I’ve been really busy these last few weeks setting up all sorts of IT related things since I moved to a new home with a 500 Mbps fiber connection to the mother-milk-tit we call the internet. I was really getting into learning all there is to know about the 100% free Sophos UTM for Home use. But when I messed up the whole configuration and basically broke it, I decided to forget about Sophos for now and rent a VPS server from a third party instead of hosting everything myself. I wish I’d done that sooner. All they gave me was a fresh Ubuntu installation and root access through SSH, but that’s all you need really. So I had some fun setting up that server as a web host with a solid, free web-admin panel. I’m not hosting any big websites or major content, simply some personal sites and a test lab environment that I consider my personal playground, but for grown-ups.
I also built three game servers. One for Counter-Strike 1.6, one for CS:Source and one for CS:GO. Basic administration for these are done by a pretty decent free admin panel . Also, I host a website that will retrieve the game server log files and convert them in to readable stats and shows them nicely on a website running a HLstats clone.
Also, an internet radio station that I set up is now live on air for 24/7, and it plays house music from between 1996 and 2006. Mostly the harder styles like techno, hard style and hardcore classics.
The thing that took me the most effort was to set up was a VPN server on this remote Linux server without a desktop environment. This is pretty easy to set up if you decide to use OpenVPN, but the thing is that I don’t want to be forced in using separate client software on my workstation/laptop. I wanted to be able to use the windows built-in options to create a VPN connection. Eventually I managed to get it to work after many hours of reading through forums and such. But, I can now safely connect to my remote server and administrate it without the need to open all sorts of exotic ports in the firewall.
Last thing I want to build is a server at a different address that will mirror all the sites I host. Including the databases, so that means I will have to read up a bit more on how to use the replicate function that MySQL offers. Afterward, I can start messing around with a load balancer. Work in progress!
I plan to post additional information about the things I’ve been working on this website that can be considered as step-by-step guides that everybody is free to use for themselves. But this has lower priority for me right now because next to all my little projects I also want to play some more of the new expansion Legion for World of Warcraft. It was released not long ago and everybody is making progress pretty fast, and I don’t want to fall behind all too far. I’m already behind in the sense that I’m not yet allowed to join raiding-groups, so one of my priorities in-game is to gather better gear so my item-level will be acceptable, so that I can join groups and experience the new raid content.
So many things to do, so little time.. oh no, wait, I actually have plenty of time!!
