<![CDATA[Photonamus Industries Forums - Self-Hosting / Infrastructure Discussion]]> https://forum.photonamus.com/ Wed, 30 Sep 2026 03:06:23 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[My Philosophy [How We Got Here]]]> https://forum.photonamus.com/showthread.php?tid=22 Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:14:08 +0000 Photonamus]]> https://forum.photonamus.com/showthread.php?tid=22
So what is the point am I just bragging on my forums? Not at all. Read what I just wrote in that line. My own forums exist and I am running the server I built from scratch loaded with a linux server flavor and then built all of this to run on it from scratch not a template. Well the site and it's stuff from scratch and all the forum themes. It's mybb by choice I wanted the classic stuff but modernized for a forum experience specifically. The site and forums are becoming a single seamless experience though. And this is the point. I swapped my entire experience out then built all this on the new one not the old one. This was ALL done while I was only 6 months into linux as a new user who never touched it.

Now if I can build all this as a new guy on linux and run 2 servers on my network with it and having never run a server I see no reason not to give it a shot just saying.

I'm not here to shout about how awesome linux is. It's an OS they all have quirks you need to learn and work around. What I am here to do is set a clear example of how easy it is to make a move that big in one shot. It is not impossible and this is evidence to prove that.

What else did I do? I took control over all of my stuff. I built every piece of hardware in my stack myself. I loaded all of it and made it do what I wanted. I don't have anyone between me and my stuff. I am one of those guys. I cut out middlemen and I do my own thing. That's the philosophy. It isn't new I am just making an example here and showing that it can be done this way. And just how far you can take all of it.

I think I am 6 weeks in now on this complete web stack build. Site needs some stuff I am a ways form done yet. Once it's up and built it just works. This is maybe an 8 week process today if you have something like claude code to use. I ran a 20 a month account and did all this at the speed of light. Most of my AI is local tooling not frontier model. I generate music with ACE-Step not suno. I use ComfyUI for graphics not some online paid stuff. My phones all have local models but can also request a model from my desktop from anywhere. Nothing like giving my phone the power of my pc on loan just saying.

I went further than my machine and servers. I completely removed windows from my network outside my kid's xbox and we are replacing that with a minipc soon. That's his next console not one because they are a scam box that charges a monthly fee to connect to his friends. He spends more time on his bazzite machine than he does that thing. We want to build a minipc and load it with steamos next. Notice we are building our own hardware and just using the free os. That's because I don't even agree with steam anymore.

Own your stuff fellas. Don't ask permission. It's easier than you think.]]>
So what is the point am I just bragging on my forums? Not at all. Read what I just wrote in that line. My own forums exist and I am running the server I built from scratch loaded with a linux server flavor and then built all of this to run on it from scratch not a template. Well the site and it's stuff from scratch and all the forum themes. It's mybb by choice I wanted the classic stuff but modernized for a forum experience specifically. The site and forums are becoming a single seamless experience though. And this is the point. I swapped my entire experience out then built all this on the new one not the old one. This was ALL done while I was only 6 months into linux as a new user who never touched it.

Now if I can build all this as a new guy on linux and run 2 servers on my network with it and having never run a server I see no reason not to give it a shot just saying.

I'm not here to shout about how awesome linux is. It's an OS they all have quirks you need to learn and work around. What I am here to do is set a clear example of how easy it is to make a move that big in one shot. It is not impossible and this is evidence to prove that.

What else did I do? I took control over all of my stuff. I built every piece of hardware in my stack myself. I loaded all of it and made it do what I wanted. I don't have anyone between me and my stuff. I am one of those guys. I cut out middlemen and I do my own thing. That's the philosophy. It isn't new I am just making an example here and showing that it can be done this way. And just how far you can take all of it.

I think I am 6 weeks in now on this complete web stack build. Site needs some stuff I am a ways form done yet. Once it's up and built it just works. This is maybe an 8 week process today if you have something like claude code to use. I ran a 20 a month account and did all this at the speed of light. Most of my AI is local tooling not frontier model. I generate music with ACE-Step not suno. I use ComfyUI for graphics not some online paid stuff. My phones all have local models but can also request a model from my desktop from anywhere. Nothing like giving my phone the power of my pc on loan just saying.

I went further than my machine and servers. I completely removed windows from my network outside my kid's xbox and we are replacing that with a minipc soon. That's his next console not one because they are a scam box that charges a monthly fee to connect to his friends. He spends more time on his bazzite machine than he does that thing. We want to build a minipc and load it with steamos next. Notice we are building our own hardware and just using the free os. That's because I don't even agree with steam anymore.

