This is a SCAM because if you start your cheap homelab, you'll be hooked and find yourself with a rack full of gear right next to your couch in the living room. You'll go quickly from an old laptop, to a desktop, and then then just one server, but before you know it, you'll be planning network upgrades, buying SSDs for your storage, and debating the merits of different operating systems over dinner with your wife that doesn't care about it at all (only cares about the electricity bill). Your living room might start looking more like a mini data center, and you'll be the proud admin of your very own homelab empire. Consider yourself warned: there's no turning back.
I hope, for your sake that you did not follow the drive partitioning recommendations. Kalos is obviously a unix noob who is unfamiliar with all of the ways a linux server may be crashed. It is a strong recommendation that you partition off the /var or /var/log directories. This way if the log files fill up the filesystem, you can still recover without too much hassle.
This! This is the type of stuff most normal people even with some basic IT knowledge can easily follow and get an actual usable home server out of! Amazing stuff!
From someone that has been been building home servers for over 20 years I gotta say this is well put together, informative, and concise while not being too dry. Good video.
@@shellohd8421it depends on what you need, but yes storage is a good place to start because a lot of other things depend on it. Samba configuration allows many shares and many users. For example, I have several personal shares that only I have access to, I have a share for my wife and I for documents we both need to access, and I have device specific shares such as for media and for our home office printer/scanner. A good next step might be setting up backup software for your computers/phones. For example I use an app to run a regular backup (at least once a day) for my phone's photos/videos/voice memos/notes. This allows me to save a local copy before it gets backed up to my cloud storage at the end of the day.
I have to say, I can only agree, this is the best bang for buck budget homeserver. Also well documented and explained for new comers, not my cup of tea since I like making my systems a bit more trim, but generally good advice.
Everyone benefits from learning to self-host their stuff. People must be educated to own their services and devices. I thank you a lot for this, really, you make the world a better place.
I remember when I was 10 my dad gave me an HP laptop motherboard from which I hosted Minecraft servers. We even upgraded the CPU from a low end c2d to a higher end c2d. Good times!
You "ran" the software that handled it all for you. Hosting a minecraft server was just a button click and has nothing to do with this video. Total AI comment.
A man after my own heart. I used to recycle old desktops as a home server but now we are using a Thinkpad T420. Nice having much lower power consumption. Replaced the main HDD with an SSD and stuck in a 2TB HDD in the DVD-drive bay. I'm just using Win 10 Pro not a real server OS. We use it as destination for automatic backup of my and my wife's desktop. It is running an NTP server to keep all the non-mobile devices on the LAN in sync. This is nice because some of our IoT devices revert to hardcoded time/date after a power failure so this way even without internet they get a reasonable time/date. It is also running a web server that displays a bunch of static links including our DIY IoT devices.
Something that wasn't mentioned here is about direct costs of a home server, as of electric bill, if you run it 24/7. The laptop is the best choice here since you get lower consumption CPUs by design and an integrated UPS! As a final tip, if you need extra storage and your laptop had a CD reader, you can find hdd/ssd caddy for the CD tray! If you need to backup stuff, also syncthing is a must have!
To be fair, unless you're doing something insane then the power consumption of a small home lab is going to be negligible compared to a fridge, HVAC, stove, microwave, etc. I run a cluster of 8 raspberry pis nearly 24/7 and I have a plug in power meter between the cluster, network equipment, and the wall. As a point of comparison, my microwave uses 27x more power than the max draw of my raspberry pi cluster (about the same power that your average old laptop/desktop would use at max draw) and 100x more than the average draw of the cluster. Electric in my region costs $0.36/kwh which means running my pi cluster all day for an entire month costs $2 to $3. I'm not trying to gatekeep having a homelab or anything but if $3/month is a problem then you should probably not go into homelab as a hobby.
@@user-jm8sy5ox2j I'm on average around the same consumption, but I do not see the point of having way too much stuff running all time when I do not need it. I had two laptops and I compared their power draw at idle. One was 7W around , the other one was 45W (it has a dedicated old GPU which I wanted to use). With the 7W I had around 2$/mo, with the 45W one I would have easily gone into 12$/mo. Probably you find cheaper and more reliable options with cloud servers around that price.
@@user-jm8sy5ox2jyeah cute in theory but I have an old proliand dl380 g5. Bitch costs like $2-3 per day of uptime. Cost like $50 but its just too much to have up unless I'm actively using it. Wish I knew how much it used in standby, though I do know its warm around its psu, on standby.
Hello, I don't have access to old laptops or Raspberry Pis, but I do have an extremely cheap mini PC/thin client from the lockdown days. I believe it has an AMD GX-217GA CPU. How would power consumption compare to an old laptop like the one shown in the video?
This is amazing. Great job! A bit fast for my level of knowledge but with 0.5x speed and a dozen replays i manage to complete this successfully. Many many many thanks!
This is so beautiful because I just ordered a raspberry pi 4 to use as a server but it felt like an overkill and now I get to use my old laptop for the server and still have a fresh raspberry pi for loads of experimentation. God bless Kalos.
Update bro : drop the ultimate - your provider have port forwarding I got you guide. That’s all I need now. Iocal network nuts with tools and all network provider is an ass. Tried telebit - will try ngrok but that would be a decent follow up video for some people already down the rabbit holes
The benefit of a laptop is probably it's a lot more powerful, downside is power draw and laptops aren't really made for acting as a server cause of their airflow
The Raspberry Pi 4 is not worth the trouble, IMO. I really wanted one, but kept holding off from buying one because of the cost. Christmas 2022 my husband got me one, and I maybe used it a week.
@@atlantic_love that's not a point again a pi4 but that you just don't use it. I bought a blender and use it maybe once a month but I don't recommend people against using a blender
Finally found a channel that explains things correctly and easy to follow- Ive been using an ssd attached to my home router and it always takes 3 or 4 attempts just to load a movie !new sub from the UK
This is probably my fav. Video on the platform, so useful and well made! With some trials and errors i turned a shitty laptop from 2010 (1gb of ram, couldnt handle it's own os / ram upgrades) into a "free" cloud, then spent a day automating remote on/off with my phone to save on the electricity bill. Now i plan to add bitwarden, an image viewer and other cool stuff, cant wait for a part 2!
Finally a down to earth, clear and informative video for a home server. Saw so many nerdy crap video's I started losing hope. I knew it had to be far less complicated and suitable for older systems as well, but all those videos I had been watching were far too complicated and got a lot of useless side information or high tech demands. Going to use this as soon as I got my systems running and the mancave is set up. Thanks!
I've watched so many home server videos. This is by far the best one. The others made me not want to touch it. This made me want to finally set one up.
