this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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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. πŸ˜… 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. Β 
Β 
Β 

Now let your pants down and tell me all about

your embarrassing host names!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They're all some kind of machine. Steam deck: SteamMachineryV1

PC: ArchMachineryV2

Phone: Android_ΞΌMachine

Oddly enough my server goes by MonoVerse, which I named first and I guess it just stuck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Ubiquitous and Tiamat are my servers, Polyglotal for my home assistant voice endpoint, and some more. Points for the reference

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My media server is called "The_Nexus."

My phone when I host anything on it is "The Hackinator 9000" because I think it would be funny for a normie to see and freak out.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
  • Omnigon: refers to my network and server overall
  • Terragon: Utility desktop
  • Pyrogon: Gaming desktop
  • Aquagon: Laptop
  • Aerogon: Phone
  • Sonogon: RPi sound server
  • Minigon: Cyberdeck
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Named mine after "objects" from Iain M. Banks' Culture Novels.

Currently I have:

  • gsv
  • hub
  • excession
  • drone

Nice and short, and map roughly to the "power level" of the hardware, so to speak.

And my Yubikeys are named after Special Circumstances agents πŸ˜„

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Hardware hosts usually get a mix of hardware description and main use, e.g. en old Esprimo with Proxmox is esprimox. Virtual hosts are garden themed - auth server is mycel, monitoring will be called canopy once I move it, VM with lots of docker stuff is garden etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I gave up on cute or clever names a while ago; now I go with β€œstorage0”, β€œrouter0”, β€œwap00”, β€œvmhost0”. Always with a numeric suffix because there will be a -1, -2 some day.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Too many hosts.
Current scheme: British towns names. They are quite unique.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Depends on how many hostnames I need. If I just need 2, using opposite duals is fun, {romeo,ruliet}.shakespeare.com. 4 I almost always use cardinal directions or the seasons; {north,south,east,west}.domain.com or {spring,summer,fall,winter}.domain.com.

If I need a lot of potential subdomains, you can't beat the Greek or NATO alphabet, giving you 24 and 26 hostnames respectively which can be further enhanced by using the purpose of the server with the alphabet;

  • beta-w02.domain.com # second webserver on beta
  • beta-db02.domain.com # second db on beta
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I use readable names.

I'm using one system for testing purposes, so it's called testingPC.

Any containers are named for the container purposes, like my pihole is named pihole.

My system is so boring that any person were to pick it up after I got hit by a bus would be able to figure out everything.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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: δΈ€ιƒŽ, δΊŒιƒŽ, and δΈ‰ιƒŽ. 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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Usually, some type of pun based on the hardware.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Charybdis, hippo, appa, Momo, pabu

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Internal server (Home Assistant etc.): domus
External server (Nextcloud etc.): nimbus
Router/firewall: murus

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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.com

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm missing the rpi1 in that list. Please fix ASAP.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I name them after a female important character in whatever novel I'm enjoying when I set the system up. Back when I was single the female was important, now it is just tradition.

Since I like fantasy there are plenty of names available that are both pronounceable and nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I call them after what service is running on it. E.g. openvpn.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I went with alpha, beta, gamma ...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I do marvel weapons/artifacts:

Phone: Mjolnir

Tablet: Stormbreaker

Laptop: Darkhold

Earbuds: I.C.E.R

Backup NAS: EyeOfAgamotto

Etc, etc πŸ˜…

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

fuck, this is way better than my current naming scheme of "customer-<devicepurpose>, I'm stealing it for my next setup.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Desktop: 30p87
Laptop: 30p87-laptop
Phone: 30p87-phone
Server: 30p87-server
DNS server at location bv: 30p87-dns-bv
DNS server at location db: 30p87-dns-db
Switch at location bv: 30p87-bottom-bv
Switch at location db: 30p87-bottom-db

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is that a new kind of masochism?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Markdown only inserting newlines on two spaces certainly is. Apart from that, only practical.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I didn't meant the newlines. ^^

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Jup. But they (or rather: their non-existence) are certainly an eyesore

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Desktop: Octiron
Laptop: Octogen
Phone: Octarine

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Fedora is called fed. Ubuntu is ubu. Laptop is laptop 🌝

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