Setting up a Server

Need a fileserver that won't face the external internet? Check Home server.

Need to email? Set up a web server? Well, here's some advice. We're gonna try to write this page like you've never done this shit before. It does, however, assume you have at least some basic GNU/Linux knowledge. If you don't, you probably aren't ready for this. You weren't going to set up a server using Windows, were you? Jesus Christ, how horrifying.

A lot of this applies to both a physical machine as well as a VPS setup.

Common uses for a server

• Install FTP software and run an FTP site.
• Install a cloud service like Seafile to run your own Dropbox service, no privacy issues, full control, unlimited space (well, limited by how many drives you can cram in).
• Always on seedbox. Start torrents with your phone through the web interface while out, they're done by the time you're back home.
• Host a personal website.
• Run your own mailserver just like Hillary!
  • Warning: Running a mailserver is a shitton of work. You will get hacked all the fucking time and it's very high-maintenance.
• Run a dedicated game server.
• Run various webapps, develop your own webapps.
• SSH-tunnel to the server from work/school/etc to use it as a proxy, so that the admin of the network you're on can't see what sites you're going on.
• Run a VPN for location spoofing or security when you're out and about.

Getting Started

Home or Remote?

Choosing an Operating System

Home Server vs. VPS

Operating system

You should run Debian, RHEL or CentOS if you want GNU/Linux, or any BSD that you like.

Ubuntu usually does retarded things with their packages and versions (lib*-ubuntu1.l2), and pulls unstable software from Debian Sid.

Rolling release distros (Arch, Fedora) are not really good for a server, because it's supposed to stay working, and it shouldn't break/change it's behavior on updates.

Gentoo is usually too much trouble to be worth it, but it's OK.

You should also consider a NAS-centric operating system for a home server. FreeBSD-based FreeNAS or NAS4Free are common choices. Both are free software and have simple GUIs to set up your services.

If you have a Raspberry Pi that you want to be put to use, ArkOS is a stable, Arch based distro for running a home server on a Raspberry Pi with a web-based GUI. ArkOS main website

Setting up your services

Centralized storage

A server is perfect for this job. It is (supposedly) an always available resource on the local network. If using this in your house, you can expect reasonable speeds, even over WiFi that will let you do many daily tasks. One option is to set it up with NFS (Linux-centric, can be used on windows but it's shit) or samba, so you can watch your chinese cartoons on any device and keep your documents/whatever synchronized. This synchronization is a key benefit of the network storage.

You may want to consider a RAID array for long-term file storage. RAID is not backup, but will protect your files in case of drive failure. NAS4Free allows you to easily set up RAID arrays using UFS or ZFS.

Cloud storage

You can store files on your server, so that they are accessible from anywhere (but password protected). These services are aimed at gaining access from the WAN (Wide Area Network, aka the internet). These services can be used on a LAN, but are cumbersome at times for most uses.

FTP

FTP refers to a protocol specification that stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is a protocol that allows uploading, downloading, moving, and renaming files on a remote system. This simple protocol that is supported in a large number of places but offers a reasonable amount of security to the remote system. There are not automated aspects to this, as it is just a protocol, but there are plenty of tools that work on this standard to do work for you (notably FileZilla for beginners)

Seafile

A file hosting software system. Files are stored on a central server and can by synchronized with personal computers and mobile devices via the Seafile client. Files can also be accessed via the server's web interface. Seafile's functionality is similar to other popular services such as Dropbox and Google Drive, with the primary difference being that Seafile is free and open-source, enabling users to host their own Seafile servers without artificially imposed limits on storage space or client connections.

OwnCloud

OwnCloud is essentially your own Dropbox. You run the OwnCloud server program on your server to make the cloud available, and create accounts for users. The rest is analogous to Dropbox: Every machine that wants to access the cloud installs the OwnCloud client, puts in your server address, their OwnCloud username/password and choose a directory to sync.

As of early 2015, the files are stored on the server's hard drive without any extra encryption. This means that the admin of the server (ie. you) can see the files of all clients. If you only want to sync your own files, that's fine. But if, say, you want to let your friend use your server instead of Dropbox then this potentially allows you to eavesdrop on what your friend puts in his cloud. Granted, this is exactly the same as Dropbox Inc being able to see what you put on your Dropbox.

