Nile on Nostr: Self host everything series pt 1: Intro: This is the first edition of a journal/blog ...
Self host everything series pt 1:
Intro:
This is the first edition of a journal/blog documenting my efforts to self host as many things as I have the interest and time for.
My background:
I'm a physicist. Due to extreme curiosity, I've become gripped with the latest strain of computer related autism.
Why?
1) Why not?
2) Data sovereignty is the only defense you plebs have in an age of infowar, internet death and jeetification.
3) Let me share something with you from /hsg/: "Home servers are about learning and expanding your horizons. De-botnet your life. Learn something new. Serving applications to yourself, your family, and your frens feels good. Put your /g/ skills to good use for yourself and those close to you. Store their data with proper availability redundancy and backups and serve it back to them with a /comfy/ easy to use interface.
Most people get started with a NAS. It’s nice to have a /comfy/ home for all your data. Streaming your movies/shows around the house and to friends. Know all about NAS? Learn virtualization. Spin up some VMs. Learn networking by setting up a pfSense box and configuring some VLANs. There's always more to learn and chances to grow.
Things that are online today might not be online forever. It's good to have a copy of something because you never know when it might get taken down due to copyright strikes. "
What?
I'll be starting with a network attached storage (NAS). As described by /hsg/, it is a /comfy/ home for my data. My usecase is fairly simple, so I don't need anything too high tech. Lowlife works for now, especially for a first project. So I did the cliche thing and purchased a Raspberry Pi. The 5 w/8GB ram to be specific.
"How are you going to build a NAS on a pi?" I hear you screech. Hats. Expansion boards that are attached to the Pi via FPC cables. I purchased the Radxa Penta SATA hat and a Samsung SSD. Total cost? $167. Not bad.
Guide:
1) Write Pi OS to a microSD card. Install Raspberry Pi imager, choose your device, OS, storage medium, set a username & password and other settings and write the image to your microSD card.
2) Assemble the parts. (Just read the Radxa docs)
3) Set up RAID, LVM, both or something else entirely.
4) Create a directory that will be shared on the network and then mount your LVM LV or RAID array to it. Edit the /etc/fstab file for persistent mounting. Ensure proper permissions are set for the directory (consult Samba docs)
5) Install Samba, edit the /etc/samba/samba.conf to setup the Samba share, then restart samba so that the newly configured shared directory is available
6) Create a user for Samba access: sudo smbpasswd -a <username>
7) Connect to the share from another computer using the CLI provided by the smbclient package or by using a GUI file explorer. SMB capable file explorers can be found on F-droid for android.
8) (Optionally) Mount the share on your PC/Laptop via cifs by installing the cifs-utils package.
Pros:
- Just Werks
- Easy
- Cheap
- Looks cool (pic rel)
Cons:
- Expansion limitation + a hard cap limitation due to the small number of Pcie lanes so network + disk speed limitations. Also, ARM architecture and running Plebian
PS: I wrote this up on my file server and accessed it on my android phone to grab the text to post on Nostr. /comfy/
Intro:
This is the first edition of a journal/blog documenting my efforts to self host as many things as I have the interest and time for.
My background:
I'm a physicist. Due to extreme curiosity, I've become gripped with the latest strain of computer related autism.
Why?
1) Why not?
2) Data sovereignty is the only defense you plebs have in an age of infowar, internet death and jeetification.
3) Let me share something with you from /hsg/: "Home servers are about learning and expanding your horizons. De-botnet your life. Learn something new. Serving applications to yourself, your family, and your frens feels good. Put your /g/ skills to good use for yourself and those close to you. Store their data with proper availability redundancy and backups and serve it back to them with a /comfy/ easy to use interface.
Most people get started with a NAS. It’s nice to have a /comfy/ home for all your data. Streaming your movies/shows around the house and to friends. Know all about NAS? Learn virtualization. Spin up some VMs. Learn networking by setting up a pfSense box and configuring some VLANs. There's always more to learn and chances to grow.
Things that are online today might not be online forever. It's good to have a copy of something because you never know when it might get taken down due to copyright strikes. "
What?
I'll be starting with a network attached storage (NAS). As described by /hsg/, it is a /comfy/ home for my data. My usecase is fairly simple, so I don't need anything too high tech. Lowlife works for now, especially for a first project. So I did the cliche thing and purchased a Raspberry Pi. The 5 w/8GB ram to be specific.
"How are you going to build a NAS on a pi?" I hear you screech. Hats. Expansion boards that are attached to the Pi via FPC cables. I purchased the Radxa Penta SATA hat and a Samsung SSD. Total cost? $167. Not bad.
Guide:
1) Write Pi OS to a microSD card. Install Raspberry Pi imager, choose your device, OS, storage medium, set a username & password and other settings and write the image to your microSD card.
2) Assemble the parts. (Just read the Radxa docs)
3) Set up RAID, LVM, both or something else entirely.
4) Create a directory that will be shared on the network and then mount your LVM LV or RAID array to it. Edit the /etc/fstab file for persistent mounting. Ensure proper permissions are set for the directory (consult Samba docs)
5) Install Samba, edit the /etc/samba/samba.conf to setup the Samba share, then restart samba so that the newly configured shared directory is available
6) Create a user for Samba access: sudo smbpasswd -a <username>
7) Connect to the share from another computer using the CLI provided by the smbclient package or by using a GUI file explorer. SMB capable file explorers can be found on F-droid for android.
8) (Optionally) Mount the share on your PC/Laptop via cifs by installing the cifs-utils package.
Pros:
- Just Werks
- Easy
- Cheap
- Looks cool (pic rel)
Cons:
- Expansion limitation + a hard cap limitation due to the small number of Pcie lanes so network + disk speed limitations. Also, ARM architecture and running Plebian
PS: I wrote this up on my file server and accessed it on my android phone to grab the text to post on Nostr. /comfy/