Hi. I’m Nobody.

Software developers are on Mastadon, though. Big time.

Mine bitcoin! Just kidding.

I dunno, install an interesting OS or distro and use it as a throwaway sandbox for learning. Or turn it into a makeshift router (not via installing pfsense or other router OS, but by configuring network services by hand in Debian or Ubuntu). I tend to want to use redundant hardware to learn new skills.

You’re probably looking for something like phpMyAdmin. A lot of hosting companies offer it (I had to log into my own to look up the name of the software). I would host in a European nation if you could (people love Hetzner; I haven’t used any outside the USA). I believe that’s a relatively save route to data sovereignty and I doubt they’d honor a court order from your country demanding records or access to your data, but you should research carefully and not trust some half-knowledgeable / half-ignorant guy on the internet (me) if you’re putting yourself at risk.

I think people on Lemmy will be genuinely friendly about answering questions if you demonstrate that you’ve put in an honest effort to learn things on your own and don’t ask people to basically do the thinking for you. Unix / Linux / network / server nerds like talking about this stuff and are happy to help each other learn so long as there’s a sense of respecting other people’s time by trying to do things on your own and only asking for expertise because you tried first but got stuck. That’s been my experience, anyway, over the years (big old nerd right here).

I run Movary on my NAS in a docker container so that my partner has a place to add to our watch-list.

I also run a personal kbase that I built on top of Docbase and Markdown files.

And I recently started using HTTP2Shell to throw commands at a local networked device. This is useful to me personally, maybe not for others, because I’ve written my own automations.

I recently considered adding Home Assistant, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen because we have lamps that don’t remain in an “on” state when unplugged; any devices I might buy to add wifi to them wouldn’t actually turn them on remotely as a result. Shame cause there’s one that’s pretty necessary at night that’s between a wall and a sofa that’s pushed back against it because that’s just the layout of the room. I don’t mind manually controlling the others, but that was the one that would have been nice to trigger from my phone. Our thermostat and robot vacuum would have been on the same system, but they already have dedicated apps anyway.

You’re only limited by your imagination and curiosity (and wallet).

Yes.

If you have anything exposed, scripts and bots are testing your server all day, every day. So long as you’ve got proper security in place, ignore the failed attempts.

Check out https://www.servethehome.com/. I imagine you’ll find some useful info there.

You can rent a virtual private server (VPS). I used to have a number of these for under $10 / month. I imagine they might cost more now., but chances are you can still find something super affordable.

Wordpress.org will let you have a free site but you don’t get a custom domain. Wordpress.com has a personal plan for $4 / month. Matt Mullenweg (CEO) has revealed himself to be a crazy piece of shit, so maybe look elsewhere. I’m just trying to give you a sense of how accessible this stuff can be.

Running a VPS will require more learning, but it can be super gratifying if you enjoy nerdy computer stuff and solving puzzles just for self-satisfaction. I used to use Rackspace, Linode, and something else that I can’t recall at the moment. All were pretty reasonable. Rackspace had a ton of good setup guides for newbies that were well written. I’d occasionally land on those doing a web search for other hosting stuff and found them reliable.

Edit: DigitalOcean was the one I couldn’t remember.

Look up Eternal September on Wikipedia.

I’m a fan of pfSense, myself. But other suggestions here for OSes have been reasonable. I have a netgate router feeding an eero wap with a second wap creating a bridged wifi network. Future-proofing with 10GB on a wired switch if a good idea. I got a pair of Unifi 2.5GB switches with 10GB uplink for that. The difference in performance moving large data around is massive. I have 10GB between my primary machine, the one that I run as my always-on server, and my NAS. It’s awesome. Everything else is 2.5GB.

Edit: made one bit plural

12.8TB. Mostly uncompressed rips from Blu-rays, some DVDs, some from iTunes Store. Some from the high seas, but not in a long time because the market solved that problem with streaming.

I don’t have opensource solutions, but CloudFlare had some news about a system that I didn’t read about (saw two headlines) last week. Dunno if it works or not.

Cool, more power to you.

My Synology is compatible with an expansion unit and can support two of them. Check if yours can do the same for the storage aspect.

If you get a NAS with 10G (it’s such a nice upgrade, I made the jump last year), there’s no reason a nice NUC can’t do the job. I went that route after previously running significantly overpowered server hardware ten years ago. We have an embarrassment of riches with modern hardware.

A+

I had a tower that generated so much heat that during a particularly hot summer, I had to stop using it around 1-2pm every day. The room just got too hot to occupy. I’m a computer nerd, so this was particularly heinous for me.

You’re pretty rad, y’know that?

I moved to 10Gbps and 5Gbps on some of my devices and it’s been glorious. Future-proof by having either built-in.