Since I got my main PC back, I decided to deploy my laptop in a server configuration since I don't use it very often if at all, as part of my
desires to learn more about networking, system administration and the sort.

So far I have:

- A NFS Server providing a fileshare between my BBS server (REMSERVE or
simply Rem), The laptop server (HONYASERVE or Honya) and my main PC - Negi.
- Folding@Home operating 24/7 at full power.
- A Discord (Instant Messaging/Collaboration service) Bot.
- XRDP Server for remote access to the server.

The server has the following hardware:

Intel i7-7700HQ CPU
NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU w/ Intel HD Graphics fallback (NVidia Optimus)
8GB DDR4 RAM

And about 300-400GB of HDD space. I don't have the storage space for backups, even if they were extremely compressed. I'm thinking of setting up a Samba server and moving movies off Negi so I have more room, but beyond that, is there anything interesting or useful that would be worth deploying for an amateur home sysadmin?

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born just in time to see it come back.
Nodoka Hanamura - NeoCincinnati BBS SYSOP - neocinci.bbs.io

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/32)
* Origin: NeoCincinnati BBS - neocinci.bbs.io:23 (21:2/106)

On 07 Jul 2020, Nodoka Hanamura said the following...

is there anything interesting or useful that would be worth deploying for an amateur home sysadmin?

A couple of things you can try:

TTRSS is an RSS news reader. I have it setup on a Pi and can access it from outside the house. You can install it with Docker or on it's own:

https://tt-rss.org/


Nextcloud is kind of like Dropbox but you host it yourself. There are also various plugins you can install to extend functionality (like an RSS reader):

https://nextcloud.com/


Host your own password manager with Bitwarden:

https://bitwarden.com/help/article/install-on-premise/


Or a network wide adblocker with Pi-hole:

https://pi-hole.net/


You may want to check out the selfhosted community on Reddit for more ideas:

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/


Jay

... If all appears to go well, you missed something

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/06/11 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Northern Realms BBS | bbs.nrbbs.net | Binbrook, ON (21:3/110)

Since I got my main PC back, I decided to deploy my laptop in a server

is there anything interesting or useful that would be worth deploying
for an amateur home sysadmin?

Depends what you're up for... On that rig you could certainly toy with Virtual Machines. I've always run http and email on anything I set up. rsync server maybe, just point it into the same locations as your samba shares. Cacheing name server... the sky is the limit...

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to All on Tue Jul 07 2020 05:13 am

Since I got my main PC back, I decided to deploy my laptop in a server configuration since I don't use it very often if at all, as part of my desires to learn more about networking, system administration and the sort.

So far I have:

- A NFS Server providing a fileshare between my BBS server (REMSERVE or simply Rem), The laptop server (HONYASERVE or Honya) and my main PC - Negi.
- Folding@Home operating 24/7 at full power.
- A Discord (Instant Messaging/Collaboration service) Bot.
- XRDP Server for remote access to the server.

The server has the following hardware:

Intel i7-7700HQ CPU
NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU w/ Intel HD Graphics fallback (NVidia Optimus)
8GB DDR4 RAM

And about 300-400GB of HDD space. I don't have the storage space for backups even if they were extremely compressed. I'm thinking of setting up a Samba server and moving movies off Negi so I have more room, but beyond that, is there anything interesting or useful that would be worth deploying for an amateur home sysadmin?

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born just in time to see it come back.
Nodoka Hanamura - NeoCincinnati BBS SYSOP - neocinci.bbs.io

Things to play with:

* Your own DNS server (I wrote an article about that for Linux Magazine)
* Your own advertisement filtering web proxy (I also wrote an article about that)
* An I2P node with Muwire or I2psnark for sharing files ofer i2p.

Just ideas.

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

Arelor wrote (2020-07-07):

* An I2P node with Muwire or I2psnark for sharing files ofer i2p.