@@CallumAnthony-r9o If you've got a closet full of old laptops, they're bound to be your friends, or your enemies. One of them likely spoke in other languages, so he was talking to a long lost friend/ememy :-)
Wow, what a brilliant video! Easy to follow, content was well organised and your presentation was consistent and spot on… especially the jokes. You even reminded me that I have an old laptop doing nothing so that’s a prime candidate for becoming useful again. Well done, Chris! Looking forward to watching more 😊
This video made my college laptop from 2011 go from e-waste to one of the most valuable devices I have in my house. Thank you for making this guide super easy to follow. You should probably make a followup video for automounting the UUID of external USB drives in fstab since I had to do a bit of additional research for that.
Wish I had a video like this like a couple years ago when I randomly decided that I wanted exactly this, it would've been an amazing start. Great vid! Now I'm deep in it with two desktops permanently next to my router running Jellyfin, Nextcloud, personal sites, etc.
@@EpicBuntyin @DiggoryJiggory's case a home server is: 1) Jellyfin = Netflix/etc. Video streaming & Spotify/etc. Music streaming replacements 2) NextCloud = Personal Cloud, not having to pay Google/Microsoft/Apple etc for cloud storage. Also could be: Local Password manager, could run AI at home, Personal local home assistant- faster, safer, more reliable- don't have to worry about if this company will be around x years later/has a data breach/service being down because of maintenance/CloudStrike instances. Many other ideas also. TLDR: Mainly a home server can help save money from fewer subscriptions, having video/music to stream keeping kids entertained during long car rides & still having video/music streaming access if internet goes out at home.
@@benwhite6786 wow, thanks for the amazing reply my man. I had no idea you could stream content from it while away from the network itself! thats really cool! How does it work if the internet is out though ?
it should be noted that to install wireguard and create a vpn with no-ip or any dynamic dns service this process does not always apply, not all providers give dynamic or public ip. many are under CGNAT means Carrier Grade Network Address Translation, it is a technique that allows the use of the same public IPv4 in which private IPv4 addresses will be associated simultaneously. so you must use NGROK or zero tier for the process to be functional remotely.
Cool. I am having to buy a new laptop for crappy reasons, but i was just thinking of setting up a server with my current one. It's a pretty powerful machine for it's time, 5 years ago. I think i should be able to do this.
I used an old laptop with a mostly broken keyboard as a plex server. Used the built in Ethernet port onto my home lab network, and the wireless link of the laptop to the 'house' cable-wireless router. It functions as a cheap bridge to protect 'public access' from my lab net and does good enough, especially since the keyboard was missing several keys.
$ uptime 13:36:54 up 418 days, 19:31, 1 user, load average: 0.05, 0.10, 0.09 And still going. An old used ThinkPad laptop connected to a UPS because the battery can't hold any charge. I mainly use it to run ZeroTier and to wakeup my desktop remotely.
I found that running a NAS OS and installing docker is much more easy then running ubuntu. I tried both and I went with OMV and using docker compose for containers and a raspberry pi 3b for wireguard and adguard.
Dude, thank you so much! Recently, I felt the urge as a pc nerd to make a home server, but all of the youtube guides I found made it so complicated. And here you are, making it so insanely easy that within like 30 minutes I have my own cloud storage! thank you so so much for this guide, you absolute legend!
Been using a linux booted 2 core 4gb ram chromebook with an upgraded ssd as a server for the past couple of months and its held up doing plex and mc servers surprisingly well.
That honor definitely does not go to me, you should check out what Wolfgang's Channel is doing with his home server videos. He was a big inspiration for this one! Thank you so much for your kind words.
This is peak content. I have an age old laptop with the exact same configuration, that I had no clue what to do with but got dirt cheap. Will be perfect for storing retro games on it.
Good starting point, but be sure to back up whatever automation scripts and software you end up needing. Laptops aren’t exactly made to have reads/writes occurring 24/7 due to (and depending on) hardware, so you’ll be looking at a ticking clock. I ran through two within 2 years before deciding to just get an actual rig.
I've read many many stories about users acquiring used hardware for homelabs. $15,000 servers for $200 that are years old yet still do what you need them to do. All those < $500 components can and do add up to a wonderful setup you've been wanting to build/expand. Yes it's worth it but as said in other comments, it's addictive!!
Thank you, for all the detailed steps, helped me put it all together. I used it to be able have my sever with my videos and file system to be able to access from any computer. and YESS I am trying not to get carried away LOL
'roflcopter' This is Awesome. As a Student I don't have much resources for a fully - decked home lab but I also want to tinker around things for Sys Admin point of view / skills!
Just wanted to say that this video has been AMAZING at getting my local IT nerd friends into home servers (as well as myself of course) and I have been spreading it like crazy, already have three different home servers which only exit because of this
Would love love love to see another video about using your server for backups from mobile devices and other desktops/laptops! This video was an awesome starting point for me, thank you so much.
You can use an old 32bit system like intel's socket 478 platform, but I do recommend upgrading to atleast a core 2 duo. Power efficiency matters in this situation. Don't pitch that old system though! A lot of fun can still be had with it!
"Debian's defaults are completely insane" 🤩 well said. It's the God's honest truth. My little crappy Chromebook OpenVPN server uses Debian, headless. Ubuntu Server was better and will be my go-to moving forward, but I had to try a few different ones.
I'm so happy daring to try a BSD. I randomly landed on OpenBSD for an old laptop after years of curiosity and haven't looked back! Must be around 4 years now. I use it on all my laptops and my moms desktop 🤭 KDE Plasma or the native CWM - fantastic! My point was INSANELY SANE DEFAULTS on OpenBSD. And "all" is in the base! Or a pkg away. ~~~😈🐡💻🐡😈~~~ And I haven't even gotten to try it as servers, which is where it really shines, they say... But nobody asked me 🫢
It is really well thought... Except for one thing: old laptops don't have a ton of storage space, which you're gonna want for a data server, specially if you store movies there. Okay, this comes from a guy who has four drives inside his computer (me), I got here just trying to figure out what to do with my old laptops. I don't find it that convenient, while I know how to set all of this up it's still faster and a lot less messing around to use my internal storage, whether directly or though a Plex media server kind of thing, which also allows me to access it remotely. I don't use that either, but it is a lot of hussling around compared to other solutions. Still, like I said, well thought and well explained. Regards. Left a thumbs up.
