I want to self host some services for me and my first questions is: Any guide or book, or wtv, you recommend to understand self host world? I want to understand all things about it, but dont know where to start. And the guides for beginners i found on internet are very basic, just seems things like “do that, do this, and go” . I want to fully understand the world of self host. I want to understand firewalls, DyanmicDNS, MeshVPN; How to do self host; what not to do, what precautions, etc, etc. thx

  • tofublEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    There is no silver bullet that will let you understand all about “the self hosting world” from the get-go without getting your hands dirty and without making mistakes.

    I recommend formulating a concrete goal (e.g., I want to run a Nextcloud instance on a Raspberry Pi 4 on my LAN, and I want to be able to reach it from outside via Wireguard), and trying to tackle this goal step by step:

    • Which OS on the Pi and why?
    • Container or bare metal and why?
    • How to install Wireguard?
    • What precautions need to be in place before I open an ingress point into my LAN for Wireguard and how do I do it?
    • What about TLS, how do I get a nice lock icon in my browser? Selfsigned? Letsencrypt?

    It’s much easier to help with concrete problems and sub-problems like these, too, and you will find this community here incredibly helpful when you ask specific questions on which you’re stuck or unsure about.

    All that said, I started learning about network administration before containerisation was a thing, and I feel like I learned a lot by setting many things up manually and bare metal. I’m not sure if it’s the best course of action for a beginner today, but it exposes you to many topics very directly. While Docker and other modern tools are incredibly convenient and a godsend for tasks that used to be horribly error prone and tedious, I have a feeling they abstract away things that might make it harder to “peek behind the curtain”, even if they might lower the entrance barrier significantly.

    But no matter which route you take, you will struggle, and you will learn, and you will break things and learn some more. Get your hands on it!