How to Set Up a Linux Home Server from Start to Finish!

[@hoff._world]

wanna see whats on MY server? kzbin.info/www/bejne/onLahGCMZqiiaKc

[@QckSGaming]

Damn, I knew all of this, there was literally nothing new to me, but the way you explained and went through it was just simply great. Awesome video with just the right level of depth for the target audience. Keep on doing this! You are good at this stuff.

[@hoff._world]

Really appreciate it my friend. Will do!

[@df29208]

I was thinking that too, that he sounds like a professional 'skills teacher', trainer. I wondered how he would do with a lot of people in a room.

[@hoff._world]

@@df29208 I am actually a teaching assistant for an embedded systems course at my university hahaha

[@df29208]

@@hoff._world Which makes sense, you did such a good job anticipating where people would make mistakes. I kept on saying, "I know nothing" while watching you - you are hands and feet above me, and I am approaching 60 - old tech, old body. I was a lab instructor while an undergrad and taught two labs each semester for two years. Until you 'experience' doing on-the-fly triage helping a student and their set up problems, on top of everything else, while teaching or caring people through a tutorial you haven't lived (or taught some one something only over the phone without benefit of zoom, just the voice.) Teaching (and learning) helps you see other perspectives and what was not made clear in your presentation - so you can improve next time ! The second year, second semester students got the benefit of a little bit well traveled 'instructor' for that class many years ago.

[@hoff._world]

@df29208 I never thought someone with your experience would find this video. It is incredibly interesting to hear about your background! 100% agree with the benefits of teaching, in fact I find I learn more from teaching than I do just by myself :) Thanks for your support.

[@gamingandanime9000]

Need more people like you, Simple and Clean explanation! Such a nice idea for home labs and just practicing server administration skills 💯

[@hoff._world]

glad you enjoyed it my guy

[@Ilsh1964]

Thank you, I've been working with Linux for about 30 years and still I've learned from your wonderful video (the site that configure your .bashrc file, the site that transform an image file to an ascii text file...)

[@hoff._world]

yeah that kinda stuff is just fun to me. No point doing all this stuff if it's not fun :)

[@RockersonJustiniano]

A technical and rigorous approach, without being tiring and boring. A very well designed complete tutorial for anyone who wants to start studying and practicing with a Home Server. And a Home Server running Debian is simply the best choice! Congratulations on the Excellent Work! I have already subscribed to the Channel, I will always like it and share it with my contacts😊😃

[@hoff._world]

thanks very much for your kind words! If you're doing anything cool with a home server be sure to let me know :)

[@robertr.721]

I know most of this stuff but your style and presentation really works for me. Laid back and chill, can literally follow you step by step without pause. Instant sub and follow for you, dude! 👍

[@hoff._world]

Cheers mate! The kind words mean a lot.

[@xnyl1907]

Hey man, I stumbled into your channel yesterday and got me motivated enough to take out my old FX 4100 machine out of my closet and started playing around with it. Looking forward to more videos!

[@hoff._world]

Fantastic to hear. Always great to find a use for old tech, and not let it go to waste!

[@alectellez1825]

literally did this 24 hours ago and you gave me some ideas to add to my new os, thanks homie!

[@hoff._world]

Awesome mate so glad to hear it. If you do anything cool with your server let me know, I'd love to hear about it!

[@ninesninesnines]

how and why does this only have 11 views lol ur my new favorite youtuber

[@hoff._world]

Thanks for the kind words Jake. Will keep at it :)

[@VeryUsMumblings]

I wish I had this when I was setting up my Debian server six or seven months ago. I'm running Apache server and connecting with nfs but I might be re-watching this video to set up a minecraft server and/or samba and a few other things. Very helpful and good video.

[@hoff._world]

make sure u have enough dedotaded wam

[@VeryUsMumblings]

@@hoff._world I had to do a search for that joke because I didn't get it right away, but it was still funny! 😄

[@logannday]

Loving your stuff!! Small tip, blow your font size up way larger for KZbin, half the audience is watching on their phone at 3am (including me)

[@hoff._world]

roger roger

[@sechvnnull1524]

Hey phenomenal job, I work in cyber and you did an excellent job explaining this. Very clear and you explain things really well.