Why not start with an i2p hidden service for the binkp server ;)

---
* Origin: (21:3/102)

Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Oli to Arelor on Wed Jul 08 2020 08:59 am

Arelor wrote (2020-07-07):

* An I2P node with Muwire or I2psnark for sharing files ofer i2p.

Why not start with an i2p hidden service for the binkp server ;)

Because I suspect proper tossing requires an i2p-aware tosser, which means coding i2cp support into it. Or BOB, or SAM.

Meanwhile, Muwire and I2Psnark are relatively popular and easy to set up, and give immediate reward (warez!)

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

Arelor wrote (2020-07-08):

Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Oli to Arelor on Wed Jul 08 2020 08:59 am

Arelor wrote (2020-07-07):

* An I2P node with Muwire or I2psnark for sharing files ofer i2p.

Why not start with an i2p hidden service for the binkp server ;)

Because I suspect proper tossing requires an i2p-aware tosser, which means coding i2cp support into it. Or BOB, or SAM.

I don't think the tosser needs to be i2p aware. The mailer does the network connections and file transmissions. Binkp and qico can use the SOCKS5 proxy for
outgoing Tor connections and I believe this would work for i2p too.

09:13 [24347] using tor-proxy 127.0.0.1:9050/ for .onion address
+ 09:13 [24347] call to 12345:6/789@network
09:13 [24347] trying abc123def.onion via socks 127.0.0.1:9050...
09:13 [24347] connected
09:13 [24347] connected to socks5 127.0.0.1:9050
+ 09:13 [24347] outgoing session with abc123def.onion:24554
[...]

---
* Origin: (21:3/102)

Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Oli to Arelor on Fri Jul 10 2020 09:42 am

I don't think the tosser needs to be i2p aware. The mailer does the network

connections and file transmissions. Binkp and qi

can use the SOCKS5 proxy for outgoing Tor connections and I believe this

would work for i2p too.

09:13 [24347] using tor-proxy 127.0.0.1:9050/ for .onion address
+ 09:13 [24347] call to 12345:6/789@network
09:13 [24347] trying abc123def.onion via socks 127.0.0.1:9050...
09:13 [24347] connected
09:13 [24347] connected to socks5 127.0.0.1:9050
+ 09:13 [24347] outgoing session with abc123def.onion:24554
[...]

That's cool.

Socks tunnel functionality of i2p is so seldom used that I always forget it is there.

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

On 07 Jul 2020, Warpslide said the following...

TTRSS is an RSS news reader. I have it setup on a Pi and can access it from outside the house. You can install it with Docker or on it's own:

I'll have to look into this.

Nextcloud is kind of like Dropbox but you host it yourself. There are also various plugins you can install to extend functionality (like an
RSS reader):

I've been wanting a solution so I can let friends over the internet get files from me securely (SSL encrypted download), would Nextcloud be able to do this?

Host your own password manager with Bitwarden:

I'd go for that, but I'm honestly quite content with my current PM. I do appreciate the suggestion.

Or a network wide adblocker with Pi-hole:

Of all the suggestions from you warp, this resonates with me the most. Youtube's ads on TV have become freaking insufferable with some that either take over 2 minutes (Sometimes just being full fucking videos in excess of 10 minutes) or ads that make no sense. I'll have to look into getting Pi-hole working.

You may want to check out the selfhosted community on Reddit for more ideas:

I'll have to take a look! I personally lurk around homelab myself, but this
is something I'll have to check into.

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born just in time to see it come back.
Nodoka Hanamura - NeoCincinnati BBS SYSOP - neocinci.bbs.io

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/32)
* Origin: NeoCincinnati BBS - neocinci.bbs.io:23 (21:2/106)

On 07 Jul 2020, Spectre said the following...

Since I got my main PC back, I decided to deploy my laptop in a serve

is there anything interesting or useful that would be worth deploying for an amateur home sysadmin?

Depends what you're up for... On that rig you could certainly toy with Virtual Machines. I've always run http and email on anything I set up. rsync server maybe, just point it into the same locations as your samba shares. Cacheing name server... the sky is the limit...

