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!
@Krik For my personal devices, i use the names of the 12 Colonies of Kobol from Battlestar Galactica. So I currently have 2 laptops: Aerilon and Caprica. When I get a new phone, I’ll probably name it Scorpia or Tauron.
Choosing a good naming scheme depends on how many you need, and how often you add to your collection.
If you need some inspiration, check out this list. https://namingschemes.com/Main_Page
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?
I only have 1 box really, it’s named Hal. Seems helpful, not entirely sure if it’s on my side. Could murder me. I keep an analog shotgun next to it.
My devices are named after planets from Doctor Who: mondas, telos, skaro, villengard.
I use characters from whichever book I’m reading at the time. Examples:
- Arya: From ASOIAF, a small but powerful Ultrabook
- Cthulhu: From HP Lovecraft, a huge 17" laptop
- Horus: From the Horus Heresy books, A powerful laptop
- Binky: Death’s white horse from discworld, a white desktop
- Peaches: A rat that always carries a book with her. My home server
When I was 18 and in my first job, my boss and I installed the very first windows NT file servers for a major uk public sector organisation. They were all named after beers that we’d drunk on team nights out. We had Blacksheep, Tanglefoot, Snecklifter, and so on. They were in a test environment so it didn’t matter. Until they went into production…
That was over 30 years ago now, but I still usually resort to beers.
Slightly unrelated but when my family was remodeling our kitchen in the home I grew up in, we pulled the oven out and found the side of the cabinet had an interesting scrawl on it that must’ve been from one of the builders:
“When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”
I found it so amusing wondering what the motive behind that was. So I guess your hostnames kinda reminded me of hidden beer-related tradesman graffiti. XD
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.
References to The Dark Tower or Murakami characters.
My little pony. My pihole is pinkypie, mediaserver trottingham, homeassistant is ponyville, and my backup server is canterlot. And so on… :)
No.
No you.
Got me
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
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.
I use names of bones for my different serves. I have metacarpus, clavicle, femur and coccyx.
Ha! Clever and humerus!
I guess with planets it always comes down to that funny one at some point
I originally named all my hardware after members of the Wu-Tang Clan plus some close affiliates, but I actually ran out of names, so now I use MFDOOM aliases for my workstations, and keep Wu-Tang for infrastructure, because it’s for the children.
The printer’s name is Marvin, from HHGTTG.
It never wants to work and always complains.
I use the names of greek deities for my host names, mostly geared towards the function of the server/computer.
- Nyx (dark-blue laptop)
- Hypnos (gaming machine)
- Argus (pi-hole and reverse proxy)
- Prometheus (minecraft server)
My two wifi bands have always been Castor and Pollux.