Great guide but after years of doing this a few points to add if you use a laptop you are going to kill the battery fast by charging it 24/7, 365 so see if you can run the laptop with the battery removed also 2.5 inch hard drives die fast if subjected to constant access you need a ssd or external 3.5 inch spinners, also with a laptop you have to consider cooling, stick something under one side of the lappy to increase airflow and if you stick it in a cubbard(closet) you need to wedge the door open an inch or two consider underclocking the cpu to help with cooling, laptops aren't designed to take this abuse but are capable, been running an acer for 5years this way never a problem except boiling it's battery
Hey man, just stumbled into your channel. While I respect that you aren’t just pumping videos out for money, your knowledge and easy to understand instructions could allow you to go farrr. Pls keep making videos if that’s something you’re interested in
You've given me the clearest, simplest plan yet for this type of project among all the videos I've watched...subbed. And by the way, your name qualifies as an excellent villain character on Star Trek TOS! "Captain Kirk! Kalos is hailing us from the Klingon cruiser!" I know, it's pretty close to Kahless, so sue me lol.
Wow! A truly engaged creator, one question please! How am I meant to access the server? Through the duckdns url? Mine only works through “[my ip addr]:8092” . I must have done something wrong with duck dns. Also what is the purpose of WireGuard? When I have the Ubuntu tunnel on everything is super slow and idk how the local only works. Also what in the world is the port forwarding do? PLEASE HELP and god bless you if you actually reply. 🙏 thank you.
Hi, it seems my reply to your comment didn't show up because of RUclips not liking "links". You access your server with its local IP, not the duckdns address. So [ip]:8082 in the browser. When you're connected to the VPN you've made, that IP (any IP call that starts with the local IP string) will be redirected to your home router, so that you can access your home network from anywhere. DuckDNS only points to the network, aka the router, not your server itself. Hope this helps!!
I appreciate this video bc I have a languishing side project to essentially make exactly this. Now that I know I can just do this, I've done this, and I'm very happy.
I LOVE taking old laptops and giving them new life using Linux! It is so much fun for me, and there's the added benefit of recycling the old gear. If it powers on and has a proccessor, it still servers a purpose!
This vid is very well made and presented. I've done these and more plenty of times already, yet I still enjoy and was able to learn from it. Thank you :)
I use a $0 backup server since June 2019. It runs on the remains of a 2003 HP d530 SFF, it has a Pentium 4 HT (1C2T; 3.0GHz); 1GB DDR (400MHz) and 1.21TB of storage in 2x IDE 3.5" and 2x SATA 2.5". The cabinet is a Compaq Evo Tower with a Win98SE activation sticker. It now runs 32-bits FreeBSD 14.0, released Nov 2023, on the OpenZFS 2.2.0 filesystem. The server supports Samba too for restoring e.g a single file, but normally the backup works with OpenZFS replication, sending the difference between 2 snapshots with "send snap1 snap2 | ssh receive".
Really really great video, thanks the yt algorithm for this discovery. I knew I would do something like a home server when I'll have the time and even if I'm kinda experimented, this video is well explained ! Keep up the good work ! :D
So far I've had a few hangups I have a bunk router I can't configure on a desktop so I had to figure out how to configure a static IP using YAML, thankfully after a day of troubleshooting and learning YAML for the first time I got it to work. Right now my big hang up is copying from my clipboard from the web browser into vim, all of the solutions I've tried to find don't seem to be working. I'm anticipating having to do some over complicated work around for the port configuration but its been a fun challenge so far! I can say I have a home server at this point all that I need to do is configure a VPN and wake on LAN. This video was so helpful in all of its steps.
6:21 keep in mind, that the user should be the same as your actual linux user otherwise this won't work. You can't just create a random new user and name whatever you want. The user should be the output of echo $USER
The fact you are replying to all the comments are amazing !! I’ve never seen something like that- Quick (maybe stupid) question though. How do I let my parents access jellyfin on their android tv ? (They are not in the same house as me )
It's not a stupid question! You can set up Wireguard on their Android TV, so that it connects to your home server no matter where it is. I don't know the exact process for Android TV, but it should be possible. Thank you for your kind words!
Also apps that officially do not support Android tv can work in it. You have to install the app in phone. Take a backup of the app. Now you get the apk in the backup folder. Now you side load it in android tv 😊
Hey Kalos, you made a wonderful tutorial! However, as a Linux and programming novice, I am having trouble with the Wireguard setup. Specifically, (11:51) I am not receiving any data despite successfully sending it. I have spent over three hours trying to troubleshoot the issue, including reinstalling Wireguard multiple times, but to no avail. Could you please provide some guidance on where I might be going wrong?
This is a networking issue. Please use a service that checks for open ports on your network, it seems that the port forwarding did not work. Perhaps you have CGNAT, which doesn't allow port forwarding?
Indeed I was having difficulties aswell. I also had double NAT (one from ISP, second from router). So far simpliest solution was just swapping Wireguard for Tailscale, which is able to run through multiple NATs. Also it's even easier to setup.
Oh man this is so easy to do and so cool! Truly incredible stuff I didn't really know I could do with my rpi this easily. Absolutely great video to get you into this stuff!
This was really helpful! I have one question: I'm using the WireGuard portion of this tutorial to set up a home file server that I can access remotely, however I don't know how to get my desktop to connect remotely to the WireGuard server. Like, on iPhone it seems pretty straightforward, what with the app scanning and enabling VPN configuration and whatnot. But what about on a laptop, where I don't have that QR-scanning functionality? How do I connect to my VPN like that? I assume it has something to do with the DDNS set up previously, but beyond that I'm kinda lost.
There's Wireguard apps for Windows, Linux, and Mac too, and you can import the configurations manually by importing the .conf file that is created on your server when you run `pivpn add`. Copy that .conf file to your samba shared storage so you can access it, and import it into the Wireguard app of your choice.
i recently decided to repurpose a miniPC I had laying around into my home seedbox. I set up Parsec on it and it gives me all the features I need to basically set up my torrent clients and the needed open ports. previously, I would seed all of my torrents on my laptop, but that would end up tethering it to my home connection and not being able to take it with me to uni or on trips. I was genuinely considering getting a seedbox, but remembered the miniPC at the last minute.
If you ever make a followup video, I'd like to see Tailscale (which uses WireGuard) instead of bare WireGuard itself. I think a lot of people would prefer the added features of TailScale.
I totally agree. I use Tailscale and I LOVE it! My network is behind two NAT enabled routers so port forwarding is a pain not to mention the potential security problems of having open ports. I'm pretty sure Tailscale is easier to setup than Wireguard too.
Awesome video. I just realized that my internet provider has very strict policies about their own routers, so I might buy one myself if I really want to enjoy such thing. Sadly, but I watched the whole thing twice and enjoyed a lot.
