HELP: Getting started self-hosting

[Cobra!]

I’m thinking about trying to to self-host stuff, like an OwnCast instance, or somewhere to host videos and various downloads for my games, but I don’t know how or where to start.

I figured I’d ask here before looking it up because if I did, I would most likely find blog posts asking you to use not-privacy-friendly, overpriced stuff, and I’m sure people here know of good FLOSS tools to get the job done.

I’m saving up for various thing I have planned, so price takes priority. I guess I’d prefer a VPS if possible because I’m paranoid about leaving something on 24/7, and that energy prices in Scotland have absolutely soared lately, but I heard you can get devices that run on almost zero power, which would at least solve problems number 2.

I know I’m being really vague here, but I guess I’m basically asking about what software and hardware I’d generally need for such a thing?

[Nullcasting]

hello i ran into this exact confusion with Owncast. It was really frustrating trying to learn this stuff for the first time, hopefully i can help a little!!

My setup is a laptop i commandeered from my mom, running Debian 11. On the laptop, I have Caddy, Owncast, and Obs Studio installed [all are free]. You'll want to get all of those on there. (use flatpaks when available, installing from the command line SUCKS sorry linux fans)

you'll need is to open up the right ports on your router (this allows other computers to retrieve and send data through the router). By default, owncast wants to use 8080, but as far as i'm aware, you can set this to like 42069 or whatever the hell, so long as the number is the same in your router and in owncast.

at this point, run owncast. it'll pop up a bunch of text like 'beep boop i'm listening on port 8080 yadda yadda'. if you go to localhost:8080, it'll be a blank page saying 'welcome to owncast', and localhost:8080/admin will let you change all your settings.

if you want to access this thing from a location that isn't localhost:8080, you'll need to set up DNS, which basically is just giving your computer an extra name since your ISP will probably not let you set a static IP address. https://www.duckdns.org/ is the DNS service i use, it works just fine and is free :). You'll then go into owncast's admin tab and change it out there. caddy is what makes it go from http://myurl.duckdns.org:8080 to https://myurl.duckdns.org, and you do this by setting up a reverse proxy (owncast has documentation for how to do this, it would be nice of them if they added in documentation for the rest of it!! >:{)

I then just embed the video and chat widgets from myurl.duckdns.org onto my actual website. this solution is also nice because i can just send the embed video link to coworkers so they can look at the funny shrimp without risking them seeing any... unsavory messages in the chat 

i hope any of this helps 

[Cobra!]

hello i ran into this exact confusion with Owncast. It was really frustrating trying to learn this stuff for the first time, hopefully i can help a little!!

My setup is a laptop i commandeered from my mom, running Debian 11. On the laptop, I have Caddy, Owncast, and Obs Studio installed [all are free]. You'll want to get all of those on there. (use flatpaks when available, installing from the command line SUCKS sorry linux fans)

you'll need is to open up the right ports on your router (this allows other computers to retrieve and send data through the router). By default, owncast wants to use 8080, but as far as i'm aware, you can set this to like 42069 or whatever the hell, so long as the number is the same in your router and in owncast.

at this point, run owncast. it'll pop up a bunch of text like 'beep boop i'm listening on port 8080 yadda yadda'. if you go to localhost:8080, it'll be a blank page saying 'welcome to owncast', and localhost:8080/admin will let you change all your settings.

if you want to access this thing from a location that isn't localhost:8080, you'll need to set up DNS, which basically is just giving your computer an extra name since your ISP will probably not let you set a static IP address. https://www.duckdns.org/ is the DNS service i use, it works just fine and is free :). You'll then go into owncast's admin tab and change it out there. caddy is what makes it go from http://myurl.duckdns.org:8080 to https://myurl.duckdns.org, and you do this by setting up a reverse proxy (owncast has documentation for how to do this, it would be nice of them if they added in documentation for the rest of it!! >:{)

I then just embed the video and chat widgets from myurl.duckdns.org onto my actual website. this solution is also nice because i can just send the embed video link to coworkers so they can look at the funny shrimp without risking them seeing any... unsavory messages in the chat 

i hope any of this helps 

Yeah, that’s really useful, thank you! I have Ubuntu as a daily driver, so this sounds surprisingly straightforward. I wonder if VPSes work in a similar fashion.

You run an Owncast instance? Do you stream to it? Would be cool to watch more streams without Twitch.

[Nullcasting]

Yeah, that’s really useful, thank you!

You run an Owncast instance? Do you stream to it? Would be cool to watch more streams without Twitch.

I do! i use it to broadcast my Shrimp Stream over at https://warpzone.site/aquarium .

C2 has an endgoal of setting up a self-hosted streaming thing, but for now twitch is okay with me - i'm really pissed over the amount of pre-roll ads they use though. if they just set them up as banner ads it would be a much better website

[Cobra!]

C2 has an endgoal of setting up a self-hosted streaming thing, but for now twitch is okay with me - i'm really pissed over the amount of pre-roll ads they use though. if they just set them up as banner ads it would be a much better website

Yeah, not to mention it’s own by Jeffery Bezos, and that is a man I don’t trust.

For what it’s worth, I’d be one of the first to switch over to Owncast if you guys started streaming there.

[Cobra!]

hello i ran into this exact confusion with Owncast. It was really frustrating trying to learn this stuff for the first time, hopefully i can help a little!!

My setup is a laptop i commandeered from my mom, running Debian 11. On the laptop, I have Caddy, Owncast, and Obs Studio installed [all are free]. You'll want to get all of those on there. (use flatpaks when available, installing from the command line SUCKS sorry linux fans)

you'll need is to open up the right ports on your router (this allows other computers to retrieve and send data through the router). By default, owncast wants to use 8080, but as far as i'm aware, you can set this to like 42069 or whatever the hell, so long as the number is the same in your router and in owncast.

Necroposting this because I'm looking to get a device to host stuff, preferably using as little wattage as possible. (for environmental and cost purposes)

What device would you guys reccomend? Where can I read on how to host websites, gemini capsules, etc. on it?

All of the "guides" I can fine online are either for temporarily hosting using XMPP or using an existing web host (I dunno why search engines bring those up when I look up self hosting, but I digress.), and it's driving me up the wall! Search Engines are so useless these days...