Usually after setting up OwnCloud you also set up a web server like apache which provides a web interface at something like http[s]://server.com/owncloud. This is analogous to the Dropbox web UI, and allows users to do things like share files with others, manage their cloud files without running a client/syncing, and so on. It also lets the server admin (probably you) manage the accounts and various settings.

OwnCloud also keeps file history data (changes/deletions) in a SQL database, so usually setup involves getting MySQL running on your server as well.

Web server

A web server serves up a page. The nice things about serving it from a server, than, say, Wordpress or your Dropbox share, is that now you can run web apps and server side code for a dynamic page.

Keep in mind that many server software installs (such as the email server below) involve setting up a webserver, so you may not even need to do anything.

HTTPS

The extra CPU burden of SSL is minuscule. Your server should serve up everything on HTTPS only. Keep port 80 (plain HTTP) open but redirect everything to HTTPS. If port 80 is closed, typing the address of your server into the address bar of a browser will probably fail (because the browser assumes you meant HTTP, but you have to go to HTTPS).

Issue a self-signed certificate. CAs are for jerks. Set the duration short (eg. a year) and don't forget to make a new one. If you've got a domain, get a Lets Encrypt-signed cert and set up a cron job to renew it. They're pretty sweet.

Setting Up Email the EASY way

See also: Email

Want to use your own email server to avoid the NSA? Good call! But setting up email servers can be pretty complicated. Assuming you mostly don't know what the hell you are doing, and assuming you're already secured your system per above, have a peek at iRedMail. iRedMail is an automated email and web server setup package. It works best if installed on a FRESH system - if you're already fumbled around with Apache and/or dovecot and/or postfix and failed, wipe your shit and start over with iRedMail. It will install and configure Postfix, Dovecot, Apache, and MySQL. It also installs and configures fail2ban and iptables. It includes spam filtering and greylisting. It just works. Its pretty awesome.

You will, however, still need to manually set up your DNS records (MX, SPF, and DKIM). Refer to the Email article for more on this.

If you want to get fancy and replace MySQL with MariaDB, or replace Apache with, say, Nginx, you can do that after you set up iRedMail, but any breakage is up to you to fix.

Remote access via SSH

GNU or BSD based systems

1. You usually enable the ssh server during the installation. Do this if possible, it is the simplest way.

2. If you did not setup sshd to auto start you can type:

• /etc/rc.d sshd start, if you use System V init.
• systemctl enable sshd.service && systemctl start sshd, if you use systemd.

3. If that does not work, you need to install sshd with your package manager.

On Windows

• Download Cygwin
• Choose "Install From Internet"
• Choose a mirror to download from
• When you get to the "Select Packages" screen, search SSH
• Choose to install the "Bin" version of the "openssh" package
• Download all dependencies and wait for setup to complete
• Open Cygwin and wait for the initial setup to complete
• Type "ssh-host-config" without the quotes
• Say yes when you get asked about privilege separation
• Say yes when asked to create a local user named sshd
• Say yes when asked to install sshd as a service
• When you see "CYGWIN=", type "ntsec tty" without the quotes (this guideexplains why)
• You should be done now setting up the SSH server. To start it, type "net start sshd" without the quotes.

If you see:

The CYGWIN sshd service is starting. 
The CYGWIN sshd service was started successfully.

Then everything went correctly. If not, you should Google the error.

On OS X

Simply go into sharing permissions and enable fucking everything.

Post-setup

• Forward port 22 to the server (Here's a guide if you don't know how)
• OPTIONAL: Assign the server an address, so you can type server.com instead of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (Read this)

Tunneling

Create a tunnel and use it as a proxy for environments that block certain DNS requests or pages and to encrypt your data

Wake on LAN

Turn on a PC on your LAN Arch Wiki guide

Web hosting

Host webpages, use nginx or apache debian nginx guide

Proxy

You can use a proxy guide

Compression

Ziproxy (Opera style web compression, including images)

Media automation

Torrenting

Use a daemon like Transmission or Deluge.

TV Series

You can use a daemon like Sickbeard

Movies

You can use a daemon like Couchpotato

Music

You can use a daemon like Headphones

Security

Setting up a Server/Security

External links

Linode Library - Good beginner tutorials.