Ask HN: Tips to get started on my own server

• orbstack

  36 4,354 6.2 Shell

  Fast, light, simple Docker containers & Linux machines for macOS

  

If you use a Mac and just want to mess around with linux try something like Orbstack(https://orbstack.dev/) to start up VMs and mess around. The benefit of this is you're going to break things a bunch as you get started. Going from there I'd start looking automating the deployment of the various components the 'old fashioned' way aka writing shell scripts/using SSH. Once you do that then go to using things like Ansible or Terraform etc.

• setup

  2 4 3.2 Jinja

  A set of scripts to setup the scanner webapp, API and model store. (by scancer-org)

  

- Come up with ways to start and stop services and such

In the end, as you start to see patterns for all this, you will find it beneficial to script everything in some way so that you can easily reuse patterns and lessons on other servers and apps.

I tend to use Ansible for this, and here is a concrete example of all sorts of things you might find interesting: https://github.com/scancer-org/setup

This sets up a server, locks it down, adds a python app with a worker set and so on: https://github.com/scancer-org/setup

Good luck on your learning journey!

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• www.mechaelephant.com

  3 1 8.8 JavaScript

  website for www.mechaelephant.com

• calebharrington.com

  1 0 - JavaScript

  source code for the website CalebHarrington.com

• dev

  1 80 7.8 Roff

  dev log (by abetusk)

https://github.com/abetusk/dev

• sqlite

  5 116 10.0 C

  sqlite mirror (by smparkes)

• Skeleton

  7 19,009 0.0 CSS

  Skeleton: A Dead Simple, Responsive Boilerplate for Mobile-Friendly Development

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• audience-minutes

  2 38 5.0 C++

  generate statistics on the number of audience minutes your site is generating, and if readers make it to the end of your screeds

• MkDocs

  114 18,257 9.0 Python

  Project documentation with Markdown.

  

• MathJax

  56 9,904 1.8

  Beautiful and accessible math in all browsers

  

• websocketd

  14 17,085 0.0 Go

  Turn any program that uses STDIN/STDOUT into a WebSocket server. Like inetd, but for WebSockets.

• two.js

  8 8,190 8.1 JavaScript

  A renderer agnostic two-dimensional drawing api for the web.

• three.js

  449 98,873 9.9 JavaScript

  JavaScript 3D Library.

• PixiJS

  116 42,496 9.9 TypeScript

  The HTML5 Creation Engine: Create beautiful digital content with the fastest, most flexible 2D WebGL renderer.

  

• Matomo

  148 19,039 9.8 PHP

  Empowering People Ethically with the leading open source alternative to Google Analytics that gives you full control over your data. Matomo lets you easily collect data from websites & apps and visualise this data and extract insights. Privacy is built-in. Liberating Web Analytics. Star us on Github? +1. And we love Pull Requests!

  

• mariadb-docker

  32 722 8.2 Shell

  Docker Official Image packaging for MariaDB

  

• jQuery

  166 58,890 8.5 JavaScript

  jQuery JavaScript Library

  

• d3

  277 107,634 8.0 Shell

  Bring data to life with SVG, Canvas and HTML. :bar_chart::chart_with_upwards_trend::tada:

  

• yunohost

  117 1,915 9.6 Python

  YunoHost is an operating system aiming to simplify as much as possible the administration of a server. This repository corresponds to the core code, written mostly in Python and Bash.

  

Pull that old laptop from the closet, the one with the broken screen and keyboard which made you so sad to put it to pasture since it did have plenty of memory and CPU to keep up. Install Debian on the thing followed by Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) [1]. Since you have 16GB of RAM in that laptop (or 8 but 16 is nicer) you should be able to run a number of containers [2].

Here's an idea, more or less based on a number of servers I configured for friends and family, based on 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 hardware with 2/4TB USB SSD. Your laptop will offer better performance.

- Create 4 or 5 containers and name them 'auth', 'serve´, 'base', 'backup' and 'mail' (if you want to run your own mail that is, otherwise skip that one). Their functions are:

> auth runs LDAP, Kerberos (if you want that), a central letsencrypt instance which takes care of all your certificate needs and anything else related to authentication and authorisation

> base runs databases, that means Postgresql, Mysql/Mariadb, Redis, RabbitMQ and whatnot - all depending on what you need.

> serve runs services, that means nginx or another web server which is used as a reverse proxy for the other web-related things you want to run: 'cloud' services like Nextcloud with everything that comes with it (e.g. Collaboraoffice or Onlyoffice to replace whatever web-based office things you currently use), communications services like XMPP, application-specific proxies like Invidious/Nitter/Libreddit, media services like Peertube/Airsonic/Ampache, a Wiki like Bookstack, search services like SearxNG, etc. - the size of your server is the limit.

> backup runs Proxmox Backup Server and is used to backup everything to some external drive and to some outside repository.

> mail runs mail services, only if you want to run those. I always say 'do it' but many people have an irrational fear of running their own mail services. That fear is not grounded in truth, running mail is not hard and offers many advantages over hosted solutions.

While it is possible to separate all the mentioned services out into their own containers I think this adds needless complexity for little to no gain. Separating out database services makes sense since those can end up quite taxing and as such might well be moved to their own hardware in some (possibly not too distant) future. Separating out authentication services makes sense since that lowers the attack surface compared to running them together with externally available services. The same goes for mail services which is why I put those in their own container.

Once you've got this up and running you can create a few more containers to play around with. If you just want to try out services something like Yunohost [3] or Caprover [4] can come in handy but I do not see these as viable alternatives to installing and running services which you intend to keep around for a long time.

Of course you can do most of this on a VPS as well but I prefer to keep thing in-house - the fewer dependencies, the better.

[1] https://proxmox.com/en/

[2] containers perform better and take less memory than VMs but if VMs are your thing that is possible as well

[3] https://yunohost.org

[4] https://caprover.com/

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

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