Many moons ago I had a home server and web host set up, knowing nothing about how to properly and securely set one up. I thought those days were behind me, now here comes this video trying to tempt me into doing it again... 😂
Hi kalos, thank you for this amazing tutorial, as I person who is new to linux I was able to follow each every step. But I'm facing an issue at 11:15 the data is being sent but I'm not receiving any data (the duckdns.log output was OK). Could you please help me on this?
so here is my side of the story after trying this on my absolute sh*t of a laptop with no battery since the battery decided to get pregnant and get kids? and an another problem in this pc is that if it overheats too much it decides to... die? so the graphics card on this thing (integrated graphics) decides to shut down the pc and make the screen look like i hit it with a sledgehammer. anyways here: so after "successfully" installing linux (ubuntu server) i ran into the first problem which is the pc not recognizing the linux installation/not finding it i have tried tons of stuff like checking the bios changing settings bla bla bla etc for like 5 hours now and it seems it doesnt want to work so i think ik what to do now im gonna install windows 7 on this sh*tbox and try to update the bios and see if that unlocks a setting that can maybe help me? i'll keep u guys updated if this comment gets 10 likes :) also for those wondering its an hp probook 5330m and its sh*t 👍 also im putting these symbols (*) so that yt doesnt delete my comment like they always do to comments that have swearing in them. anyways please like this comment and i will keep u guys updated ;) Update 1: so i installed windows 7 HARDLY bc of how weird the uefi boot mode was on this pc then i updated the bios so the first update went smoothely but didnt add any of the features i was looking for (but it actually let me run ubuntu server? i will speak abt this later) and then i tried to install the second bios update which... failed at first failed again then i had to create a fat32 partition so it could put its data there then it finished and i thought the update finished but it didnt restart which wwas confusing then i found .efi files in the partition that i created so i tried to boot it in the boot manager in UEFI mode and it failed the update 💀HORRIBLY. then after some digging i foudn that there is a bios update mode in the bios so i turned it on and then i got so confused imma update yall again in a few minutes or hours it depends. also linux ran after the first bios update but i didnt realize until i booted in UEFI mode and then i found out that i f*cked up and forgot the credentials and the linux installation also deleted the bios update partition that lets the bios update mode do its sh*t so now i have to redo all that sh*t again YAY! updating in a few hours pls like :) MIGHT BE LAST UPDATE!!!: so after some time and more gibberish and jank I actually ended up FINALLY reinstalling ubuntu server bc I didn't realize that it would keep failing if I connected it to the ethernet or wifi so I had to do the installation with no wifi but then it finished and I realized I couldn't SSH into the laptop if it wasn't connected into the internet or wifi and the only ethernet cable I had was being used in my working desktop and connecting wifi to linux using the terminal is SOOO COMPLICATED FOR NO F*CKING REASON!...that was.. until I discovered nmcli which was so easy to to help me connectto the internet. now I have internet and I can ssh into my laptop I can finally download samba and finish my home server also one thing that's pretty weird abt this laptop is the that the file that chooses what to tell the PC when the lid is closed I made it so that the laptop ignores the input and doesn't go to sleep mode but it still goes to sleep mode? its pretty confusing but I decided to just keep the lid a little open so it wouldn't sleep. anyways last update is in a few minutes/hours and thanks for 2 likes guys :) LAST UPDATE!: so I installed samba and I'm proud to say that this laptop actually has a new use which is storing my extra files and its really good also when I tried to connect to it my dumbass forgot a number in the IP address and I was wondering why it wasn't working 😭💀 anyways bye guys :)
Kudos for making this tutorial. It is going to help a lot of people start their servers/homelab journey. Pretty late for me, I went all in with a monster 2 years ago 😂
![Coheed and Cambria - Searching for Tomorrow [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDsYGLbmadg/mqdefault.jpg)
This is a SCAM because if you start your cheap homelab, you'll be hooked and find yourself with a rack full of gear right next to your couch in the living room. You'll go quickly from an old laptop, to a desktop, and then then just one server, but before you know it, you'll be planning network upgrades, buying SSDs for your storage, and debating the merits of different operating systems over dinner with your wife that doesn't care about it at all (only cares about the electricity bill). Your living room might start looking more like a mini data center, and you'll be the proud admin of your very own homelab empire. Consider yourself warned: there's no turning back.
LMAO
I agree. DON'T DO THIS! It's endless pit.. 🙃
I have since years one server and not more. If you size it from start with space for future things your statement is usesless :D
@@mutosanrc1933 Hey, you completely forgot the video title there :D
LMFAOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
outta no where I just got a random side quest
Just spent past couple of hours completing this side quest. 👍
Two weeks after watching this I've been pretty deep into making a home server. Thank you for making such an easy to follow start guide
Very glad I could help get you started!
I hope, for your sake that you did not follow the drive partitioning recommendations. Kalos is obviously a unix noob who is unfamiliar with all of the ways a linux server may be crashed. It is a strong recommendation that you partition off the /var or /var/log directories. This way if the log files fill up the filesystem, you can still recover without too much hassle.
@@mrquickyhow would you recommend doing that?
@@swiftsushi create two partitions, one for /var or /var/log & the second one for the root filesystem /.
Yeah, it’s really rare to see such a celebrity into computers. Thank you Paul Dano!
This! This is the type of stuff most normal people even with some basic IT knowledge can easily follow and get an actual usable home server out of! Amazing stuff!
From someone that has been been building home servers for over 20 years I gotta say this is well put together, informative, and concise while not being too dry. Good video.
where should i start for homeservers and what are they most useful for ? storage ?
@@shellohd8421it depends on what you need, but yes storage is a good place to start because a lot of other things depend on it. Samba configuration allows many shares and many users. For example, I have several personal shares that only I have access to, I have a share for my wife and I for documents we both need to access, and I have device specific shares such as for media and for our home office printer/scanner. A good next step might be setting up backup software for your computers/phones. For example I use an app to run a regular backup (at least once a day) for my phone's photos/videos/voice memos/notes. This allows me to save a local copy before it gets backed up to my cloud storage at the end of the day.
I have to say, I can only agree, this is the best bang for buck budget homeserver. Also well documented and explained for new comers, not my cup of tea since I like making my systems a bit more trim, but generally good advice.
I’m surprised Paul Dano was able to take a break from his stellar career to teach us about home servers
Jerry O'Connell
Jerry O'Donnell
😂😂😂
Everyone benefits from learning to self-host their stuff.
People must be educated to own their services and devices.
I thank you a lot for this, really, you make the world a better place.
I remember when I was 10 my dad gave me an HP laptop motherboard from which I hosted Minecraft servers. We even upgraded the CPU from a low end c2d to a higher end c2d. Good times!
@@repairwins Nice!
When was that
Hello 2001-2006
You "ran" the software that handled it all for you. Hosting a minecraft server was just a button click and has nothing to do with this video. Total AI comment.
@@Sammysapphira heh?
