Server guides

Your laptop will hold a small pair of files called an SSH key. Your server will trust it, so logging in never asks for a password — then we turn password logins off completely.

A fully updated server, a personal account with admin rights, a firewall that blocks everything except SSH, and security updates that install themselves.

Docker installed from Docker's own package source, the way their documentation says to do it — and how to remove every trace of it, because I tested that too.

An AI model running on your own machine, answering questions in your terminal. No account, no API key, no GPU — your prompts and replies stay on this machine.

A web page served from your own computer, readable on a phone anywhere in the world — without touching your router, opening a port, or creating any account.

An encrypted backup of a folder, stored in a second location, that you have personally restored from. That last part is the whole point.

A real service running from one small text file, surviving reboots — then I prove, with real output, that Ubuntu's firewall does not protect Docker's published ports, and show you the fix.

Two small dashboards watching your server: Beszel graphs the machine itself, Uptime Kuma watches your services. In my test the stack used about 155 MB of RAM at idle.

Any machine that gets a password wrong five times will be banned from your SSH port for ten minutes, automatically. I attacked my own test server to prove it.

Your machines — server, laptop, phone — on one private network that follows them anywhere, encrypted end to end. No port opened on your router, no fixed addresses to memorise.

A backup that runs itself every night: back up, then apply a keep-this-many rule. No cron syntax, no forgetting.

Your nightly backup pushes a copy to a second machine, and a one-word command proves the backup still restores — because an untested backup rots quietly.

A proper web chat — history, multiple conversations, a login — in front of your local model, reachable from any phone or laptop on your network.

The permanent version of the quick tunnel: your own domain names, each reaching a different service on your machine. No ports opened, and the tunnel survives reboots.

A small Ubuntu virtual machine running inside your Ubuntu machine: create it, log into it, switch it off and on, and delete it — all in the terminal, with free tools.

A virtual machine on a server you only ever touch over SSH. No desktop, no console passwords — your SSH key is injected at first boot, and the guest survives host reboots.

Snapshots you can rewind to, and a clone that you break and then properly fix. The breaking is deliberate: cloning has a common identity trap.

A PostgreSQL database, a real backup of it, and a restore you have watched succeed — plus a restore that fails while looking half-successful, the exact trap the essay warns about.