[@hoff._world]

hey thanks! What kinda cyber you in, like servers, networks, pen testing?

[@sechvnnull1524]

@hoff._world I'm a pentester. I absolutely love Linux and find anything to do with server admin really interesting.

[@BigDogHaver]

Wow, what perfect timing. I'm currently saving up to build a new PC from scratch, and I'm planning on turning my old PC into a home server for media storage for the family, and game servers for me and my friends. (First one will be a Gregtech: New Horizons playthrough!!) 100% bookmarking this for when I'm going to need it.

[@hoff._world]

Legendary, save that thing from ewaste. Anything you can run on your server that will help others as well as yourself is a great feeling, and game servers are definitely it

[@BigDogHaver]

@@hoff._worldI finally got that new PC up and running after 4 weeks of hiccups and RMA’s 😅 Sitting at work watching through this video again just to hype myself up for when I finally get home :)

[@BigDogHaver]

Also this is probably a noob question as I’ve yet to use docker, but are there any performance losses by having the minecraft server run inside a container, as opposed to without using docker at all? Again, sorry if this is a “can you write a red line with a blue marker?” Question 😅

[@BigDogHaver]

@@hoff._worldLast night, I successfully SSH’d into my new server, and used docker for the first time. Uptime 11 hours on my GregTech: New Horizons Minecraft server!! Also very happy I can just SSH from my iphone at work, and fiddle with the minecraft server as needed 🗿

[@metindmrc]

Great job ! Pls dont forget to clear cli lines. KZbins play bar comes before the codes.

[@Dungeonseeker1uk]

Shots fired at Canonical.... I agree fully

[@hoff._world]

Can't forget what RedHat tried to do with CentOS, Rocky and Alma lately either. With this comment RIP my chances of ever working there...

[@weiss7070]

this is so cool i wish i had any reason or means(got only 1 laptop) to create my own home server this is insane consider you got only 500 views with such a quality hope that your next project would be more useful for me lol

[@hoff._world]

Thanks for your kind words! Everyone starts small, don't sweat it, maybe one day you'll have the means for a server :)

[@Keyfaze]

This has been an awesome guide espcially for a linux noob

[@SumanNathThePP]

Hey, thanks for this video. I setup my homeserver using your steps. I added plex to stream my movie collection to my TV.

[@hoff._world]

epic glad to hear you found it useful :)

[@agrisdorins1195]

If you do not enter a password for root during installation phase, root user will be disabled and first user will be put into sudo group automatically. No need to do all that manually after a first boot.

[@hoff._world]

good note, thanks!

[@Palatonista]

This video is a life saver! Helped me so much! Thanks mate. Keep those videos comin!♥

[@hoff._world]

No worries my dude glad to hear it

[@ЯрославМизгирев-р2р]

Thanks for awesome guide.

[@WindowsAurora]

Nice Video! You Are So Underratted!

[@anthonymann7679]

Another Aussie also from QLD, great video incredibly informative thanks.

[@shadowseek27]

this is a goated video, sub confirmed

[@hoff._world]

and you're a goated dude, dude

[@maritimers4sure]

Thank you.. Excellent guide.

[@vladlvv]

Man, i watched this far and i am the one who must be saying thank you, like BIG THANK YOU. In 60 mins u wrapped up all my background knowledge into a nice picture where everything makes sense, final result so to say, without going into the specific details I either have answer on or I can google it up or learn it with no problems. I also would like have video in something similar way about making this locally run server available in internet for every one, so i can play with my friends on mine micraft server for instance. But I guess it's rather more about computer networks rather than this channel topic. Regardless I have a lot to practice on setting up server properly, and local is more than enough for that. Ty so much again, this will be probably one of those videos which i will be re-watching a lot to fresh my knowledge or until i brake it down for myself in obsidian

[@vladlvv]

I think i might find my answer in video where u setting up cs server. Probably just need to browse ur channel more

[@gabrielrock]

great video my bro. congrats!!

