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!
- Omnigon: refers to my network and server overall
- Terragon: Utility desktop
- Pyrogon: Gaming desktop
- Aquagon: Laptop
- Aerogon: Phone
- Sonogon: RPi sound server
- Minigon: Cyberdeck
Where’s Demogorgon?
Just to the left of Demimoore.
I name my devices after greek gods based on what I’m going in life at the time or after what their purpose is.
I named my first gaming PC “Poseidon” when I was doing ship related work. Now it’s my server.
My gaming PC is “Asclepius”, the Greek god of healing. Built when I got into healthcare.
Hermes, god of messeges, is my lil pi that helps with routing (pihole, pivpn, nginx).
My HTPC is Dionysus, Greek god of wine and parties.
My thinkpad is Persephone cus it looks good but doesn’t do much. I might rename it.
The services that I run on these are just named “device-service” e.g. hermes-nginx
fuck, this is way better than my current naming scheme of "customer-<devicepurpose>, I’m stealing it for my next setup.
I do the same but Egyptian
MacBook Pro:
mbp.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 2:rpi2.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 3:rpi3.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 4:rpi4.domain.com
Raspberry Pi 5:rpi5.domain.com
(Yes, I have one of each.)
Synology DS415+:ds415.domain.com
Phone:iphone.domain.com
Watch:watch.domain.com
AppleTV:appletv.domain.com
Nintendo Switch:switch.domain.comI’m missing the rpi1 in that list. Please fix ASAP.
That one was called just
rpi.domain.com, but didn’t stand the test of time…
What happens if you add another RPi?
I might rename them. So, e.g. if I’d add another Pi5, the existing one would become
rpi5-1and the new onerpi5-2.
I envy you so much
Wait until I tell you about all the small issues this zoo of devices brings with it… haha.
AI from fiction:
HAL M.O.T.H.E.R AM Jarvis
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
I have to ask, why start with 0? I never understood this with infrastructure. I would do something like 00000 if I did numbers so it would be easy to sort, but I always started with 1. I’m just curious.
First non negative integer so easy for computer to display.
I only really use zero in networking names to correspond with an IPv4 address that ends with dot zero.
I think it’s just what you’re used to. Like counting bottom to top in teleco versus counting top to bottom in IT.
One possibility could be because in conventional “computer counting” in (most) coding languages, it starts at zero. Like if I make an array of things
[monke, chimp, peanut]monke would be
[0]chimp would be
[1]peanut would be
[2]Once I learned about this concept I started naming enumerated things from 0 usually just to keep a kind of consistency. Maybe I think if it’s a habit, I won’t make those mistakes as often with code. I dunno. :p
Use Lua, it uses one-based arrays. This is nice for a few reasons:
- last element is array[length]
- zero can be reserved for the type (especially nice for representing XML: 0 = node name, 1-N = children, named table entries = attributes)
- very rarely see
+ 1and- 1in my code
It feels wrong coming from C, but it’s actually really nice, especially since the reasons C does it don’t apply (i.e. index is just a memory offset).
Finally someone who actually uses a Vostro. Always found that name unreasonably funny.
This is basically how I do it too.
I used to be more creative but then I got in the habit of running more servers and swapping hardware more frequently so it got harder to remember what hardware I was actually connecting to. Now they get hardware based names and everything else is named by service-based Ansible roles.
The printer’s name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.
It never wants to work and always complains.
my local hostnames are all David Bowie related. I have: outside (my laptop) blackstar (server 1) starman (server 2) heros (desktop1)
I’ve always done characters from Beatles songs
- Walrus
- Martha
- Her-Majesty
- Submarine
- MissLizzy
- Blackbird
- NowhereMan
- SgtPepper
- Jojo
Uhg y’all actually have creative names, here are mine:
My homelab - Pero-base
My main PC - Pero-main
My laptop - Pero-portable
My other server - Pero-webI swear I’m not a narcissist.
Nah, just a huge fan of barley tea.
My laptop is called xontros-gatos, which in my native language means fat-cat. Similarly, my server is called server-cat, a small laptop that I have for testing stuff is called small-cat and a new laptop that I just got is called fatter-cat.
I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS I LIKE CATS
I bet your whole network is connected by CAT. :P
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!"
When I was 18 and in my first job, my boss and I installed the very first windows NT file servers for a major uk public sector organisation. They were all named after beers that we’d drunk on team nights out. We had Blacksheep, Tanglefoot, Snecklifter, and so on. They were in a test environment so it didn’t matter. Until they went into production…
That was over 30 years ago now, but I still usually resort to beers.
Slightly unrelated but when my family was remodeling our kitchen in the home I grew up in, we pulled the oven out and found the side of the cabinet had an interesting scrawl on it that must’ve been from one of the builders:
“When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”
I found it so amusing wondering what the motive behind that was. So I guess your hostnames kinda reminded me of hidden beer-related tradesman graffiti. XD
I use Alps bigger peaks for the hosts like:
- Castore
- Polluce
- Lyskamm
- Gnifetti
- etc.
(yes, mainly from Monte Rosa) and smaller peaks for the VMs:
- Grigna
- Grignetta
- Resegone
- Cornizzolo
- Palanzone
- etc.
Three-letter words that can be typed with one hand, since I have to type them frequently.
$ egrep "^([qwertasdfgzxcvb]{3}|[yuiophjkllnm]{3})$" /usr/share/dict/wordsUsername checks out
Yes, yours too.
? A and L are on opposite ends of the keyboard.
You have a mighty big hand if you reach l and a with the same one
Mine just moves 😉
Hmm, this wouldn’t work well for me since I use Dvorak. All the vowels are on the left and the most common consonants are on the right.
My consonant options on the left hand are: py (top) and jkxb (bottom).
This is the way.
I only have 1 box really, it’s named Hal. Seems helpful, not entirely sure if it’s on my side. Could murder me. I keep an analog shotgun next to it.