I have experimented with VM deployment, had a game server put in a debian VM instance. I would set up email, but from what I've heard, residential IP Addresses are often blocked by other email services. I do run HTTP on Rem for NCBBS. My only lament is that I can't afford to get a second IP Address for running a second website seperate from NCBBS.

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born just in time to see it come back.
Nodoka Hanamura - NeoCincinnati BBS SYSOP - neocinci.bbs.io

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/32)
* Origin: NeoCincinnati BBS - neocinci.bbs.io:23 (21:2/106)

Or a network wide adblocker with Pi-hole:

Of all the suggestions from you warp, this resonates with me the most. Youtube's ads on TV have become freaking insufferable with some that either take over 2 minutes (Sometimes just being full fucking videos in excess of 10 minutes) or ads that make no sense. I'll have to look into getting Pi-hole working.

You may want to check out the selfhosted community on Reddit for more

I'll have to take a look! I personally lurk around homelab myself, but this is something I'll have to check into.

Just two points, off warps suggestions... a pi-hole is absolutely awesome,
and easy to setup. It can be installed in so many ways, like... mine is
through my home automation server, running home assistant - but regardless,
get a pi-hole in whatever way you prefer and it really does take care of ALL the ads Nodoka! What you just described, about taking 2 mins, etc- GONE.... pi-hole... A+.

And, in addition to the self hosted communitry on reddit... there are some great self hosted podcasts (The self hosted podcast :P) that give ME ideas
for when I'm wondering what my next project might be... if yer not one to dig thru online forums, maybe giving a listen for an hour might help. (Podcasts usually list the topics and you can select one that might ring your bell...)

Last, Nextcloud is badass - if you have usecase. Certainly you could serve up files to your friends; but really so much more. Serve up files to YOU, its
like having Apple Cloud without Apple... it can be very active, as opposed to Dropbox being a passive feature.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: American Pi BBS (21:2/150)

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to Spectre on Wed Jul 08 2020 04:09 pm

Hey...

Rem for NCBBS. My only lament is that I can't afford to get a second IP Address for running a second website seperate from NCBBS.

There might be more to this than the statement, but I thought I'd suggest it just in case. You know you can run many websites off of the same IP address.

Websites are not dependant on unique IPs. Happy to help you get up that second website up and running if you need it...

...ëîåï

... I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)

*** Quoting Nodoka Hanamura from a message to Warpslide ***

Nextcloud is kind of like Dropbox but you host it yourself. There are also various plugins you can install to extend functionality (like an
RSS reader):

I've been wanting a solution so I can let friends over the internet
get files from me securely (SSL encrypted download), would Nextcloud
be able to do this?

Yup, this is do-able. As Nextcloud is web-based, as long as you have SSL enabled you can either give them an account or simply create a share link where they can download the file in question. It has some extra features
such as password proteting the link, setting an expiry date & what-not that you can also use. There is also an option to allow uploading only if you wanted to use it as a file drop.

Or a network wide adblocker with Pi-hole:

Of all the suggestions from you warp, this resonates with me the
most. Youtube's ads on TV have become freaking insufferable with some
that either take over 2 minutes (Sometimes just being full fucking
videos in excess of 10 minutes) or ads that make no sense. I'll have
to look into getting Pi-hole working.

I think YouTube ads are a difficult thing to block in general. There's a whole forum dedicated to it and it seems to be a cat & mouse game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/et4tt4/is_there_a_current_pi_hole_con fig_which_blocks/

Even the extension I use in Chrome (uBlock Origin) has stopped blocking
YouTube ads lately.

Jay

... Reward for a job well done: more work.

--- Telegard v3.09.g2-sp4/mL
* Origin: Northern Realms/TG | bbs.nrbbs.net:2323 (21:3/110.1)

debian VM instance. I would set up email, but from what I've heard, residential IP Addresses are often blocked by other email services.