[@hoff._world]

thanks gabriel u rock xx

[@grommysvideohorde2734]

Howdy! This tutorial was INSANELY helpful (and I really dig the fact that you named your servers after Pokemon, I'm doing the same lol), but noob question: If I have several drives on my rig, how can I set them up to be shared via NAS? I could only seem to get the root drive to show up, but I have 2 8tb drives I want to use for storage, and which are presently sitting unused. Again, very noob-y question, but I'm a first timer, lol.

[@bdsipos]

Thanks, legend! Super helpful🙏

[@hoff._world]

no worries mate!

[@cmdrsausage9669]

Thanks for the tutorial, its been really good from someone who is a complete noob like me trying to teach myself about Linux use while setting up a home server. I was wondering if in future videos you would be able to keep the action above the bottom of the screen, the play bar on youtube makes it hard to read what you've typed when the video is paused. Also been looking at the difference between the ext4 file system and btfs system and wondering why you went that way when setting up your RAID1 array? Really appreciate the video mate, even if you are a Queenslander haha

[@steven.cutright]

Your the man bro.. Thank you.

[@hoff._world]

no dramas mate glad u enjoyed

[@rodricbr]

46:19 hahahah, I was waiting for this moment

[@hoff._world]

had to do it to em :P

[@_parasitic]

sorry for the newbie question, but what would be the process for opening up the server (and minecraft server) for a few friends to use? I assume they wouldn't be able to connect using just my local IP:port. Amazing video btw

[@KaDaOtok]

if I have just one ssd in my debian machine how should I setup the file mangement system?

[@erickperes0495]

Hoff, I can copy, but not paste in vim. Why? (23:11) I am on Windows accessing Debian server through SSH.

[@genericstospecifics1856]

I made my first home server a few days ago following a yt video and made it remotely accesible with wireguard and pihole, and I was scared for one thing what if someone I authorize to connect to my server misuses it to land on sites you should never be on without a vpn. After some digging I found out a way to do so by blacklisting everything with regex that worked but then I thought what if I had to limit there access to just one port for a service for example jellyfin but not samba or pihole or portainer. I think this would work thank you very much❤

[@mangoherpson]

Could you explain the point of whole disk mirroring/setting up btrfs section? I didn't really follow why we are doing this in the first place? Whats wrong with just having directories for your minecraft server, etc?

[@hoff._world]

redundancy. If one of your hard drives dies then all the data is mirrored to the other one so ur all good. Of course it's all about risk management; if you don't really care that the drive dies or do your backups another way then feel free to skip it :D

[@mangoherpson]

@@hoff._world Great, thanks a bunch. Can't wait to get this thing up and running

[@bitemykrank1970]

Just curious, why didn't you start with ubuntu server as the base instead of debian12, is there a big difference in the two that makes one preferable over the other?

[@hoff._world]

To be honest I'm not really a fan of what Canonical has been doing lately with snaps for example. They're pushing them way too hard imo (like replacing sudo apt install firefox with the snap version) in a way that is almost deceptive, and to top it off the backend for the snap store is proprietary. Debian has been around for a lot longer and has been overall very friendly to its community.

[@bitemykrank1970]

@@hoff._world Fair enough, I know very little about linux, but I have used it on and off for 30+ years, and I still suck at it to this day....tutorials like yours are always a welcome sight to myself. I'm currently doing a server exactly as in the video, save disk sizes, and hardware. I'm curious to see how long it will be until I do my normal linux thing and totally lock myself out of the machine and need to completely re install from scratch. I usually average about three days....with this guide, I should be able to improve on that, I'm thinking, maybe 24 hours, not because the guide is bad, but because I cannot resist trying shit I shouldn't......ALL AHEAD FULL, DAMN THE TORPEDOES........!!!!

[@d9h34nu0df]

great video, please make a video about nginx

[@hoff._world]

definitely on the menu

[@MVeans]

Thanks for your good video. Couple of things to mention: 1. The final ssh code, is there a way to "tiny url" it since it involves some typing? 2. When I do the ssh-keygen in Ubuntu the xyz.pub gets dropped in the Home folder and so I have to manually slide it into .ssh in hidden folders. 3. Can you leave some guidance on creating a static address please; what are your views on that please? Cheers

[@hoff._world]

1. you can set a bash alias to it, open bashrc and go alias sshme='ssh -p xxxx 123.456.7.890 -i ~/.ssh/xxx_file' obviously replacing all parameters with your own. Then source ~/.bashrc and you can just type 'sshme' or whatever u want 2. when using ssh-keygen and it asks you for the path you need to specify the full path; it is relative from the directory you run it in. 3. static for your local network (i.e. for your ethernet adapter) or you mean on the actual internet?

