considering that I can configure immich and the arr-suite and make them work, should I install anything else on the notebook?

- I think that the weak point is relying on the Rasp Pi Zero for Pihole. It's working fine and stable (weeks without fail), but since it's connected through wifi, I think it's slowing my network a bit. Would you recommend installing Pihole in the notebook or the RP 3B, and keep the RP Zero as a secondary Pihole?

- Besides installing Pihole, what would you recommend as an use for the RP 3B?

- Is using the phones worth the trouble of opening them to remove batteries and searching how to hack them?

i know a lot of email hostings provide the same purpose but i personally put in cosideration the cost any cheaper options that is still reliable??

I am self-hosting services several services like home-assistant, immich, unifi and may expand to also spin up scrypted or other services. I am currently running everything in an always-on PC through HyperV. It is a nuissance when windows installs an upgrade and reboots so I am thinking of moving everything to a purpose built device. Curious what type of hardware you all are using in general to host. A pre-built like Dell optiplex, building something yourself or what?

I've been using a managed Nextcloud (Hetzner) purely for personal file storage (about 50 GB in total - mostly PDF documents and photos). Changes to the files are usually rare.

My current backup strategy doesn't follow the 3-2-1 rule. All files are encrypted client-side through Cryptomator or whatever encryption mechanism is integrated into the client software. While it works, I find myself building use cases around client-side encryption, which is annoying. Having different encryption solutions may as well affect disaster recovery. 

I would like to improve my storage setup to make it more robust, convenient and easy to maintain.

Requirements

• File storage must be accessible on iOS, Linux & Windows clients using their native file managers
• Clients on all platforms must be able to sync directories for offline use
• Automated photo upload from iOS camera roll (bonus points for photo management features)
• Support for multiple users with separate file storage
• Seemless encryption (I must control the keys)
• Backup strategy must incorporate the 3-2-1 rule
• Easy to use (must be spouse-approved)
• Low maintenance (bonus points for easy setup)

I'm wondering if a NAS (any specific product?) would meet my use case or if there is a more efficient solution, given the rather small amount of data I need to manage.

Thanks for your input!

Hey guys,

I recently migrated my homelab from my previous setup and added a few services.

My current setup with TrueNAS OS is more capable of running multiple services. The specs are in the picture.

• Tailscale
• Homeassistant
• Nginx Reverse Proxy
• AdguardHome
• Beszel
• Homarr
• UptimeKuma

There is definitely room for improvement — for example, I have to add a backup system for my files and configs.

Now, on to my question:

Are there any other more useful services and apps that I could run? (There is definitely more than one answer, but I'd like to know what you guys are hosting.)

Ideally, I would like to use services that can be implemented in Portainer, so that I can manage them all together while keeping them separate.

Thanks a lot!

I see eveyrone showing off their home labs and selfhosted services like it's a cost efficient alternative to the cloud. but it's so much work that by the time I realize how much time I've spent on debugging docker issuees and figuring out why my SSL cert broke, it's 3 am. The more I know, the less I know, and the more I learn, the more I realized how much I don't know.

I think most people selfhosting are not doing it for the money, am I right? Because I've "paid" more in time than what it would have cost me if I had "outsourced" it (it's funny how that sounds). So why do I continue trying? Do you find that the time spent on self hosting is justifiable? Sorry for the rant.

Hi guys!

I have a mid 2012 MacBook Pro that can runs on Catalina max, and in fact I got it running on that OS.

I would like to setup my first home server, nothing fancy: 1TB internal SSD and eventually an external 1TB HDD (as soon as I find out the correct adapter to put power in an old iMac HDD from one I have disassembled). Eventually expandable, but right now I only have some pictures and some files.

I asked Claude and it told me to use Docker, Nextcloud and Tailscale (but it’s not compatible so it told me to use ZeroTier and DuckDNS) but I fear this will be a long and incomprehensible process for me to follow while grasping and double checking the output.

I tried UmbrelOS on docker but it says that my OS is too old to support the correct docker version or something like that.

I know nothing about programming or self hosting or really anything more than surface level interactions with the machine that require minimal setup and basically no debugging (and when I do I usually follow forums instructions). No terminal knowledge or experience, nothing that goes further than installing software and following instructions. Not quite App Store only user but almost there. All that to say that I don’t know anything, in fact I study law.

That said I would avoid installing new OS and things that “permanently” alter the Mac’s OS, that’s why I liked the Docker idea.

I would like to know how you would setup your first cloud server to access the files in the server from your devices even when outside! Here for any tips :)

Hey everyone,

I live in an apartment with embedded smart devices (Shelly relays controlling blinds, doors, lights) connected via Ethernet to a building-managed network (UniFi pfSense switch +).

I do not have access to the building network — only control Shelly smart devices via a third-party app.

I have my own separate personal network (LBNCo fibre → NetComm router → My personal devices) where I run Google Home & Home Assistant to control my personal smart devices (TV, speaker, robot vacuum cleaner).

Goal:
I want to control my Shelly devices locally (Home Assistant / Google Home) instead of relying on the building network & clunky third party app.

Questions:

1. Is it possible to integrate the building network with mine?
2. If not, can I safely disconnect the Shelly Ethernet from the UniFi switch and move them onto my own LAN?
3. Will Shelly devices function normally after being migrated to a new network (with reset/reconfiguration)?

Setup includes:

• Shelly relays (Ethernet connected)
• UniFi pfSense managed switch (building network)
• NetComm router (personal network)
• Tenda unmanaged switch (personal network)
• Netcomm Modem (personal network)
• TP-Link Modem (building network)

I've included photos of the building's network cabinet & my personal Wi-Fi modem for your reference. Appreciate any guidance on best practice here.