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!
Desktop: HAL9000
laptop: HALjr
Phone: HALnano
Then HALserver, HALprinter (octoprint), HALhome (home assistant) and so on… Big fan of Stanley Kubrick haha
Tried to get the hal9.ooo domain name but it was taken…
Edit: I use Dave as the username, so that in the terminal it is dave@hal9000, which just seems appropriate
My devices are cringely named after songs in Haken’s discography.
Desktop is MESSIAH. Laptop is AFFINITY. Phone is NIGHTINGALE. Steam Deck is SHAPESHIFTER. Router (and its WAP) is PORTALS. My NAS is the only one that falls outside of this, it’s generically (last name)NetNAS. I should rename it, but I don’t want to break anything 😅
Eta: changed my NAS’ hostname is ARCHITECT. Nothing broke! Yay for me.
This is my favorite of the thread.
You can even call one Host, haha.
Shit, you’re right!
Sounds like a good option for a VPS.
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 envy you so much
Wait until I tell you about all the small issues this zoo of devices brings with it… haha.
What happens if you add another RPi?
I might rename them. So, e.g. if I’d add another Pi5, the existing one would become
rpi5-1and the new onerpi5-2.
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.
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.
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.
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’m in the name after location and function fraction. All but my printer, he’s named Cthulhu because printers are a menace to humanity and it supports wake-on-LAN.
Amen
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
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
Finally someone who actually uses a Vostro. Always found that name unreasonably funny.
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.
I am a simple person.
My PC: Panda
My wifes PC: notpanda
Docker VM: dockerhost.homeFedora is called fed. Ubuntu is ubu. Laptop is laptop 🌝
Naming scheme like John Wick with his dog.
What happens if you decide to use Fedora or Ubuntu on two devices?
Physical machines (except my gaming PC) get Ratchet & Clank character names, and matching labels to go with it. My trusty sidekick Thinkpad T14 G1 is named “Clank”. It runs LMDE.
VMs and LXCs get actually-descriptive names, since those are what run my services.
Gaming PC is called “Dagny”; it’s a Scandinavian name for “a new day”, since that PC was a gift to myself after my divorce. It’s currently the only Windows machine in my house now.
Usually, some type of pun based on the hardware.
I do marvel weapons/artifacts:
Phone: Mjolnir
Tablet: Stormbreaker
Laptop: Darkhold
Earbuds: I.C.E.R
Backup NAS: EyeOfAgamotto
Etc, etc 😅
I select hostnames drawn from the ordinal numerals of whatever language I happen to be trying to learn. Recently, it was Japanese so the first host was named “ichiro”, the second as “jiro”, the third as “saburo”.
Those are the romanized spellings of the original kanji characters: 一郎, 二郎, and 三郎. These aren’t the ordinal numbers per-se (eg first, second, third) but are an old way of assigning given names to male children. They literally mean “first son”, “second son”, “third son”.
Previously, I did French ordinal numbers, and the benefit of naming this way is that I can enumerate a countably infinite number of hosts lol
That’s an interesting take! Maybe I should do that too, when I restart learning Italian again.
Une, due, tre. Short and simple enough for me!
Or I go the masochist route and name them il ragazzo, la ragazza, i ragazzi and le ragazze. :D