I haven't tended to find that unless they're just dropping mail on the floor and not bouncing it. If you want to be tricky you route your email back through someone like gmail. You can use you gmail account to authenticate and pretty much send what you want. But I just run mine stand alone.

I do run HTTP on Rem for NCBBS. My only lament is that I can't
afford to get a second IP Address for running a second website
seperate from NCBBS.

Erm I have four sites popping out of 1 Apache server. webring, tlp, pineapple and ghostwheel that latter 3 are all .zapto.org and webring is a pointer to tlp
I think, only Paul knows for sure :) Apache is good for virtual servers. You need to set a default so if someone pops in via IP address alone you know which
site is going to pop up, after that it sorts by the request address as to which
site its serving.

I don't know Rem though...

Spec


--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: (21:3/101)

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: paulie420 to Nodoka Hanamura on Sun Jul 12 2020 01:55 am

Just two points, off warps suggestions... a pi-hole is absolutely awesome, and easy to setup. It can be installed in so many ways, like... mine is through my home automation server, running home assistant - but regardless, get a pi-hole in whatever way you prefer and it really does take care of ALL the ads Nodoka! What you just described, about taking 2 mins, etc- GONE.... pi-hole... A+.

And, in addition to the self hosted communitry on reddit... there are some great self hosted podcasts (The self hosted podcast :P) that give ME ideas for when I'm wondering what my next project might be... if yer not one to di thru online forums, maybe giving a listen for an hour might help. (Podcasts usually list the topics and you can select one that might ring your bell...)

Last, Nextcloud is badass - if you have usecase. Certainly you could serve u files to your friends; but really so much more. Serve up files to YOU, its like having Apple Cloud without Apple... it can be very active, as opposed t Dropbox being a passive feature.

Shameless self-promotion: for ideas for network level ad blocking, check
Linux Magazine #232 (https://www.linux-magazine.com/index.php/Issues/2020/232)

It comes with two articles about DNS ad-blocking, pi-hole style, and "evil interception proxy", which captures websites before they reach your browser and take the advertisements away, MITM style.

Nextcloud is ok for many groupware tasks. You can integrate it with thunderbird for sending BIG attachments (so the attachment is sent to the nextcloud server, and the recipient receives a link to it). You can have groups with different access permissions, so it is nice for managing teams of proofreaders for my short stories. There is a federation protocol, so you can share files and folders with users of other Nextcloud instances - which is cool of your proofreaders happen to be in a Nextcloud instance that is not yours.

Oh, and you can shoehorn it into OpenBSD's stock HTTPD server without much trouble, which is a bonus.
short stories :-)

--
gopher://gopher.operationalsecurity.es
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to Spectre on Wed Jul 08 2020 04:09 pm

I would set up email, but from what I've heard, residential
IP Addresses are often blocked by other email services.

They often are - or they are given a SPAM value that with all the other checks results in them being tagged as spam.

What you can do is route your mail through a "reliable" email provider - gmail,
office, etc. I've just started using smtp2go.com, and while I have a static IP in the cloud, my mail from this host was being dropped by messagelabs.com (which is another big email service provider) - and my attempts to be whitelisted went nowhere.

smtp2go.com seems reliable and they are a free tier which is perfect for home use.

...ëîåï

... It's a can of wormms full of Pandora's boxes.
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)

On 12 Jul 2020, alterego said the following...

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to Spectre on Wed Jul 08 2020 04:09 pm

Hey...

Rem for NCBBS. My only lament is that I can't afford to get a second Address for running a second website seperate from NCBBS.

There might be more to this than the statement, but I thought I'd
suggest it just in case. You know you can run many websites off of the same IP address.

Websites are not dependant on unique IPs. Happy to help you get up that second website up and running if you need it...

Unless you mean running HTTP over a different port, It's news to me and I'm down for it if you could give me some pointers.

----------------------------
Nodoka Hanamura
Nugget BBS SysOp @ NeoCincinnati BBS
neocinci.bbs.io

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born too early to go back in time.
Born at the right time to look back.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Quantum Wormhole, Ramsgate, UK. bbs.erb.pw (21:1/158)

I don't know Rem though...