A man after my own heart. I used to recycle old desktops as a home server but now we are using a Thinkpad T420. Nice having much lower power consumption. Replaced the main HDD with an SSD and stuck in a 2TB HDD in the DVD-drive bay. I'm just using Win 10 Pro not a real server OS.
We use it as destination for automatic backup of my and my wife's desktop. It is running an NTP server to keep all the non-mobile devices on the LAN in sync. This is nice because some of our IoT devices revert to hardcoded time/date after a power failure so this way even without internet they get a reasonable time/date. It is also running a web server that displays a bunch of static links including our DIY IoT devices.
Cool but now i need to find a home
Real AF
One with Internet
that cracked me up fr
Ai
Same here. Keep your head up and don’t let anyone deter you from your goals.
I have no intention of creating a home server and yet, I loved watching this.
Same but I do have an intention of doing it
You have an intention of making a home server. You just haven’t realized it yet.
Something that wasn't mentioned here is about direct costs of a home server, as of electric bill, if you run it 24/7. The laptop is the best choice here since you get lower consumption CPUs by design and an integrated UPS!
As a final tip, if you need extra storage and your laptop had a CD reader, you can find hdd/ssd caddy for the CD tray!
If you need to backup stuff, also syncthing is a must have!
To be fair, unless you're doing something insane then the power consumption of a small home lab is going to be negligible compared to a fridge, HVAC, stove, microwave, etc.
I run a cluster of 8 raspberry pis nearly 24/7 and I have a plug in power meter between the cluster, network equipment, and the wall. As a point of comparison, my microwave uses 27x more power than the max draw of my raspberry pi cluster (about the same power that your average old laptop/desktop would use at max draw) and 100x more than the average draw of the cluster. Electric in my region costs $0.36/kwh which means running my pi cluster all day for an entire month costs $2 to $3. I'm not trying to gatekeep having a homelab or anything but if $3/month is a problem then you should probably not go into homelab as a hobby.
@@user-jm8sy5ox2j I'm on average around the same consumption, but I do not see the point of having way too much stuff running all time when I do not need it. I had two laptops and I compared their power draw at idle. One was 7W around , the other one was 45W (it has a dedicated old GPU which I wanted to use). With the 7W I had around 2$/mo, with the 45W one I would have easily gone into 12$/mo. Probably you find cheaper and more reliable options with cloud servers around that price.
@@user-jm8sy5ox2jbut you are running a cluster of low power devices, maybe he is referring to use a server PC like a hp Proliant 24/7
@@user-jm8sy5ox2jyeah cute in theory but I have an old proliand dl380 g5.
Bitch costs like $2-3 per day of uptime.
Cost like $50 but its just too much to have up unless I'm actively using it.
Wish I knew how much it used in standby, though I do know its warm around its psu, on standby.
Hello, I don't have access to old laptops or Raspberry Pis, but I do have an extremely cheap mini PC/thin client from the lockdown days. I believe it has an AMD GX-217GA CPU. How would power consumption compare to an old laptop like the one shown in the video?
This is amazing. Great job! A bit fast for my level of knowledge but with 0.5x speed and a dozen replays i manage to complete this successfully. Many many many thanks!
This is so beautiful because I just ordered a raspberry pi 4 to use as a server but it felt like an overkill and now I get to use my old laptop for the server and still have a fresh raspberry pi for loads of experimentation. God bless Kalos.
Update bro : drop the ultimate - your provider have port forwarding I got you guide. That’s all I need now. Iocal network nuts with tools and all network provider is an ass. Tried telebit - will try ngrok but that would be a decent follow up video for some people already down the rabbit holes
The benefit of a laptop is probably it's a lot more powerful, downside is power draw and laptops aren't really made for acting as a server cause of their airflow
The Raspberry Pi 4 is not worth the trouble, IMO. I really wanted one, but kept holding off from buying one because of the cost. Christmas 2022 my husband got me one, and I maybe used it a week.
@@atlantic_love that's not a point again a pi4 but that you just don't use it. I bought a blender and use it maybe once a month but I don't recommend people against using a blender
@@atlantic_love how often you use it is not an argument to not buy one
Finally found a channel that explains things correctly and easy to follow- Ive been using an ssd attached to my home router and it always takes 3 or 4 attempts just to load a movie !new sub from the UK
thank you, Jim Morrison from The Doors, for teaching me about servers
Come on baby boot my server
Finally a youtuber that doesn't blur private addresses.
I was going to but then the other Chris from the channel told me it was stupid. This is why you need people to review your edits 💀💀💀
@@KalosLikesComputers But also, people are gonna give up on doing it because of what to put on it.
Blurring private ips is stupid lol
@@ak49at the same time an overabundance of caution is better than nothing
@@ak49why is it stupid
This is probably my fav. Video on the platform, so useful and well made! With some trials and errors i turned a shitty laptop from 2010 (1gb of ram, couldnt handle it's own os / ram upgrades) into a "free" cloud, then spent a day automating remote on/off with my phone to save on the electricity bill. Now i plan to add bitwarden, an image viewer and other cool stuff, cant wait for a part 2!
I'm so glad we helped!!
Nice to see some people making the path easier for beginners, Keep it up
Finally a down to earth, clear and informative video for a home server. Saw so many nerdy crap video's I started losing hope. I knew it had to be far less complicated and suitable for older systems as well, but all those videos I had been watching were far too complicated and got a lot of useless side information or high tech demands. Going to use this as soon as I got my systems running and the mancave is set up. Thanks!
This guy is a nerd. The great one. I hope your channel grow big and you countinue to share your computer knowledge
My friend and I just followed this guide and now have our own home servers with our old laptops, so cool! Thanks a ton!
I've watched so many home server videos. This is by far the best one. The others made me not want to touch it. This made me want to finally set one up.
- How did you ended up with a closet full of old laptops?
- Kalos said "Dale" y yo le dí 🤷🏼♂️
"Honey, would it be okay if I got this component that I think will really help us out?" :D
Why did you switch language?
@@CallumAnthony-r9o If you've got a closet full of old laptops, they're bound to be your friends, or your enemies. One of them likely spoke in other languages, so he was talking to a long lost friend/ememy :-)
Le daste bien?
@@mishXY diste* :)
Wow, what a brilliant video! Easy to follow, content was well organised and your presentation was consistent and spot on… especially the jokes. You even reminded me that I have an old laptop doing nothing so that’s a prime candidate for becoming useful again. Well done, Chris! Looking forward to watching more 😊
This video made my college laptop from 2011 go from e-waste to one of the most valuable devices I have in my house. Thank you for making this guide super easy to follow. You should probably make a followup video for automounting the UUID of external USB drives in fstab since I had to do a bit of additional research for that.
Wish I had a video like this like a couple years ago when I randomly decided that I wanted exactly this, it would've been an amazing start. Great vid!