[@capothefool]

Hi! First of all, great video, very easy to follow and very informative. It's my first time ever using/setting up ssh and I'm having a problem with key authentication. I followed the steps to enable key authentication but, even inputting the right parameters, it still get a publickey error. I even tried to uncomment AuthorizedKeysFile in the config but the host is still rejecting my login. Any further troubleshooting that you might advise? thanks.

[@raven-vr5yz]

Hey there again, great video. This actually hyped me to tidy my network a bit and tweak few things in it. This actually motivated me to finally ditch windows and go full on arch. I’m experienced with all that, but I’ve never done encryption or lvm. Now that I’m putting that on my main desktop, I really want to make it great. Do you think encrypting is a good idea for a desktop computer in my room? Noone’s gonna be stealing my disks any time soon and even if they did, I’ve got all the important data encrypted on cloud… also, do you have any tips for installing arch kde bare metal? Ty o7

[@hoff._world]

I do it just as a best practice, sure no one will be stealing them (probably) but it's lowkey real comfy to have everything encrypted tho I know that isn't an objective reason :) In my country law enforcement can just ask you for the keys and u get thrown in jail if u dont so it isnt to protect my stuff from them. I just like to do it In terms of tips yeah for sure make a list of the packages you want beforehand. E.g. if you want a minimal plasma install then plasma-desktop will install the DE, then you can pick and choose the KDE apps u want like kate, okteta, gwenview, etc. Take extra care to install konsole (the terminal), dolphin (file browser), NetworkManager and plasma-nm (plasma networkmanager widget) before your first boot. Otherwise u wont be having much fun :)

[@raven-vr5yz]

@@hoff._world damnn tysmm. I actually install plasma-desktop on my notebook and wondered where's everything...

[@kach0937]

Am I doing it wrong if I've just turned an old laptop with NixOS on it into a media server via jellyfin? I plan to buy an 8tb HDD and just stick loads of movies and tv shows on it, is there a better way? It's all working as in I can view the media from any device in my home, but should I be doing something like this video instead?

[@hoff._world]

no my friend that is a very nice way to utilise old hardware. The video I went through here was purely an example :) There are many ways to set up servers and you can use almost anything to do it. Nix is a cool system. If you can't mirror your disks I'd at least make sure to backup the important stuff

[@Mako2107]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but I'm new to this. Does "-p" option in docker actually forward the ports? Meaning now the container will be accessible from outside of the local network, or does it only open those for connections from within the local network? From what I understand I would still need to forward the port on the router, for it to be accessible from the outside, but I'd like to make sure since I wouldn't want to accidentally expose too much. Great video by the way!

[@hoff._world]

It is a bit confusing, I agree :) -p means make it accessible on the local network as if it were running on the host. So for example, say I run nginx on my actual host as a service on port 80. Hosts on my local network can connect to that on say 192.168.1.55 If i run it in docker without -p, then only my host can connect to it since it won't be exposed to LAN by default. However WITH -p, I can then connect to nginx on 192.168.1.55 as if it were running on the host. So I mean forward the port to the host :)

[@Mako2107]

@@hoff._world thanks for the answer, that's very helpful!

[@shaerodenaizen4375]

excellent video but please do something about the thundering keystrokes in the microphone.

[@hoff._world]

yes I need to get some kind of boom for my microphone. thanks for the comment!

[@spinning_elbow]

@@hoff._world what keyboard is this?

[@hoff._world]

@spinning_elbow in that video I was using a logitech MX mechanical mini wireless but I daily a logitech g910

[@mrzack4299]

hey man i have a problem when i try adding any files to the shared folder it tells me that i dont have access to the whole folder

[@Dinky-Ayulo]

Great video, bit of a weird edition mid way you started to slurp jam off your toes but im down for it!

