Hello.

I’ve been trying to get familiar with self hosting. The only roadblock I have is I’m unable to do so because I am a university student living in student accommodation where it is against WiFi policy to host anything. And currently I don’t even have my raspberry pi with me. My laptop is relatively low specced, so I can’t exactly do VMs, but I want to learn more about hosting stuff and the services I can host. I recently signed up for a free managed Nextcloud instance because I wanted to see what it’s like and whether I’d be interested in hosting my own.

I know VPS-es are an option but they can get pretty costly, especially for a student like me. Do you have any recommendations, including any cheapz reliable VPS-es for a UK student to dip his toes into self-hosting? Thank you.

P.S I know this isn’t exactly self-hosting as I’m technically reliant on third party hardware but it’s the only option in my situation.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    4 months ago

    Super easy things you can do as exercises and take no serious resources:

    • build a static site and host it locally
    • host your music collection
    • host your video collection
    • setup the *arr stack
    • setup home assistant for your dorm room
    • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      If you’re into developing and stuff, GitLab

      Plex server

      Jellyfin server

      ELK stack or security onion

      Get steam working, connect via steam link.

  • smpl@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    It’s easy to overlook with the omnipresent internet, but self-hosting doesn’t require internet. You could host for your fellow students on the local network. If that’s also against the Wifi rules you can either ignore that stupid rule or set up your own god damn wifi with hostapd on your machine and let students connect directly to it. It’s probably best to use a machine dedicated to the task for security reasons as you wouldn’t want curious students to accidentally erase your homework. I wouldn’t use containers or VMs for any of this, I’d just use bare metal like in the good ol’ days. You could also, without having to worry, give people shell accounts because it’s a closed network. The options are endless without all the worries of hosting on the internet.

  • k4j8@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    4 months ago

    I think it’s cool you’re trying to find ways to get into this. If the goal is to learn, why not deploy the services on your laptop? They won’t be available when the computer is off of course, but you would still get the full experience. Even a low-spec laptop will be better than a cheap VPS.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      The worst laptop you can find could probably be better than even a reasonably specced VPS. Low end VPS are dire, and you can get some pretty decent laptops for almost nothing. If it’s pre 8th Gen. Intel they’re basically worthless on the used market. But they’ll still easily get the job done.

    • theshatterstone54@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      I completely forgot about the Linux Upskill Challenge! I should have mentioned I’ve been running Linux as my desktop operating system for almost 3 years, and I’ve been tinkering with it quite a lot throughout so I’m quite familiar and very comfortable with the command line. I shoukd go through the Linux upskill challenge so I can fill in any knowledge gaps though. Thanks for reminding me!

  • hperrin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    4 months ago

    You can buy a super cheap cloud VM and use a (self hosted) VPN so it can access your own PC and a reverse proxy to forward all incoming requests to your own PC behind your school’s network.

    It’s arguable whether this would violate their policy, since you are technically hosting something, but not accessible on the internet from their IP. So if you wanna be safe, don’t do this, otherwise, that could help you get started.