Now I'm deep in it with two desktops permanently next to my router running Jellyfin, Nextcloud, personal sites, etc.
What's the point of having a home server? U can view your media files on all devices that's it?
@@EpicBuntyin @DiggoryJiggory's case a home server is: 1) Jellyfin = Netflix/etc. Video streaming & Spotify/etc. Music streaming replacements 2) NextCloud = Personal Cloud, not having to pay Google/Microsoft/Apple etc for cloud storage. Also could be: Local Password manager, could run AI at home, Personal local home assistant- faster, safer, more reliable- don't have to worry about if this company will be around x years later/has a data breach/service being down because of maintenance/CloudStrike instances. Many other ideas also.
TLDR: Mainly a home server can help save money from fewer subscriptions, having video/music to stream keeping kids entertained during long car rides & still having video/music streaming access if internet goes out at home.
@@benwhite6786 wow, thanks for the amazing reply my man. I had no idea you could stream content from it while away from the network itself! thats really cool! How does it work if the internet is out though ?
it should be noted that to install wireguard and create a vpn with no-ip or any dynamic dns service this process does not always apply, not all providers give dynamic or public ip. many are under CGNAT means Carrier Grade Network Address Translation, it is a technique that allows the use of the same public IPv4 in which private IPv4 addresses will be associated simultaneously. so you must use NGROK or zero tier for the process to be functional remotely.
ngrok allows only 2 hours of connection tho
Tailscale is another option for this as well
@@Nathan_Woodruff been using tailscale to workaround that, works like a charm.
Cloudflare tunnels too
Cool. I am having to buy a new laptop for crappy reasons, but i was just thinking of setting up a server with my current one. It's a pretty powerful machine for it's time, 5 years ago.
I think i should be able to do this.
I used an old laptop with a mostly broken keyboard as a plex server. Used the built in Ethernet port onto my home lab network, and the wireless link of the laptop to the 'house' cable-wireless router. It functions as a cheap bridge to protect 'public access' from my lab net and does good enough, especially since the keyboard was missing several keys.
$ uptime
13:36:54 up 418 days, 19:31, 1 user, load average: 0.05, 0.10, 0.09
And still going. An old used ThinkPad laptop connected to a UPS because the battery can't hold any charge. I mainly use it to run ZeroTier and to wakeup my desktop remotely.
I found that running a NAS OS and installing docker is much more easy then running ubuntu. I tried both and I went with OMV and using docker compose for containers and a raspberry pi 3b for wireguard and adguard.
I found OMV was too cumbersome to use and instead went to just a bare ubuntu install with docker.. lol
Dude, thank you so much! Recently, I felt the urge as a pc nerd to make a home server, but all of the youtube guides I found made it so complicated. And here you are, making it so insanely easy that within like 30 minutes I have my own cloud storage! thank you so so much for this guide, you absolute legend!
Been using a linux booted 2 core 4gb ram chromebook with an upgraded ssd as a server for the past couple of months and its held up doing plex and mc servers surprisingly well.
I genuinely loved how simple and amazing the explanation is, especially the part about Jellyfin being Mum approved. Truly great work!
Subbed because you actually explain this in an easy to follow fashion.
Dude, this is a killer, practical video on getting into home servers. Awesome work! Just gained a new sub.
This is what I've done. It is simple and gives my laptop with a broken screen another purpose.
YOU ARE THE BEST PERSON IN THIS WORLD FOR PROVIDING THIS GUIDE, LOVE YOU DUDE, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU DOING
Your videos are genuinely good and on point. You are gaining global audience by the way. I am from India.
True. Hello from Puerto Rico.
thanks to you i finally can acces my home network from outside, completely changed the game, thank you so much kalos
I believe this is the best ever video about home labs.
That honor definitely does not go to me, you should check out what Wolfgang's Channel is doing with his home server videos. He was a big inspiration for this one!
Thank you so much for your kind words.
This is peak content. I have an age old laptop with the exact same configuration, that I had no clue what to do with but got dirt cheap. Will be perfect for storing retro games on it.
This video had so much information that I didn't understood anything completely. Thanks a lot because now I have so many new cool things to research.
Good starting point, but be sure to back up whatever automation scripts and software you end up needing. Laptops aren’t exactly made to have reads/writes occurring 24/7 due to (and depending on) hardware, so you’ll be looking at a ticking clock. I ran through two within 2 years before deciding to just get an actual rig.
I've read many many stories about users acquiring used hardware for homelabs. $15,000 servers for $200 that are years old yet still do what you need them to do. All those < $500 components can and do add up to a wonderful setup you've been wanting to build/expand. Yes it's worth it but as said in other comments, it's addictive!!
Is there a subreddit to follow this kind of stuff?
@@lorenzogiovannone5036r/homelab
Thank you, for all the detailed steps, helped me put it all together. I used it to be able have my sever with my videos and file system to be able to access from any computer. and YESS I am trying not to get carried away LOL
'roflcopter'
This is Awesome. As a Student I don't have much resources for a fully - decked home lab but I also want to tinker around things for Sys Admin point of view / skills!
How I havent found your channel yet is baffling. Your content is very easy to follow and engaging, this has got me interested, thanks
Just wanted to say that this video has been AMAZING at getting my local IT nerd friends into home servers (as well as myself of course) and I have been spreading it like crazy, already have three different home servers which only exit because of this
IT NERDS UNITE
Would love love love to see another video about using your server for backups from mobile devices and other desktops/laptops! This video was an awesome starting point for me, thank you so much.
We may visit this topic soon! The other Chris on this channel really wants to do a backup solutions video.
You can use an old 32bit system like intel's socket 478 platform, but I do recommend upgrading to atleast a core 2 duo. Power efficiency matters in this situation.
Don't pitch that old system though! A lot of fun can still be had with it!
You can use the old electrical tape trick to essentially overclock a Core 2 Duo
This brought back memories. I'd setup servers for a multitude of reasons, but mostly email and ftp, some 20 years ago. Good times
"Debian's defaults are completely insane" 🤩 well said. It's the God's honest truth. My little crappy Chromebook OpenVPN server uses Debian, headless. Ubuntu Server was better and will be my go-to moving forward, but I had to try a few different ones.
I'm so happy daring to try a BSD. I randomly landed on OpenBSD for an old laptop after years of curiosity and haven't looked back! Must be around 4 years now.
I use it on all my laptops and my moms desktop 🤭
KDE Plasma or the native CWM - fantastic!
My point was INSANELY SANE DEFAULTS on OpenBSD. And "all" is in the base! Or a pkg away.
~~~😈🐡💻🐡😈~~~
And I haven't even gotten to try it as servers, which is where it really shines, they say...