[@hoff._world]

Just trying to be like my idol, Richard Stallman

[@dimasadnan4873]

hey, great video! I want to do this to my old laptop which has a wi-fi receiver(obviously), and I'm planning to use it as my source of internet and local area connection instead of the rj45/ethernet port. Do I need an extra step or debian will automatically install the correct wi-fi driver for me? Thanks!

[@hoff._world]

should install the wifi driver, setting it up is another matter. If you're doing a headless install like the vid you could use NetworkManager and nmcli or you could use wpa_supplicant

[@nikhilhalbe]

great vid bub

[@hoff._world]

thanks dad

[@sarno2123]

Hey man! Great video! I got to the boot up of Debian and I was met with a Graphical Interface...where did I go wrong? I did not boot into a command line to log in?

[@hoff._world]

no problem my friend no problem during the install you probably forgot to uncheck Debian Desktop Environment as something to be installed. It's not an issue at all, the rest of the steps will still be identical except u can just use the default terminal program if u want

[@ROYALGAMERJAMES]

How I make my server available to the public like anyserver my website server or what i am making is minecraft server and Do i need to have static public IP I know I need to do port forwarding but still it is not working

[@joejoe2452]

Is there a different iso for server version because I can only find one download dvd iso?

[@Asfgxff]

Yes. But you can use the desktop version as well. Just type the commands in a terminal.

[@MarkMoerman]

How would I add a 2nd pc to the SSH authenticated users? I tried to just copy your workflow and paste it below the initial one, but that does not seem to work

[@hoff._world]

adding it to authorized keys should be enough, make sure ur second PC is using -i with the right path to the key

[@chuckdockery6540]

After install the keyboard has failed to recognize any key but the enter key. At the prompt to unlock disk it only recognizes the enter key so I cannot enter a password/key.

[@hoff._world]

the password isn't echo'd to the terminal, so you are still entering it it just doesnt show for security purposes.

[@forstyh]

15:45 - how can i go to the desktop ? is the next screen from server-pc or home-pc?

[@hoff._world]

ssh'd into from another pc sorry boss

[@forstyh]

ubuntu: user1@home-pc:~$ ssh server@ip-adress ssh: connect to host [ip-adress] port 22: Connection timed out

[@hoff._world]

did u start the ssh server? also make sure its actually on port 22, and that your server has an internet connection (try pinging google or something)

[@mr-tiki]

Thank you so much, I was looking for a good tuto to configure my server and there was none that explained it so well and covered everything, you've helped me enormously, thank you. and I love having an ascci art when I connect (●'◡'●)

[@hoff._world]

who doesnt? what's the ascii art of?

[@joolz999]

got suck at ssh part will try again but literally do not understand anything i heard online its best to do a server like this to learn but if i have very little knowledge idk how much im learning

[@hoff._world]

if there's anything in particular you're hung up on let me know and I'll try to help

[@ujvalshah1248]

I am a newbie in this and I have an old laptop with 32 bit architecture with intel Atom 2 gb Ram and storage of 256 gigs , so can I make something out of it like for file storage or just to access movies or a vpn or something? I searched on the internet I got that ubuntu Lts and debian are no more supported on 32 bit and ChatGpt said I could install Lubuntu but I wan something with no GUI so its not intensive on the Laptop . Can you help me out and suggest me what should i do . BTW this video 🤌

[@hoff._world]

debian still supports 32-bit although they have noted it will end at some point. For now you can still get 32-bit debian, download the 'i386' iso from their site.

[@ujvalshah1248]

@@hoff._world Thanks a lot ! But i guess my processor has 68bit architecture as it shows on the intel site but 32bit windows is installed idk why so ill try that and is there any specific reason not to go with LTS and use debian instead . And do you have a discord channel or something so we all can share there aswell!

[@taskip]

hey how would i get back that public key, i got stuck at some part of the video and tried to generate like 3 of the keys since it wasnt working the first time but after suffering through to the point of assembling the final parts right at 24:26 but it said the address wasnt available, so i'm like freaking out since i have no idea what the possible address could be or what i messed up, i've been working on this for 4 hours and i feel like i'm banging my head against a wall 😐 got any advice as to how i can retrieve the code?

[@taskip]

is it just easier to start over?

