Ubuntu server, some bash scripts, and a docker install. KISS

Last I tried this, the Nvidia cli I stalker was easy peasy for my 1050ti.

However, I haven’t took a look at jellyfin, but the Intel quicksync encoder on the Intel chip on my home server did the same encoding tasks and was far less temperamental with plex than Nvidia was. Do you really need the GPU? If it’s just for video encoding I feel like you could skip it. If it’s for more esoteric stuff like running LLM then of course it’s a requirement.

Used Dell Optiplex SFF (Small Form Factor) PC from ebay. They are tiny and total powerhouses for home server stuff. I run one with a 1 TB SSD and 16 TB hard disk, and it runs basically all of that using docker containers. And minus the storage it cost me about $120 bucks.

There is this thing called the internet, it’s filled with web servers. It’s what cybersecurity is basically all about.

A web server is more than just a thing that serves up personal web pages. Virtually all system to system communication uses a web servers nowadays, the world runs on APIs.

I feel like this is like asking why you’d have to know how a stove works if you’re going to be a cook. It’s more than just related, it’s practically the core most fundamental thing you need to know how it works in order to be a cybersecurity pentest person.

Imho attitude’s like this really turn me off in some people. A friend of mine wanted to learn computer programming and information technology, so I gave him a crash course on docker with the goal of setting up a container to handle vpn bittorrent downloads. Really simple stuff, like copy and pasting a few commands. He asked why even do this if he can just use deluge on his desktop. Like, it’s missing the forest for the trees, you need to know how stuff works to be useful to people that are looking to hire people who know how stuff works.

The friend of mine was hoping to work with me as a contractor so he could get high paid computer work, but frankly, I don’t need to hire someone who is too lazy to learn even the most basic fundamentals. And in your case, knowing how a web server works is fundamentals. And you can figure out the basics in only a few days.

The only way you’re going to make it in info tech is to be curious and figure out how stuff works. That is the *only* real skill you need to succeed.

I wrote a bunch of scripts that for each file I got from bittorrent, it removes it from the daily backups, and instead has a log of what file goes where and what torrent it came from. I’ve actually had to use it’s restore function a few times because I’m trigger happy and sometimes ruin my server. One of these days I will clean up the script and make it portable…

Oh dude, yeah ChatGPT knows Linux and docker better than I do and I’ve been doing this sort of thing professionally for 15 years, lol. Whatever you need as far as writing scripts, invoking containers, or generally asking it questions, you can just consider it an expert network administrator and it can write all your scripts and whathaveyou.

One of the best moments this year was when I realized I never had to figure out how to write an iptables command again lol

One thing nobody has mentioned here, I run all my services as a docker container. It makes them very easy to back up, and very easy to segregate. If a service gets compromised, in theory, it’s isolated to what it can access inside the docker container and can’t compromise the host. And if you delete and rebuild the container, any damage done in the container dies with it.

Running home assistant with docker is as simple as the command:

sudo docker run -d \

--name homeassistant \

--restart=unless-stopped \

-e TZ=America/Chicago \

-v $(pwd)/homeassistant:/config \

--network=host \

homeassistant/home-assistant

There is of course, more details to learn and the devils are in the details, but thankfully anything you want to know on how to set up your network in this regard you can just ask chatgpt.