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!
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My phone’s name is “Samsung Smart Fridge™” because I think it’s hilarious if someone is looking at hotspots or network info and go “what the hell is a fridge doing here-”
I usually name my devices after Greek gods and godesses; Artemis, Hermes, Metis, Athena, Apollo etc.
Shit I thought I was so damn novel. Blast you.
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?
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.
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.
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.
You have a mighty big hand if you reach l and a with the same one
Mine just moves 😉
This is the way.
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.
Colour + noun:
- redbug
- bluecar
- yellowboat
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 - monitoring, logging
- Douglas - vm - Home Assistant stack
- Basement - vm - development server
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
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.
my local hostnames are all David Bowie related. I have: outside (my laptop) blackstar (server 1) starman (server 2) heros (desktop1)
I use zerg units.
- NAS is named Nydus
- Homelab with a GPU is Hydralisk
- Jail instance that I can use for random cron jobs is Drone
Huh. I thought for sure someone else would be using my scheme.
LAN computers are all Tolkien swords: sting, orcrist, gurthang, glamdring, etc. If I run out of swords, I’ll start adding other weapons: aeglost, the spear; dailir, the arrow. We don’t get a lot of named battle axes, which I always thought weird; I’d think dwarves of all people would forge legendary axes, and certainly name them.
My WiFi and VPN networks are forests in Middle Earth: fangorn, bindbole, dimholt, lothlorien, etc. The only exception is my LAN itself which is… “lan”. Because short.
My cloud VPSes are named after Greek Titans: hyperion, phaethusa, tethys, etc.
Mobile devices have whatever names they come with, because they’re so ephemeral.
I like your schema. I’ve used something similar. My hosts have always been sci-fi space/time ships/stations, user accounts are characters from or Captain’s of said vessels. Over the years I’ve had a TARDIS, Serenity, Moya, Out of Bands II, Galactica, Millennium Falcon, Rocinante, etc. It’s usually whatever I happen to be discovering or binging at the time I setup the machine. For nearly a decade the TARDIS was my server/NAS because it was bigger on the inside that survived through several generations of smaller devices like laptops and raspberry Pi’s named after smaller lighter vessels like Serenity and Rocinante.
Thanks! I’ve learned in jobs over the years that there are two good ways to choose names:
- Descriptive acronyms: AppDev01Loc01. They’re useful in business and large teams, and dull as shit. But practical.
- Mythos with a lot of variation. Characters from your favorite novel is usually bad, because you quickly run out of names. Mythos are usually good, dinosaurs… anything with a lot of variation.
“Sci fi starships” is a great one! Lots of source material there; the categories basically fall out by themselves. That’s a great choice.
In the past, I used Gimli’s family tree for server names. My main server was called “Thorin”. I think I had used Thrain and Gloin.
These days I use Union generals from the civil war:
Sherman - NAS, media server, nextcloud. Thomas - reverse proxy, adguard1. Ellsworth - arr stack. Sheridan - backup server. dockerhost01 - because naming your servers after their function makes a lot more sense.
In the past, I used Gimli’s family tree for server names.
Oh, that’s good.
Middle Earth is a great source for this stuff, b/c Tolkien filled out the world like a historian.
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…
I envy you so much
Wait until I tell you about all the small issues this zoo of devices brings with it… haha.
I’ve always done characters from Beatles songs
- Walrus
- Martha
- Her-Majesty
- Submarine
- MissLizzy
- Blackbird
- NowhereMan
- SgtPepper
- Jojo
