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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Characters from the Murderbot Dairies, mostly
- main laptop (t480 currently) – Murderbot;
- previous main laptop (x270) – MB20;
- homeserver – ART;
- a TV box running armbian – Miki;
- t440p is currently Behemoth (from Bulgakov’s “Мастер и Маргарита”), although I’ll probably rename it to Holism;
- x230t – Three;
- a random thin client I occasionally use to test stuff is yogurt (from" love, death & robots"), not sure if I’ll rename them.
So many answers!!
First it was from planets from Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish cycle.
Now it’s the names of birds visiting my feeder: chickadee, titmouse, mockingbird, etc.
This is the most solar punk answer ever! XD Love it. That’s really neat. I struggle so much with naming schemes.
I don’t have a whole network setup like the rest of you guys, but I’ve been naming my desktop pc’s SHODAN ever since I built my first one. Secondary/partner’s pc is named XERXES. I’ll probably never change them.
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.
One possibility could be because in conventional “computer counting” in (most) coding languages, it starts at zero. Like if I make an array of things
[]monke would be
[]chimp would be
[]peanut would be
[]Once I learned about this concept I started naming enumerated things from 0 usually just to keep a kind of consistency. Maybe I think if it’s a habit, I won’t make those mistakes as often with code. I dunno. :p
Use Lua, it uses one-based arrays. This is nice for a few reasons:
- last element is array[length]
- zero can be reserved for the type (especially nice for representing XML: 0 = node name, 1-N = children, named table entries = attributes)
- very rarely see
+ 1and- 1in my code
It feels wrong coming from C, but it’s actually really nice, especially since the reasons C does it don’t apply (i.e. index is just a memory offset).
Finally someone who actually uses a Vostro. Always found that name unreasonably funny.
my local hostnames are all David Bowie related. I have: outside (my laptop) blackstar (server 1) starman (server 2) heros (desktop1)
Solar System objects for my local network and names of extra solar objects for my offside servers. With all the moons and named trans neptunian objects in the solar system I so far had no issues finding a hostname candidate.
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.
Why limit yourself to the penguins?
Naming my devices after stars. Specifically stars in Ursa-Major
Desktop: alioth Laptop: alkaid Smartphone: alcor SteamDeck: dubhe Server: sarir
I usually use pokémon, typically from the first few generations.
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.
I Used Gondolin for my PC but after reinstalling I didn’t put it back on and left the default
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
I do the same but Egyptian
fuck, this is way better than my current naming scheme of "customer-<devicepurpose>, I’m stealing it for my next setup.
My personal use devices are all some variation of Pingu (eg. iPingu, Pingtendo etc.), and my NAS devices are based off Pokémon puns (Storlax and Archivysaur currently).
My wife on the other hand is boring, so her’s are just system default.
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
You have a mighty big hand if you reach l and a with the same one
Mine just moves 😉
Yes, yours too.
- Cthulhu (primary server)
- Azathoth (backup server)
- Nyarlathotep (main laptop)
- Shodan (router)
- Theseus (rebuilt thinkpad x220)
