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!
Used to be names from Neuromancer like “ono-sendai” and variations of that.
Now laptop is “flat”, server is named after it’s purpose like log, mail, mon, hosting, storage, etc.
Every computer I own is an autobot. My primary machine is always Optimus Prime, has been since 2008. Other machines get other names generally slightly inspired by their role / nature. Bumblebee and CliffJumper are miniPCs of various persuasions, Preceptor is my “mess around with AI” box, my big server that handles most of my data and network services is Wheeljack, my Macbook is Mirage, my backup server is Powerglide, my TV (which is an old Dell all in One running Linux Mint) is UltraMagnus.
References to The Dark Tower or Murakami characters.
The printer’s name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.
It never wants to work and always complains.
Asterix & Obelix themed.
- Asterix is a rpi4, strong and small with ssd running dockers with homeassistant, revproxy and webserver, and camera storage.
- Idefix is a rpi3, mainly test only nowadays.
- Obelix is my desktop running voidlinux.
I used to have Pneumatix which is the mailman as the mail server and Panoramix, the druid, as domoticz server, Heroix, chief, as firewall and Bellefleur, beauty, as webserver 😉 All were LXD virtual servers on a pentium 3. I try to find a character matching the functionality. Except for domoticz all are now dockers on Asterix, so less use of funny names.
Non linux machines would be roman names from Asterix & Obelix, but I have none …
At work we used famous dogs. Laika, Pluto, Cerberus etc
Rock types and Greek gods. Everything from emerald to Aphrodite.
I have pebble, pabble, pibble, rebble, rabble, ribble and nibble.
Though the primary server is old enough that it was from a time when I named everything after Transformers, so it’s Shockwave.
pretty new setup but so far I’ve got
symmetra - synology dsm (nas)
junkrat - intel nuc main serverneed to name my desktop/laptop now and maybe networking gear. thinking ramattra for the router and zenyatta for the bridge
I go for the unoriginal but oh so simple: location-type-No
So HL-SRV-01 is “homelab server no 1”
HS-DSK-02 is “House desktop no2”
NA-LPT-01 is “Not Applicable” because this is my admin laptop that I expect to move around a lot so I always treat it as high-risk.
Mine are named after the penguins from the Madagascar movie : Skipper, Private, Kowalski, and Rico.
Unfortunately there’s only four so I often supplement with a suffix. For example, I’ve got an old windows laptop kicking around that is “rico-w”
… I should really commit to a naming scheme with a wider array of options.
I named mine after Rocket League cars.
- Octane (main desktop)
- Breakout (laptop)
- Dominus (laptop; older, larger)
localhost
Why: for privacy/anonymity concerns
Hmm, what does localhost.local do if you use mdns?
Also, your router must be a bit confusing:
- localhost - 192.168.1.2
- localhost - 192.168.1.3
- …
Fixes IP for me, but I admit I don’t have a lot of services to access to like OP does
I started with pirates of the carribean, so…
blackpearl: main PC Redpearl: raspberry pi Purplepearl: refurbished laptop. The router is … router
The phone is zizidane (“donkey dick” in French, also playword on Zinedine Zidane).
I have three Proxmox nodes named:
acid1
,freebones
, and a partially decommissioned node aptly namedpve
acid1 was named from a sticker I got in a big collection. I was extra sold on the name when I did some research into acid1 tests.
freebones is from an inside joke from a GPT3.5 bot I terribly finetuned using my friend groups entire chat history. At one point the bot randomly said “algebra: you get free bones” and I kind of just ran with that
I have node named pve too. Small world.
I’ve named my last few computers after planets, with disks named after moons.
When I worked at Microsoft they had all kinds of clusters - OurGang with Spanky, Darla, Alfalfa… Addams with Gomez etc, Disney with Mickey, etc.
Same, all celestial names.
I’m similar, but it’s internal drives are planets, while external drives are moons.
When I run out of the solar system I’m going to move on to Star Wars.
Nice. I might copy your idea.