Own your stuff fellas. Don't ask permission. It's easier than you think.]]> <![CDATA[PhotonamusWeb - This Infrastructure]]> https://forum.photonamus.com/showthread.php?tid=19 Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:28:20 +0000 Photonamus]]> https://forum.photonamus.com/showthread.php?tid=19
I will cover the hardware I use and all of the costs involved (not much) and the process I used to get this all up and running the way it is now.

So first off let's get right into the core of this whole thing the hardware. What is PhotonamusWeb? That is the name of the server all of this runs off of. I run a pair of servers actually. The first is a tiny pi4 running 17 services that are all facing my own home network. It serves the house and any internal network stuff. We will cover that thing in a different post later on it needs it. And the other server is the one this stuff runs off of. This one has all the public outward facing stuff on it. 2 servers 2 jobs serving inward and outward from my network.

Ok so let's take a quick look at said hardware for a moment.

[Image: photonamus-web.jpg]
PhotonamusWeb — STGAubron ABR0222 Gaming Diamond
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 @ 3.60GHz (Haswell, 4 cores / 8 threads, LGA 1150)
Motherboard: STGAubron Intel B85 (LGA 1150, Haswell chipset)
RAM: 16GB DDR3 (2x 8GB @ 1333 MT/s)
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti 6GB GDDR6 (present but unused — headless)
Boot Drive: Western Digital Green 240GB SATA SSD
Storage Drive: Western Digital Blue 1TB SATA SSD (mounted at /mnt/storage)
Network: Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.0 (unused)
Chassis: Mid-tower, white, 8x RGB fans
OS: Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So this is our server and the site/forums and other stuff is all running off of this one little box. It is not breaking a sweat to do this. Is this fantastic hardware? Nope this is FREE hardware LOL. But it works and I have zero investment in hardware only my time. I cleanup the machine and went over everything made sure it was all working and in good order. A refurb job essentially. Once that was done I loaded it up with ubuntu server as a headless server. I did this from my own machine. Both servers work this way they are headless and I can ssh into them and use terminal to do the work. As for a web address? A .com address through cloudflare at the time of purchase was $10.48 USD. I also use claude code to write most of the stuff and get work done fast. So I have a $21.50 a month bill for that. Though once the site is up forums work and everything is built it becomes manageable from my end without anything else. Use the big tools to stand it up then build some systems to update and manage it and it just works basically. It's not exactly difficult these days or expensive either. No excuses get those servers up fellas we need em Smile
I will be coming back to this one with a lot more information on the process later but I wanted to at least give everyone a look at what is going on and how it became possible.
]]>
I will cover the hardware I use and all of the costs involved (not much) and the process I used to get this all up and running the way it is now.

So first off let's get right into the core of this whole thing the hardware. What is PhotonamusWeb? That is the name of the server all of this runs off of. I run a pair of servers actually. The first is a tiny pi4 running 17 services that are all facing my own home network. It serves the house and any internal network stuff. We will cover that thing in a different post later on it needs it. And the other server is the one this stuff runs off of. This one has all the public outward facing stuff on it. 2 servers 2 jobs serving inward and outward from my network.

Ok so let's take a quick look at said hardware for a moment.

[Image: photonamus-web.jpg]
PhotonamusWeb — STGAubron ABR0222 Gaming Diamond
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 @ 3.60GHz (Haswell, 4 cores / 8 threads, LGA 1150)
Motherboard: STGAubron Intel B85 (LGA 1150, Haswell chipset)
RAM: 16GB DDR3 (2x 8GB @ 1333 MT/s)
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti 6GB GDDR6 (present but unused — headless)
Boot Drive: Western Digital Green 240GB SATA SSD
Storage Drive: Western Digital Blue 1TB SATA SSD (mounted at /mnt/storage)
Network: Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.0 (unused)
Chassis: Mid-tower, white, 8x RGB fans
OS: Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So this is our server and the site/forums and other stuff is all running off of this one little box. It is not breaking a sweat to do this. Is this fantastic hardware? Nope this is FREE hardware LOL. But it works and I have zero investment in hardware only my time. I cleanup the machine and went over everything made sure it was all working and in good order. A refurb job essentially. Once that was done I loaded it up with ubuntu server as a headless server. I did this from my own machine. Both servers work this way they are headless and I can ssh into them and use terminal to do the work. As for a web address? A .com address through cloudflare at the time of purchase was $10.48 USD. I also use claude code to write most of the stuff and get work done fast. So I have a $21.50 a month bill for that. Though once the site is up forums work and everything is built it becomes manageable from my end without anything else. Use the big tools to stand it up then build some systems to update and manage it and it just works basically. It's not exactly difficult these days or expensive either. No excuses get those servers up fellas we need em Smile
I will be coming back to this one with a lot more information on the process later but I wanted to at least give everyone a look at what is going on and how it became possible.
]]>