Comment by 🚀 stack
Re: "Self-hosting with an old laptop"
Pick a weird port number for SSH and lock all other poers
I do all development on a 10-year old box or same ageThinkpad 460. Old equipment is fine, maybe a little less power-efficient.
2025-12-24 · 4 months ago
8 Later Comments ↓
🚀 RubyMaelstrom · Dec 24 at 12:47:
Another ssh trick is to only unlock it for IPv6 traffic and connect to it that way. Almost no malicious traffic comes through IPv6...yet. You can also do it on a weird port and only allow key access, no password, as had already been suggested. Combine them all into a giant robot of security!
📻 Anchorite · Dec 24 at 13:37:
I have a very similar setup with a much older laptop, a 2010 Panasonic Toughbook. I run Proxmox on it with a few containers, including an instance of Mediawiki that's exposed to the web behind Cloudflare and a reverse proxy running Caddy so I can have multiple services under different subdomains, including potentially a gemini capsule if this becomes my next ADHD hyperfixation.
It works well enough for me. I would highly reccommend setting up a DMZ in your home network if you haven't already done so.
Can I do it on an old android?
highly recommend picking a weird port for SSH!! default gets too much noise
That laptop, to me, is not within entirely shitty range. It's good you are putting it to use. I lost a tower this year I had since around 2007.
🐦 wasolili [...] · Dec 24 at 15:55:
Should I run the server over a VPN, or even go Tor-only, for personal safety reasons?
It depends on what your safety concerns are. If you just don't want people who visit your capsule to get your home ip address, you could use your cheap vps as a reverse proxy.
I have a play server running on a laptop from 2014, so yeah, it's a fine idea!
Personally I *do* have ssh running on it, but I *don't* have the ssh port forwarded in from the outside internet. I can only ssh in from within my home network.
Also, my laptop's DVD drive stopped working for years, but turned out it was because the battery was getting puffy and pressing on it. My touchpad also started getting glitchy for the same reason. Replacing the battery fixed that.
👤 travisshears · Dec 25 at 06:48:
Since you already have a VPS, probably with static IP, I would route all public traffic though it. Then connect both it and the old laptop to a VPN like Tailscale. Host the apps on the laptop say with docker. That’s my setup.
Original Post
Self-hosting with an old laptop — I have a piece of hardware which I do not intend to use as a desktop machine ever again. It's a cheap and shitty HP laptop from 2019. AMD A6 processor, 8GB of RAM, 1TB spinning hard disk, and a DVD drive that hasn't worked in over a year. Since I have hardware from 2007 that is nicer to use than this machine, I was thinking of turning it into a server. I'd probably either install Proxmox, Alpine, HardenedBSD, or OpenBSD, and spin up a couple of lightweight...