How do you set up a server? Do you do any automation or do you just open up an SSH session and YOLO? Any containers? Is docker-compose enough for you or are you one of those unicorns who had no issues whatsoever with rootless Podman? Do you use any premade scripts or do you hand craft it all? What distro are you building on top of?

I’m currently in process of “building” my own server and I’m kinda wondering how “far” most people are going, where do y’all take any shortcuts, and what do you spend effort getting just right.

  • Matt
    3•2 years ago

    For personal Linux servers, I tend to run Debian or Ubuntu, with a pretty simple “base” setup that I just run through manually in my head.

    • Setup my personal account.
    • Upload my SSH keys.
    • Configure the hostname (usually after something in Star Trek 🖖).
    • Configure the /etc/hotss file.
    • Make sure it is fully patched.
    • Setup ZeroTier.
    • Setup Telegraf to ship some metrics.
    • Reboot.

    I don’t automate any of this because I don’t see a whole of point in doing it.

    • @myersguyA
      2•2 years ago

      Super interesting to me that you swap between Debian and Ubuntu. Is there any rhyme or reason to why you use one over the other?

      • Matt
        1•2 years ago

        I tend to prefer installing Debian on a server, but recently I did install Ubuntu’s recent LTS on a box because I was running into an issue with the latest version of Debian. I didn’t want to revert to an earlier version of Debian or spend a bunch of time figuring out the problem I was having with Python, so I opted to use Ubuntu, which worked.

        Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it’s like using the same operating system, as far as I’m concerned.