Home Server Setup

I have this old, broken laptop, which was sitting at a corner of the home gathering dust. Ultimately, I decided to put it to a good use, by converting it as a home server.

Basically, I wanted my server to be a media server which contains all of my movies, TV shows and anime. So, I grabbed the Ubuntu server ISO and then flashed it to a USB. Upon booting, I noticed that there was no way to connect to WiFi and the only way to connect to the internet was through LAN. Since, it would to be difficult for me to run a LAN cable from one corner to another, I decided to load something lightweight.

I, then downloaded Lubuntu, which is one of the lightweight distro out there. After installing it successfully, I then installed Open SSH and SFTP. With the help of SSH, I could control my newly created server from my other laptop and even from a phone, with the help of Termux.

I then began to host the services which I required for my server. The first one being Emby, a media server to play all the locally stored moves, anime and TV shows. Next on the list was Aria2, a lightweight multi-protocol & multi-source, cross platform download utility. Lastly, a qbittorrent server, to download torrents.

It amazes me that one broken laptop can be put to such a good use. With this now I have my very personal Netflix, which I can enjoy anytime. Previously, I used to stay from anything that deals with server stuff because I thought I didn’t have those skills to work on it, but now that fear has gone way and hopefully in future I treat myself with a better and bigger server setup.