Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I have my 22 port opened on IPv6 only and I can only authenticate with my private keys, which are all added in .ssh/authorized_keys. Fail2ban is configured to keep the bots out but the ban log is empty because there are either no bots operating on IPv6 yet or my IP is so far out of reach it will take the bot a millenium to get to my address.
Some set up WireGuard or another VPN protocol but I like having everything within reach as long as the device I'm carrying has my key on it.
One thing you should avoid is opening your docker containers to the web. If your VPS isn't behind a NAT (they usually aren't) becareful when binding ports which usually bypasses whatever firewall configuration you may have because docker writes it's changes directly to nftables.
https://docs.docker.com/network/#published-ports
Other then that, remember that this is just a hobby (for now) and take a break when something doesn't work or you don't understand it. I personally did a lot of mistakes because I was just eager to finish something and I was rushing it.
That last paragraph is great advice. I get so frustrated at times. Sometimes it feels like I need to fix things ASAP when I’m reality it doesn’t matter. In many cases coming back with fresh eyes helps considerably.
Accidentally exposing a database port when you deploy a database container has bitten so many asses. ElasticSearch and MongoDB were famous for this, so many databases exposed to the internet without authentication because the owners didn't know docker can bypass iptables-based firewall when assigning ports and ElasticSearch and MongoDB weren't ship with authentication enabled back then.
some sort of dashboard with monitoring and statuses of all my services
See if Uptime Kuma suits your needs.
Are there any major no-no things a newbie might do with Docker/selfhosting that I should avoid?
Allow password based SSH authentication, you should look into key based authentication
I wanted to have it behind a domain, how would I achieve it?
Use a reverse proxy (like caddy) which serves different content based on domain name.
I host in the way that you describe: "service.domain.com". I use Cloudflare, docker, and Caddy.
I don't remember any pit falls off the top of my head. Make sure to use HTTPS (port 443). Everything on http is basically open for everyone to see. Caddy should set that up for you automatically, tho. I recently moved to Caddy from Traefik, it's an awesome tool.
Oh, here's a pitfall. One time I opened a port, #22, for ssh access to my server. I installed fail2ban on my server. One weekend I looked at my logs and found I'd banned hundreds of IP addresses. Some bot found my open port and then begun attacking the login with some kinda rainbow table. I moved the port from the ssh default to something else and never had a problem since.
Also, and this isn't a requirement but just useful, I set up a VLAN for my selfhosted server. It's firewalled from my local network. That way, if someone access' my server they don't have access to my whole network.
So, tldr, have fun and midigate risk where you can.
Yeah, I love Caddy so much. I’ve only ever used Nginx before, and it was a pain to configure. With Caddy, it’s just a few lines, and the automatic HTTPS is very nice.
Thanks for the SSH port tip, I’ve disabled password auth on all my servers before and only used key auth, but I will move the port to something other for extra security.
Don’t expose anything from your local network to the internet (unless you want multiple new sysadmins in your house). Try tailscale instead.
Technically any connection made from inside your local network can expose it to the outside world for someone outside. Browsing web, some nasty js and here you go.
I personally have some stuff hosted on my home hardware, cant share details obviously, but even the ip address of those services is not my home ip address. Also extensive use of rootless containers and other cool stuff is making me want to keep things like that.
The difference is that you need way more interaction. Expose a webserver on the internet and check how many requests you get from just bots.
You can control what you navigate and how to interact with the outside world, but you can’t control how the outside world will interact with your services.