Where to Begin
Ep. 02

Where to Begin

SF, CA
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Episode description

Timestamps

(00:24) Happy 2025!

(00:34) Hungry Bogart interview on Linux Prepper origins and background on Medium.

(01:00) Episode Overview

(01:45) Audience Feedback

  • What is Matrix and why do we have a Matrix chat. Join it here.

(02:50) Discussion forum now live for the podcast and eventually Living Cartoon Company, my theatrical work.

(03:20) SeaGL Gnu/Linux Conference from October

(08:00) There is more to this podcast than just technology in terms of computers. Also relates to making musical instruments, electronics, recipes, DIY, hardware

(09:15) My audience expectations is you want to learn more. You are someone happy to learn more. You will be inspired to take initiative.

  • Basic web searches like “Linux Password Manager” to learn.
  • Markdown is how this is written for you.
  • Bullet Journaling
  • Password Managers

Where to Begin

(12:00) Everyone starts hosted. No shame in it. But, when to try selfhosting on your device?

  • Encounter a limitation like sharing multi-terabytes of data, when my hosted storage is smaller.
  • Get a “homelab” with any old machine.
  • Give yourself a reason to learn.

(15:00) Basic services you can experiment with to begin your own homelab of internal devices

  • Avahi, mDNS for treating your device as hostname.local for printing, Samba and more with zero configuration.
  • DNS Server, popularly done with Adblockers like Pi-hole and Adguard Home, plus Unbound with a blocklist.
  • DHCP Server (requires router access) to use something like the above services to set static routes and DHCP reservations for your devices in a saner manner.
  • I personally enjoying setting all of my device IP assignments based on MAC addresses.

Expanding beyond DNS and DHCP

(19:00) Buy a domain yourself using a service like Porkbun.com

  • or, try an open source, dynamic dns provider like duckdns.org

(19:30) Reverse Proxy to access your services with valid https, either publicly and/or locally only.

  • No more http warnings in the browser. <- nothing makes friends and family less interested in our service.
  • No more remembering IP addresses or port numbers.
  • Classier than simply using avahi as hostname.local:$port
    • avahi still serves as a nice fallback
  • Local only https is totally doable thanks to DNS challenges. Your application doesn’t have to be public.

There are tons of reverse proxies to choose from! I don’t want to recommend one over another. Which do you prefer? All of these services are ones your friends and family will use, whether they know it or not.

(22:05) What services do you actually host for your friends and family? Let me know! podcast@james.network

State of the Podcast

(22:30) Paypal donations accepted (23:00) Podcasting 2.0 support enabled (24:00) Now using studio monitors for reference in better recording and mixing the show.

No chapters are available for this episode.