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Installation For OpenBSD (opensmtpd should be installed by default):
pkg_add opensmtpd-filter-rspamd rspamd dovecot For Arch Linux:
pacman -S opensmtpd opensmtpd-filter-rspamd rspamd dovecot For Debian Linux:
apt install opensmtpd opensmtpd-filter-rspamd rspamd dovecot-imapd dovecot-lmtpd Prerequisites Open ports 25 (SMTP), 465 (submission) and 993 (IMAPS). Port 25 will be used by…
Blocky is a libre DNS server that, in addition to the standard DNS protocol, supports DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS. It also supports auto-updating ad blocking DNS lists in addition to your static /etc/hosts file.
DNS-over-TLS is the technology required by Android 9+ to set a universal DNS server. With this consideration, Blocky becomes an invaluable tool for blocking ads and unwanted…
LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is a libre and free disk encryption standard which allows for the encryption of external and internal disks on Linux. Everything from an SD card to your root partition can be encrypted with LUKS, allowing you to keep your data secure.
LUKS works by utilizing a master encryption key protected by a user key, which in most cases will be a password.
External USB…
What is I2P and I2Pd? I2P, also known as the Invisible Internet Project, is a decentralized anonymizing network designed to protect the privacy and anonymity of its users. Like Tor, I2P encrypts data through multiple layers and routes it through multiple nodes, with each node in the network decrypting one layer to reveal the next destination, thus hiding the origin and content of the data from…
The Monero cryptocurrency relies on a network of decentralized nodes to store the private transaction information and maintain consensus.
Running your own node will let you relay transactions and contribute to the Monero network by dedicating storage and processing power to the task. You can then connect to your node from a wallet (if you enable rps).
Some other benefits of a full node…
P2Pool is a decentralized service to mine Monero. It works by making users attach the p2pool software to their existing Monero nodes, and mining through the port provided by the p2pool daemon.
The need for P2Pool By default, Monero mining on your own is extremely unlikely to yield results unless you have a significant amount of computing power. By using a mining pool, you can organize with…
Soju is an IRC bouncer that turns the protocol into something modern everyone can use with chat history, persistent connections, and multi-server support.
This guide assumes you have a subdomain at irc.example.org and are port forwarding at 6697.
Installation Soju is not in Debian 12’s repos, so we’ll need to build it from source.
VERSION=v0.8.0 curl -fLO…
Isso is a free and open source commenting server for people that want simple, self-hosted comments sections for their blogs.
Prerequisites This guide assumes you already have a static webserver up and running with nginx website roughly in this shape:
/var/www/example.org/ ├── index.html ├── favicon.ico ├── posts │ ├── article-1.html │ ├── article-2.html │ └── article-3.html └── styles.css…
Tor, also known as “The Onion Router”, is the most popular “anonymizing network” or “darknet”. It works by relaying your internet traffic through various servers (ran by volunteers) and encrypting the traffic with new keys for every “hop”, thus creating various layers of encryption just like an onion.
This tutorial will cover 4 ways of running…
KISS Linux is a Linux distribution that uses the kiss package manager, a simple extensible shell script. KISS Linux is source-based, meaning packages are downloaded and built from source rather than prebuilt.
KISS Linux is community maintained. It was originally developed by Dylan Araps who left the project on December 13th, 2021. The repositories and the kiss package manager have since been…
Mumble is a light and high-quality libre voice chat protocol. You can self-host your own Mumble server and control your conversations.
Installation The Mumble server software, “murmur”, is available in the Debian repositories:
apt install mumble-server Configuration The Mumble server is configured in /etc/mumble-server.ini. Here you can customize information, like the welcome…
MongoDB is a modern, document-based database that is used by a lot of web software and services. Unlike SQL databases such as MySQL that store data in tables, MongoDB utilizes json documents instead.
Initial Setup This section covers the base installation of a MongoDB database server; It is highly recommended to follow the steps in further setup.
Installation To install a relatively modern…
The Matrix protocol’s default implementation, Synapse, is very memory and processor hungry, mostly due to it being written in the interpreted Python programming language. This means that running Synapse on less powerful servers may take a lot of resources away from other services. If you need a more efficient and less memory-intensive but still fully functional Matrix server, then Dendrite…
Matrix is a free/libre API and protocol for chat and voice communication; Think DIY Discord, except without all the spyware. One can setup their own Matrix homeserver using either the Synapse or Dendrite software; A Matrix server supports messaging, encrypted messaging, voice and video calls (once a turn server is set up), and many other services.
Initial Server Setup This section covers base…
NGINX (pronounced “Engine-X”) is a free/libre webserver and reverse-proxy software. It’s basically what you’re meant to be using instead of Apache2.
Installation NGINX is included in the Debian repositories:
sudo apt install nginx Configuration By default, NGINX on Debian scans the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory for webserver configuration files. The…
Coturn is a libre STUN and TURN server software that allows users of chat protcols (Such as XMPP and Matrix to perform WebRTC voice and video calls despite them being behind NATs.
Almost every self-hosted voice and video conferencing program (such as Nextcloud’s Talk app) will require Coturn or some other equivalent turnserver to function properly.
Note on ejabberd If you’re…
GnuPG is a free and libre implementation of the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption protocol. PGP, which has existed since 1997, is the de-facto standard for asymmetric encryption online and offline.
Asymmetric encryption refers to a model of encryption where every individual holds two mathematically-linked keys; the private/secret key, and the public key.
Put simply, a public key allows…
NVIDIA GPUs are notoriously hard to setup on Linux. This comprehensive guide aims to make this relatively difficult process streamlined and easy, to maximize either performance or battery life.
This guide is aimed specifically at Arch Linux systems. The steps described here may not work on other distributions, but still remain indicative of the general setup required to get NVIDIA…
SQL is a standardized language for database management. This article is a “cheat sheet” of sorts, helping you with the semantics of database engines such as MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Note on Encoding While a manual server setup will normally ensure a proper locale is installed, some VPS providers and default server ISOs may need further configuration to make sure all data is encoded…
Vichan is libre imageboard software written in PHP. It’s a simple, minimalist social media solution, similar to popular sites like 4chan.
Installation This guide runs you through the initial setup process for Vichan. This is a very barebones install, with no index page. The additional functionality seen on most popular board sites can be replicated utilizing…
Dnsmasq is a libre DNS and DHCP system that allows anyone to run a DNS server to resolve domains. Normally to block domains and ads, users on most operating systems can edit their /etc/hosts file or use one of the many existing ad-blocking hosts collections available online. However, if you’re trying to block ads over your entire home network and do not have access to your router’s…
XMPP is a fantastically simple protocol that’s usually used as a messenger. It’s highly extensible, better than IRC, lighter and more decentralized than Matrix, and normie social media like Telegram can’t hold a candle to it.
XMPP is so decentralized and extensible that there are many different XMPP servers. Here, let’s set up a Prosody XMPP server.
Installation To…
Ejabberd is a server for the XMPP protocol written in Erlang. It’s more scalable, and easier to setup than Prosody due to having most of its modules built-in and pre-configured by default.
Subdomains Ejabberd assumes that you have already created all the required and optional subdomains for its operation prior to running it.
Depending on the usecase, you may need any or all of the…
PeerTube is a self-hosted and (optionally) federated video sharing platform that saves bandwidth on videos the more people watch. PeerTube instances can follow each other to share videos and grow the federated network, but you can always keep your instance to yourself if you choose to.
Note on Bandwidth Video sharing is the most bandwidth intensive thing on the internet! If you plan on just…