I have a base Debian template with a few tweaks I like for all my machines. Debating setting up something like terraform but I just don't spin up VMs frequently enough to wan tto do that. I do have a few Ansible playbooks I run on a fresh server to really get it to where I want though.

I use SSH to manage docker compose. I'm just using a raspberry pi right now so I don't have room for much more than Syncthing and Dokuwiki.

I'm all in on docker-compose + rootless podman. Definitely not no issues, but I've got the hang of the kinds of issues it presents at this point. They're mostly around SELinux and networking, thought generally the networking only gets problematic on exotic compose setups - jitsi was a huge pain for me.

Raw server with SSH and an immutable OS too. I'm using fedora IOT for my homeserver, and apart from some initial issues with GPU drivers because of layering issues (now working) that's been basically flawless.

I was on OpenSuse MicroOS, but I had huge problems with BTRFS and decided to give it up in favour of EXT4 + XFS. That necessitated moving distro, because MicroOS uses BTRFS snapshots as the basis for its auto-updating/green/blue system. Fedora IOT uses rpm-ostree instead, and works on any filesystem.

I've recently switched my entire self hosted infrastructure to NixOS, but only after a few years of evaluation, because it's quite a paradigm shift but well worth it imho.

Before that I used to stick to a solid base of Debian with some docker containers. There are still a few of those remaining that I have yet to migrate to my NixOS infra (namely mosquitto, gotify, nodered and portainer for managing them).

Probably the odd one here with Arch Linux + docker compose with still a lot of manual labor
updating it after maximum 4 weeks is enough, container more often

I run Debian + Docker, and use Portainer to manage the docker stacks

K

For years over done an Ubuntu LTS base with docker, but I've just recently started using debian base. Moved to debian for my workstation as well.

OpenMediaVault

I usually set up SSH keys and disable password login.

Then I git-pull my base docker-compose stack that sets up:

• Nginx proxy manager
• Portainer
• Frontend and backend networks

I have a handful of other docker-compose files that hook into that setup to make it easy to quickly deploy various services wherever in a modular way.

I'd like to use rootless podman, but since I include zerotier in my containers, they need access to the tunnel device and net_admin, so rootless isn't an option right now.

Podman-compose works for me. I'd like to learn how to use Ansible and Kubernetes, but right now, it's just my Lemmy VPS and my Raspberry Pi 4, so I don't have much need for automation at the moment. Maybe some day.

Cloud vps with debian. Then fix/update whatever weird or outdated image my vps provider gave me (over ssh). Then setup ssh certs instead of password. I use tmux a lot. Sometimes I have local scripts with scp to move some files around.

Usually I'm just hosting mosquitto, maybe apache2 webserver and WordPress or Flask. The latter two are only for development and get moved to other servers when done.

I don't usually use containers.

I'm better at hardware development than all this newfangled web stuff, so mostly just give me a command line without abstractions and I'm happy.

I have a bunch of different stuff, a dedicated server with Debian, 4 raspberry Pis + 1 micro computer that acts as a LB/Router/DHCP/DNS for the Pis.

In general I would say that my logic is as follows:

• Every OS change is done through Ansible. This sometimes is a pain, you want to just apt install X and instead you might need to create a new playbook for it, but in the long term, it paid off multiple times. I do have some default playbook that does basic config (user, SSH key provisioning, some default packages) and hardening (SSH config, iptables).
• I then try to keep the OS logic to a minimum, and do everything else as code. On my older dedicated server I run mostly docker-compose with Systemd + templated docker-compose files dropped by Ansible. The Pis instead run Kubernetes, with flux and all my applications are either directly managed via Flux or they have Helm in between. This means I can destroy a cluster, create another way, point it to my flux repository and I am pretty much back where I started.

For me it’s Ubuntu Server as the OS base, swag as reverse proxy and docker-compose for the services. So mostly SSH and yolo but with containers. I’d guess having something like Portainer running would probably be useful, but for me the terminal was enough.

As folder structure I just have a services directory with subfolders for each app/service.

I have a stupid overcomplicated networking script that never works. So every time i set up a new server I need to fix a myriad of weird issues I've never seen before. Usually I setup a server with a keyboard and mouse because SSH needs networking, if it's a cloud machine its the QEMU console or hundreds of reboots.

Proxmox + mostly Debian + currently documenting my builds for future automation.

Lots of snapshots and clones/backups, for in case I want to roll back, or in case I want a head start in the future.

For example, I have a couple LAMP stack VMs backed up. If I need another LAMP VM, I clone (restore-as-unique) the backup in Proxmox, twiddle a few settings to make it actually unique, and go.

I don't do Docker or anything like it currently, and eventually I'm sure I'll learn, but having a crapload of VMs (true VM or LXC) suits me just fine for now. I will likely learn how to do my deployments with Ansible before learning Docker et al.

A series of VPSes running AlmaLinux, I have a relatively big Ansible playbook to setup everything after the server goes online. The idea is that I can at any time scrape the server off, install an OS, put in all the persistent data (Docker volumes and /srv partition with all the heavy data), and run a playbok.

Docker Compose for services, last time I checked Podman, podman-compose didn't work properly, and learning a new orchestration tool would take an unjustifiable amount of time.

I try to avoid shell scripts as much as possible because they are hard to write in such a way so that they handle all possible scenarios, they are difficult to debug, and they can make a mess when not done properly. Premade scripts are usually the big offenders here, and they are I nice way to leave you without a single clue how the stuff they set up works.

I don't have a selfhosting addiction.

Kubernetes.

I deploy all of my container/Kubernetes definitions from Github:

https://github.com/JustinLex/jlh-h5b/tree/main/applications

Raspberry Pi with Alpine Linux and Docker containers. The thing really flies! While I try to keep it light I’m sometimes shocked how much stuff I can cram into Docker.

I like to use a host-based Postgres and Unbound from the package manager though; I advertise Unbound as the LAN DNS server to offer encryption.

(Rambling here: On my personal devices though I bypass that resolver and use one hosted on Fly (an Alpine Linux Docker image to be exact) so I can block ads, tracking and all that trash.)