This guide will show you how to turn any computer into a server that can run your website, applications, or store your files.
Why?
Independence.
Having your own private server means your emails, data, movies and music don’t depend on any business or company, only on openly distributed software that anyone can access.
You can meet your technological needs without depending on companies that you will probably outlive. Like learning how to drive, it takes a little bit of work upfront. But it’s not hard.
- Install ubuntu – you can install it standalone or dual boot it with windows
- Install openssh-server
- Check that it’s running ssh.service sudo systemctl status ssh
- On another device, create ssh key if you don’t have one already: ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C “your-email@example.com” or “
ls -al ~/.ssh” to check - Copy ssh key from device into authorized keys file on your server.
- Restart ssh server: sudo systemctl restart ssh
- Find the ip of your server using hostname -I, it’s the first set of numbers.
- then do ssh -p <port number> user@<ipaddress> on the device that you want to connect to the server with.
- Congratulations! You’ve connected to your ssh server!
- Now you want to do a couple of things:
- Set up dynamic dns – that depends on who you bought your domain with. I used IONOS. So I followed this guide.
- Set up port forwarding on your router. You’ll need to access your router settings and add your devices local IP to it as well as the port you’ve set up for the ssh server.
- Set up a static IP address for your device so that the IP address that you’ve set up in
- Make it a service so that it starts automatically when the computer boots up.