Hi fellow selfhosters!
What hostnames do you use for your systems and services?
And maybe why if it’s an interesting story.
I’ll start:
Steam Deck: krax
Smartphone: krix (once I get LineageOS installed again)
MiniPC: krux
Reserved for future use: krex & krox
Creative, I know. 😅 The names have no deeper meaning. The x comes from Linux. That’s it.
I know some of you use god names of certain pantheons, such as Thor. But I find that boring as a lot of people are doing that.
Now let your pants down and tell me all about
your embarrassing host names!
I self-host for learning and fun. So I name my home servers with the car names.
Server Hostname car name RaspberryPi cooper Mini Cooper Old Laptop Raptor Ford F150 Raptor PC Hummer Hummer For my servers I try to use names from the Final Fantasy universe. Lately been focusing on FFXI end game bosses.
Kirin (opnsense firewall) Byakko (proxmox host) Tiamat (proxmox backup) Shiva (Nas)
The only clever virtual machine names I care to brag about are: DockBox (VM running docker) Jellxc (proxmox lxc running jellyfin)
I use the names of greek deities for my host names, mostly geared towards the function of the server/computer.
- Nyx (dark-blue laptop)
- Hypnos (gaming machine)
- Argus (pi-hole and reverse proxy)
- Prometheus (minecraft server)
I originally named all my hardware after members of the Wu-Tang Clan plus some close affiliates, but I actually ran out of names, so now I use MFDOOM aliases for my workstations, and keep Wu-Tang for infrastructure, because it’s for the children.
I take a word that’s related to the purpose of the new host and put it in an online translator and cycle through languages until I get something cool.
What names has this process come up with?
I use the most boring names: LASTNAME-LAPTOP LASTNAME-PHONE LASTNAME-SERVER LASTNAME-ROUTER
But, living in tight suburban spaces, I’m never confused whether a device is mine or somebody else’s.
My home network is called The IT Clowd with these devices:
- Moss - physical server
- Roy - physical server
- Jen - vm - main docker host
- Richmond - vm - *arr stack
- Denholm - vm - management, monitoring
- Douglas - vm - Home Assistant stack
- Basement - vm - development server
Lol your arr stack.
"Jen what did you do?! I told you never open that door!"
Y’all are too creative for me… I have:
- poweredge-r520-0
- poweredge-t620-0
- poweredge-t620-1
- pi4-0
- pi3b-0
- pi3b-1
- pi3b-2
- pi3b-3
- vostro-3525-0
- ideapad-c340-0
localhost
Why: for privacy/anonymity concerns
Hmm, what does localhost.local do if you use mdns?
Also, your router must be a bit confusing:
- localhost - 192.168.1.2
- localhost - 192.168.1.3
- …