But nobody asked me 🫢
It is really well thought... Except for one thing: old laptops don't have a ton of storage space, which you're gonna want for a data server, specially if you store movies there. Okay, this comes from a guy who has four drives inside his computer (me), I got here just trying to figure out what to do with my old laptops. I don't find it that convenient, while I know how to set all of this up it's still faster and a lot less messing around to use my internal storage, whether directly or though a Plex media server kind of thing, which also allows me to access it remotely. I don't use that either, but it is a lot of hussling around compared to other solutions. Still, like I said, well thought and well explained. Regards. Left a thumbs up.
- $0
- you just have to own another fu**ing computer
This is EXACTLY the type of video I've been looking for! Thanks for the simple step by step explanations for noobs like me.
Great guide but after years of doing this a few points to add if you use a laptop you are going to kill the battery fast by charging it 24/7, 365 so see if you can run the laptop with the battery removed also 2.5 inch hard drives die fast if subjected to constant access you need a ssd or external 3.5 inch spinners, also with a laptop you have to consider cooling, stick something under one side of the lappy to increase airflow and if you stick it in a cubbard(closet) you need to wedge the door open an inch or two consider underclocking the cpu to help with cooling, laptops aren't designed to take this abuse but are capable, been running an acer for 5years this way never a problem except boiling it's battery
You're right, I've removed the battery from the laptop I'm using as a server for exactly this reason!
Hey man, just stumbled into your channel. While I respect that you aren’t just pumping videos out for money, your knowledge and easy to understand instructions could allow you to go farrr. Pls keep making videos if that’s something you’re interested in
Tip: press alt + / to reach the EOF when in nano
This is great video! Now I can put all my outdated laptops to use. Thank you for sharing it Kalos.
You've given me the clearest, simplest plan yet for this type of project among all the videos I've watched...subbed.
And by the way, your name qualifies as an excellent villain character on Star Trek TOS!
"Captain Kirk! Kalos is hailing us from the Klingon cruiser!"
I know, it's pretty close to Kahless, so sue me lol.
This might be the best video I’ve ever watched. Thanks for holding my hand!
🤝
Wow! A truly engaged creator, one question please! How am I meant to access the server? Through the duckdns url? Mine only works through “[my ip addr]:8092” . I must have done something wrong with duck dns. Also what is the purpose of WireGuard? When I have the Ubuntu tunnel on everything is super slow and idk how the local only works. Also what in the world is the port forwarding do? PLEASE HELP and god bless you if you actually reply. 🙏 thank you.
Hi, it seems my reply to your comment didn't show up because of RUclips not liking "links".
You access your server with its local IP, not the duckdns address. So [ip]:8082 in the browser.
When you're connected to the VPN you've made, that IP (any IP call that starts with the local IP string) will be redirected to your home router, so that you can access your home network from anywhere.
DuckDNS only points to the network, aka the router, not your server itself. Hope this helps!!
This is great! I was considering setting up home server for some time but I didn't want spend much on it alas I have unused 2009 HP notebook.
I appreciate this video bc I have a languishing side project to essentially make exactly this. Now that I know I can just do this, I've done this, and I'm very happy.
That part in the intro of you spinning around smiling at the laptop made me so happy, thank you
🥰🤝💻
damn watching this video made me want to find an old laptop just to try it! Well done Kalos!
I have a Toshiba laptop that is like from 1857. Now it will become my private server. Thank you!
What a revolutionary™ machine
how
wtf a good tutorial about self-hosting, it's very nice to see!
This ist amazingly useful and very well explained. Thank you!
I LOVE taking old laptops and giving them new life using Linux! It is so much fun for me, and there's the added benefit of recycling the old gear. If it powers on and has a proccessor, it still servers a purpose!
This vid is very well made and presented. I've done these and more plenty of times already, yet I still enjoy and was able to learn from it. Thank you :)
I use a $0 backup server since June 2019. It runs on the remains of a 2003 HP d530 SFF, it has a Pentium 4 HT (1C2T; 3.0GHz); 1GB DDR (400MHz) and 1.21TB of storage in 2x IDE 3.5" and 2x SATA 2.5". The cabinet is a Compaq Evo Tower with a Win98SE activation sticker.
It now runs 32-bits FreeBSD 14.0, released Nov 2023, on the OpenZFS 2.2.0 filesystem. The server supports Samba too for restoring e.g a single file, but normally the backup works with OpenZFS replication, sending the difference between 2 snapshots with "send snap1 snap2 | ssh receive".
Really really great video, thanks the yt algorithm for this discovery. I knew I would do something like a home server when I'll have the time and even if I'm kinda experimented, this video is well explained ! Keep up the good work ! :D
So far I've had a few hangups I have a bunk router I can't configure on a desktop so I had to figure out how to configure a static IP using YAML, thankfully after a day of troubleshooting and learning YAML for the first time I got it to work.
Right now my big hang up is copying from my clipboard from the web browser into vim, all of the solutions I've tried to find don't seem to be working. I'm anticipating having to do some over complicated work around for the port configuration but its been a fun challenge so far!
I can say I have a home server at this point all that I need to do is configure a VPN and wake on LAN. This video was so helpful in all of its steps.
6:21 keep in mind, that the user should be the same as your actual linux user otherwise this won't work. You can't just create a random new user and name whatever you want. The user should be the output of echo $USER
Phenomenal video! Hands down the best basic guide I've seen in a long time! Way to go!
For wireguard I rather using Tailscale (it does not need port forwarding in the router)
Same here
This brother save my old laptop with 1.5TB storage
thank you
Hi, great tutorial but I need help of how can I connect from any other pc/laptop instead of using a phone like in the video? Thanks everyone
same
Finally, a nerd of the same flavor as me. Love it!
The fact you are replying to all the comments are amazing !! I’ve never seen something like that-
Quick (maybe stupid) question though.
How do I let my parents access jellyfin on their android tv ? (They are not in the same house as me )
It's not a stupid question!
You can set up Wireguard on their Android TV, so that it connects to your home server no matter where it is. I don't know the exact process for Android TV, but it should be possible.
Thank you for your kind words!
Learn how to download apps
Also apps that officially do not support Android tv can work in it. You have to install the app in phone. Take a backup of the app. Now you get the apk in the backup folder. Now you side load it in android tv 😊
Mr.Worldwide reporting, first time watcher, your humour lets me know I'll probably be watching again 🤟
First! Sick bro! 🤘
Great guide my dude. How secure would you rate this setup to be? Any homeserver security guide or video that you recommend?
Hey Kalos, you made a wonderful tutorial! However, as a Linux and programming novice, I am having trouble with the Wireguard setup. Specifically, (11:51) I am not receiving any data despite successfully sending it. I have spent over three hours trying to troubleshoot the issue, including reinstalling Wireguard multiple times, but to no avail. Could you please provide some guidance on where I might be going wrong?