Rem's the name of my BBS Server :)

----------------------------
Nodoka Hanamura
Nugget BBS SysOp @ NeoCincinnati BBS
neocinci.bbs.io

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born too early to go back in time.
Born at the right time to look back.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Quantum Wormhole, Ramsgate, UK. bbs.erb.pw (21:1/158)

On 13 Jul 2020, alterego said the following...

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to Spectre on Wed Jul 08 2020 04:09 pm

I would set up email, but from what I've heard, residential
IP Addresses are often blocked by other email services.

They often are - or they are given a SPAM value that with all the other checks results in them being tagged as spam.

What you can do is route your mail through a "reliable" email provider - gmail, office, etc. I've just started using smtp2go.com, and while I
have a static IP in the cloud, my mail from this host was being dropped
by messagelabs.com (which is another big email service provider) - and
my attempts to be whitelisted went nowhere.

I'll have to give that a look sometime soon.

----------------------------
Nodoka Hanamura
Nugget BBS SysOp @ NeoCincinnati BBS
neocinci.bbs.io

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born too early to go back in time.
Born at the right time to look back.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Quantum Wormhole, Ramsgate, UK. bbs.erb.pw (21:1/158)

I don't know Rem though...

Rem's the name of my BBS Server :)

Truly remarkable :)

Spec


--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: (21:3/101)

Whats your web server running?

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to alterego on Mon Jul 13 2020 06:30 am

Unless you mean running HTTP over a different port, It's news to me and I'm down for it if you could give me some pointers.

Nope, all on the same ports - port 80 for http, and 443 for https.

I use nginx, and its pretty easy - you use the ServerName directive to distinguish which configuration is responsable for which url used.

And you normally specific one of them as "default" which is a catch all when a url doesnt match a servername directive.

The same can be done for apache - but I havent used apache for years.

This will help you with https: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/configuring_https_servers.html#name_based_https_
servers

...ëîåï

... Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.
--- SBBSecho 3.11-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)

On 13 Jul 2020, Spectre said the following...

Whats your web server running?

Spec

*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

I was running lighttpd initially and then I switched to Apache.

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born just in time to see it come back.
Nodoka Hanamura - NeoCincinnati BBS SYSOP - neocinci.bbs.io

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/32)
* Origin: NeoCincinnati BBS - neocinci.bbs.io:23 (21:2/106)

On 13 Jul 2020, alterego said the following...

Re: Re: Suggestions for server experiments/services
By: Nodoka Hanamura to alterego on Mon Jul 13 2020 06:30 am

Unless you mean running HTTP over a different port, It's news to me a I'm down for it if you could give me some pointers.

Nope, all on the same ports - port 80 for http, and 443 for https.

I use nginx, and its pretty easy - you use the ServerName directive to distinguish which configuration is responsable for which url used.

And you normally specific one of them as "default" which is a catch all when a url doesnt match a servername directive.

The same can be done for apache - but I havent used apache for years.

This will help you with https: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/configuring_https_servers.html#name_based_h
servers

Well I'll be. Learn something new every day. I'll have to look into how to implement this with Apache, then.

Thanks for the info!

Born too late to experience the scene.
Born just in time to see it come back.
Nodoka Hanamura - NeoCincinnati BBS SYSOP - neocinci.bbs.io

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/32)
* Origin: NeoCincinnati BBS - neocinci.bbs.io:23 (21:2/106)

If you're running some kind of debian extraction of *nix then Apache will be a doddle to set up. You just copy the default config, edit the contents for your new site, the FQDN it'll be called from, and the html directory and drop it into your sites-enabled folder.

Spec


--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: (21:3/101)

On 13 Jul 2020, alterego said the following...

smtp2go.com seems reliable and they are a free tier which is perfect for home use.

Thanks for this!

Jay

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/06/11 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Northern Realms BBS | bbs.nrbbs.net | Binbrook, ON (21:3/110)