Re: My very own Guix System Server in my apartment

[david larsson]

On 2021-06-30 17:35, Joshua Branson wrote:
> Hello Guix people!
>
> So I will shortly be setting up my very own Guix System server in my
> apartment!  I am super excited!  I would love to hear any and all
> advice.  I should probably set up a good firewall.  I should probably
> use REALLY LONG passwords.  AND ONLY use ssh authentication.
>
> I plan to have this Guix System Server host my websites:
>
> gnucode.me and propernaming.org.
>
> I intend this server to host email for the above sites.
>
> I do have a static IP address a signed by my ISP.
>
> I want to run cuirass or the Guix Build Coordinator.
>
> I want to run a GNU FM and or libre.fm instance.
>
> What else should I do with said server?
>
> It's a Dell Optiplex 7020 with 30GB of RAM with a 3TB HDD.  It cost me
> $250 USD.

Sounds like you got quite a deal :-P

> What do you all think?
>
> Joshua

Hi Joshua,

I am excited to hear how this goes!

I can suggest a few things (that may be a bit advanced):

1. Setup the email servers with a spamassasin spamfilter, and make it 
pass the big email providers' spam filters (checking with for example: 
https://duckduckgo.com/l/?uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mail-tester.com%2F&notrut=duckduck_in). 
For this you usually need ur ISP to add reverse PTR record in DNS 
(though most regular ISP's don't help with this). Otherwise there is 
ovpn.com that lets you self-administer a static VPN ip's reverse PTR 
record via web portal. You also need a few more records in DNS.

2. A Nextcloud server.

3. If you can manage: a guix service knot DNS server (with DNSSec would 
be cool).

and of course all of the above with the lets encrypt service TLS certs! 
:-)
(and why not publish TLSA records in DNS and sign them with DNSSec :-P )

If you wanna go bold, get a second Dell Optiplex 7020 with the same 
specs, and setup a Ganeti cluster as described in the Guix blog post :-) 
I can confirm that those instructions work, as I have a few fun hosting 
things there myself :)


Best regards and best of luck with your new project!

David L