I am facing the same issue. Please let me know once you get to know how to resolve it.
up this comment
This is a networking issue. Please use a service that checks for open ports on your network, it seems that the port forwarding did not work. Perhaps you have CGNAT, which doesn't allow port forwarding?
Also, if you have two routers, you have a double NAT. Please make sure you are port forwarding the correct router.
Indeed I was having difficulties aswell. I also had double NAT (one from ISP, second from router). So far simpliest solution was just swapping Wireguard for Tailscale, which is able to run through multiple NATs. Also it's even easier to setup.
Oh man this is so easy to do and so cool! Truly incredible stuff I didn't really know I could do with my rpi this easily. Absolutely great video to get you into this stuff!
This was really helpful! I have one question: I'm using the WireGuard portion of this tutorial to set up a home file server that I can access remotely, however I don't know how to get my desktop to connect remotely to the WireGuard server. Like, on iPhone it seems pretty straightforward, what with the app scanning and enabling VPN configuration and whatnot. But what about on a laptop, where I don't have that QR-scanning functionality? How do I connect to my VPN like that? I assume it has something to do with the DDNS set up previously, but beyond that I'm kinda lost.
There's Wireguard apps for Windows, Linux, and Mac too, and you can import the configurations manually by importing the .conf file that is created on your server when you run `pivpn add`. Copy that .conf file to your samba shared storage so you can access it, and import it into the Wireguard app of your choice.
i recently decided to repurpose a miniPC I had laying around into my home seedbox.
I set up Parsec on it and it gives me all the features I need to basically set up my torrent clients and the needed open ports.
previously, I would seed all of my torrents on my laptop, but that would end up tethering it to my home connection and not being able to take it with me to uni or on trips.
I was genuinely considering getting a seedbox, but remembered the miniPC at the last minute.
If you ever make a followup video, I'd like to see Tailscale (which uses WireGuard) instead of bare WireGuard itself. I think a lot of people would prefer the added features of TailScale.
I totally agree. I use Tailscale and I LOVE it! My network is behind two NAT enabled routers so port forwarding is a pain not to mention the potential security problems of having open ports. I'm pretty sure Tailscale is easier to setup than Wireguard too.
Awesome video. I just realized that my internet provider has very strict policies about their own routers, so I might buy one myself if I really want to enjoy such thing. Sadly, but I watched the whole thing twice and enjoyed a lot.
She is cute as hell
bro?!
sick perv
@@pizzabossxd LMFAO
Many moons ago I had a home server and web host set up, knowing nothing about how to properly and securely set one up. I thought those days were behind me, now here comes this video trying to tempt me into doing it again... 😂
Hi kalos, thank you for this amazing tutorial, as I person who is new to linux I was able to follow each every step. But I'm facing an issue at 11:15 the data is being sent but I'm not receiving any data (the duckdns.log output was OK). Could you please help me on this?
upvoting
Hi! Sorry for taking so long to respond. Please join our Discord server so we can troubleshoot together!
the intro was enough for me im sold *subscribes*
so here is my side of the story after trying this on my absolute sh*t of a laptop with no battery since the battery decided to get pregnant and get kids? and an another problem in this pc is that if it overheats too much it decides to... die? so the graphics card on this thing (integrated graphics) decides to shut down the pc and make the screen look like i hit it with a sledgehammer. anyways here:
so after "successfully" installing linux (ubuntu server) i ran into the first problem which is the pc not recognizing the linux installation/not finding it i have tried tons of stuff like checking the bios changing settings bla bla bla etc for like 5 hours now and it seems it doesnt want to work so i think ik what to do now im gonna install windows 7 on this sh*tbox and try to update the bios and see if that unlocks a setting that can maybe help me? i'll keep u guys updated if this comment gets 10 likes :) also for those wondering its an hp probook 5330m and its sh*t 👍 also im putting these symbols (*) so that yt doesnt delete my comment like they always do to comments that have swearing in them. anyways please like this comment and i will keep u guys updated ;)
Update 1: so i installed windows 7 HARDLY bc of how weird the uefi boot mode was on this pc then i updated the bios so the first update went smoothely but didnt add any of the features i was looking for (but it actually let me run ubuntu server? i will speak abt this later) and then i tried to install the second bios update which... failed at first failed again then i had to create a fat32 partition so it could put its data there then it finished and i thought the update finished but it didnt restart which wwas confusing then i found .efi files in the partition that i created so i tried to boot it in the boot manager in UEFI mode and it failed the update 💀HORRIBLY. then after some digging i foudn that there is a bios update mode in the bios so i turned it on and then i got so confused imma update yall again in a few minutes or hours it depends. also linux ran after the first bios update but i didnt realize until i booted in UEFI mode and then i found out that i f*cked up and forgot the credentials and the linux installation also deleted the bios update partition that lets the bios update mode do its sh*t so now i have to redo all that sh*t again YAY! updating in a few hours pls like :)
MIGHT BE LAST UPDATE!!!: so after some time and more gibberish and jank I actually ended up FINALLY reinstalling ubuntu server bc I didn't realize that it would keep failing if I connected it to the ethernet or wifi so I had to do the installation with no wifi but then it finished and I realized I couldn't SSH into the laptop if it wasn't connected into the internet or wifi and the only ethernet cable I had was being used in my working desktop and connecting wifi to linux using the terminal is SOOO COMPLICATED FOR NO F*CKING REASON!...that was.. until I discovered nmcli which was so easy to to help me connectto the internet. now I have internet and I can ssh into my laptop I can finally download samba and finish my home server also one thing that's pretty weird abt this laptop is the that the file that chooses what to tell the PC when the lid is closed I made it so that the laptop ignores the input and doesn't go to sleep mode but it still goes to sleep mode? its pretty confusing but I decided to just keep the lid a little open so it wouldn't sleep. anyways last update is in a few minutes/hours and thanks for 2 likes guys :)
LAST UPDATE!: so I installed samba and I'm proud to say that this laptop actually has a new use which is storing my extra files and its really good also when I tried to connect to it my dumbass forgot a number in the IP address and I was wondering why it wasn't working 😭💀 anyways bye guys :)
Kudos for making this tutorial. It is going to help a lot of people start their servers/homelab journey.
Pretty late for me, I went all in with a monster 2 years ago 😂
2:17 right then and there my PILE of laptops are useless 💀
I guess you could try to find a 32-bit server OS but you'll struggle 😅
Hey man !@@KalosLikesComputers
Havent finish watching the vid but already gathered my old laptops laying around😂😂😂😂 thanks mate!
I literally loved this 10/10 It was a fun journey to set up.
Great to see all IT people here.❤