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!
Hello!
Well I’m having the following hostnames on my LAN:
- betelgeuse (Beelink server with Proxmox)
- altair (an another Beelink server with Proxmox)
- eudora (outgoing SMTP server)
- polaris (my laptop)
- epsilon (my desktop)
Have fun!
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)
My two wifi bands have always been Castor and Pollux.
The printer’s name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.
It never wants to work and always complains.
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.
Server (big iron): Bender
Desktop (main character): Fry
Laptop (for accounting): Hermes
Netbook (small and dumb): Nibbler
Phone (held to my head): BrainSlug
HTPC (one big viewport): Leela
This is my scheme as well! Pretty much to the t. Except my HTPC is hypnotoad and nibbler is my NAS.
OMG Hypnotoad HTPC is so much better! Why didn’t I thnnk of that?
Every computer I own is an autobot. My primary machine is always Optimus Prime, has been since 2008. Other machines get other names generally slightly inspired by their role / nature. Bumblebee and CliffJumper are miniPCs of various persuasions, Preceptor is my “mess around with AI” box, my big server that handles most of my data and network services is Wheeljack, my Macbook is Mirage, my backup server is Powerglide, my TV (which is an old Dell all in One running Linux Mint) is UltraMagnus.
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!"
Asterix & Obelix themed.
- Asterix is a rpi4, strong and small with ssd running dockers with homeassistant, revproxy and webserver, and camera storage.
- Idefix is a rpi3, mainly test only nowadays.
- Obelix is my desktop running voidlinux.
I used to have Pneumatix which is the mailman as the mail server and Panoramix, the druid, as domoticz server, Heroix, chief, as firewall and Bellefleur, beauty, as webserver 😉 All were LXD virtual servers on a pentium 3. I try to find a character matching the functionality. Except for domoticz all are now dockers on Asterix, so less use of funny names.
Non linux machines would be roman names from Asterix & Obelix, but I have none …
At work we used famous dogs. Laika, Pluto, Cerberus etc
I just memorise the IPs lmao. then again I only have 1 or 2 hosts up on my network ever
References to The Dark Tower or Murakami characters.
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?
Used to be names from Neuromancer like “ono-sendai” and variations of that.
Now laptop is “flat”, server is named after it’s purpose like log, mail, mon, hosting, storage, etc.
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
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
- …
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.