[@hoff._world]

do you mean the IP address? you can find it out by running 'ip addr' on your server.

[@taskip]

@@hoff._world Nono whenever I run the command at that time stamp it says that the address for the key itself is unavailable, it’s either locating the address of the key or starting over, for instance in your video you named your key "video_demo" for me I believe I named it something like "chill" so when I go to enter it in, said it wasn’t available or didn’t exist

[@hoff._world]

make sure ur specifying the full path bro, and in ssh keygen it's relative so if u didnt specify a full path e.g. ~/.ssh it would just put it in the dir u ran ur command from if you still cant find it go to your home directory and run $ find . -name "*.pub*" should find all public keys for u

[@taskip]

@@hoff._world alright just went through manually on my actual server screen and redid everything, i found all of my paths and I actually created a brand new key and pasted it into the authorized keys, although whenever i run the command to login with the key address it's still not letting me in, i'm clueless as to what i'm supposed to do, one thing i notice that differs from your tutorial is that the actual fingerprint itself is labeled as RSA instead of ed25519, i could be dumb and am probably overlooking something but honestly i don't mind living without the auth key, just wondering IF there's a way around this

[@jjjjulian]

any downsides for using ventoy isnntead of flashing with rufus? my ass cant wait

[@ColoredBytes]

I'd say maybe the ISO not being compatiable with Venoty but besides that most isos work just fine

[@axMf3qTI]

I'm going crazy. For me only the live version works when I install from the booted OS, but that one doesn't give a lot of options so I have to install gnome and all the software that comes with it. I don't want that.

[@hoff._world]

try the net installer instead, that's what I use in the video

[@axMf3qTI]

@@hoff._world I tried but when I do "graphical installer" i get that screen inside that screen and it stays there.

[@axMf3qTI]

@@hoff._world Oh well guess I have a server with a gnome desktop. I'll remove it and remove some other things too when I see them in the upgrade list. Thanks for the instructions.

[@Gh0_-st]

as someone who knows nothing, where do you think i should start without really "having to study" if you know what i mean.

[@hoff._world]

just use it

[@geoffroberts1126]

TrueNAS Core. It's free and it's a dedicated Network Accessible Storage System. BSD based. Can also run things like Minecraft in a 'jail'. Mine runs a Minecraft Server and a local DNS server in separate jails in addition to the software RAID based storage. OS boots off a USB Flash drive, so all the storage is available. It's not quite turnkey, but it's way closer to it than raw Debian (or any other Distro for that matter).

[@waynefilkins8394]

If I want to set something like this up, but I'm not using it for minecraft or gaming or any of that, I'm using it for document editing and working on programming products and will later host an open source form of chat gpt on it which I will be trying to access from my other devices, which steps can I skip? I do want debian and high security and all that, probably ssh, docker, etc. but are any other steps related to mincraft / gaming?

[@itachi-xx9vl]

Minimum specs for linux server?

[@hoff._world]

anything my broski depends on what u wanna run on it and how much load it'll be under

[@bob-zb3ed]

can we implemented this on a raspberry pi 4

[@hoff._world]

most of it sure, but the installation is going to be different (you might even use raspberry pi os instead of debian, tho my Rpis run straight Deb) since you'll flash the image to an SD card. Disk mirroring also maybe not gonna be a thing unless you're using USB external drives

[@Shxvang]

How about we have a discord server? :D

[@hoff._world]

We will see we will see :D I have a lot on my plate at the moment so can't promise anything

[@Shxvang]

@@hoff._world okok it's alright

[@DarrenAllatt]

QUEENSLANDER

[@QwertyQwerty-so4kw]

hello 123 hello test 123

[@adamlachguar3758]

Hey! Do you have a discord server?

[@hoff._world]

truth be told im kinda a busy buffalo and I dont want to make promises about being active on discord I cant keep :)

[@alviGD]

yo bro after im done installing, it puts me in tty, where theres no way to copy nor exiting out of the tty, meaning that for the public key copying thing, i have to MANUALLY type EACH LETTER, is there anyway to fix this ?

[@hoff._world]

ya the server is headless so TTY is all u get :P SSH into it and copy the key like that, by default SSH will have password auth able to be used