Setting up a home server

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

First of all, you are welcome

@Sheila_Flanagan

I am still unsure whether to just use an old laptop and add an external 5 tb drive to it or purchase something like a Pi.

I think, as en exercise -or prototype- the old laptop is OK. You can implement your server on it, experiment, do the necessary configs,and test-drive it.

But for the long run, I think, I’d invest in a more energy-efficient device.
(And old laptop could draw massive 30W, which is almost 22kWh a month, if you run it 24/7)

@Sheila_Flanagan

when you spoke about “spinning” I assume you are not using SSDs. Can I ask why?

Exactly, I use regular HDD’s. Not because I don’t like SSD’s or such…
Simply because I need storage capacity more than performance. I use SSD everywhere I need performace…
With those spinning drives I get the performance I expect, but at approx 30% of the price that would take to have SSD’s.
A 4TB HDD I can get for approx 38€, whereas a SSD with the same capacity would cost 250€.

Because my network limits transfer speed to ~100MB/s anyway, I would not get much more performance.

@Sheila_Flanagan

which I currently use a free account on, but this would be for the server backup? But Seafile is also a cloud for backing up the server?

I meant both Seafile and Nextcloud self-hosted on your server. I have deployed Seafile on my server, because it was way much more performant than Nextcloud, at the time I choosed. I don’t know, if it’s still the case, but I suspect it is.

In reality “cloud” is something that makes rain fall. In IT for people the experts talk about cloud, it means a bunch of server of which they don’t kow anything.
I don’t trust the so called “cloud” at all, mainly for privacy related things, but also because I want to be the guilty myself, if I loose my data. Let me mention: RAID is not a backup - #22 by kovacslt

For backup, I have a dedicated computer, which switches on nightly, rsnycs data blobs from my server and shuts down. (It’s more complicated than that, but basically it works this way)

@Sheila_Flanagan

I currently use a CalDAV/CardDav service and that would also need to be on the server. Have not heard of Radicale, but will check it out.

There are numerous options. Nextcloud offers it too (AFAIK), and there’s Baikal
https://sabre.io/baikal/
Davical
https://www.davical.org/

but because of simplicity, and performance I choosed Radicale.

@Sheila_Flanagan

aside from needing a couple of things for security and the apps hosted on top of the server OS.

Oh they differ in the way being used.
You (human) interact with your desktop directly, using keyboard / mouse and watch the display of it…
Normally you don’t have such a direct interaction with your server, so it doesn’t have to have keyboard and display. Well, at the initial configuration, and later if something goes wrong, and you can’t reach it via SSH, then yes, a keyboard and a monitor comes handy
But this is not the normal operation.

So on the server you don’t need a heap of stuff you need on a desktop.
But you will need the server processes, which will be basically the main goal.

@Sheila_Flanagan

I do not have to worry about the DDNS stuff? Or do I?

So when you are far away from your home network, how do you find it?
Do you plan to use your own services (CalDAV for example) to use with a mobile device too? Android maybe? Do you connect to your VPN with your mobile every time you want to snychronize your calendar entries?

@Sheila_Flanagan

I am most comfortable with the CLI in Ubuntu-based systems, and not sure I understand the difference between Debian XX, since Ubuntu is based on Debian, right?

Ubuntu is based Debian testing, so they don’t differ on CLI level.
Debian is just my choice -because of a few reasons-, but you can base your instace on Ubuntu of course.

@Sheila_Flanagan

Do external HDDs not have RPM specs?

Sure. External drives are just 2,5" internal drive assembled in an USB case.
Run sudo smartctl -i /dev/sdX where sdX is your USB attached drive. You’ll get the all the details of the HDD placed into that case, knowing the model, you can look up the specs on the manufacturers site.

@Sheila_Flanagan

will a newer, faster HDD will even work in that old of a machine (like 2006 Toshiba that came with Windows XP on it)?

The drive itself shouldn’t be a problem, but the question is: the USB case is probably meant for USB3, will it work with USB2? If the thing doesn’t need excess power to start, it will work, of course only with USB2 performance. If it doesn’t even start (the HDD in the case does not spin up), it will not work.