Ep2 Yunohost Post Install

The post install steps for Yunohost

Quick bit of housekeeping to do first.

I've set up a new email to seperate mail from ones for my podcasts and personal. The new email you need to send in tips, questions or just stories of your experiences with setting up your own self hosted project. Send them to unkleb@boneheadmedia.com I've got some fun episodes coming up. I'm going to be doing an "app of the week" on both the audio podcast as well as the vidcast. Which by the way the podcast is about DNS this week. You should check it out. Even though you dont really need to know about DNS if you are just installing Yunohost for yourself and using their domain, you should still understand what it is. Also I'm considering purchasing a VPS and migrating my stuff there. But that of course is going to require me to spend money that the wife wont let me spend. Lol. Happy wife = Happy life. So I'm thinking of accepting donations through Librepay or Open Collective.

But there are some caveats I want to go over.

  1. I will only spend what is needed to keep the server going! (There is a couple of shows right there on migrating to a VPS from a home server!)
  2. Anything after what is spent on hosting for the month I will randomally pick 5 open source projects and take a poll on Mastodon. The one with the most votes will get the remainder of the donation.

Post-Installation

The step called "post-installation" is actually the initial configuration of YunoHost. It has to be done just after the installation of the system itself. From the web interface

You can perform the post-installation with the web interface by entering in your browser :

the local IP address of your server if it is on your local network (e.g. at home !). The address typically looks like 192.168.x.y (see 'Find your IP' on the page about SSH) the public IP address of your server if your server is not on your local network. Typically, if you own a VPS, your VPS provider should have given you the IP of the server.

During the first visit, you will very likely encounter a security warning related to the certificate used by the server. For now, your server uses a self-signed certificate. You will later be able to add a certificate automatically recognized by web browsers as described in the certificate documentation. For now, you should add a security exception to accept the current certificate.

From the command line

You can also perform the postinstallation with the command directly on the server or through ssh.

 yunohost tools postinstall 
Informations asked

Main domain

This is the first domain name linked to your YunoHost server, but also the one which will be used by your server's users to access the authentication portal. It will thus be visible by everyone, choose it wisely.

If you do not have a domain name, or if you want to use the YunoHost's DynDNS service, choose a sub-domain of .nohost.me, .noho.st or .ynh.fr (e.g. homersimpson.nohost.me). Provided that it's not already taken, the domain will be configured automatically and you won't need any further configuration step.

If you do know what DNS is, you probably want to configure your own domain name here. In this case, please refer to the DNS page page for more informations.

If you don't own a domain name and don't want a .nohost.me, .noho.st or .ynh.fr, you can use a local domain. The idea is to configure your router to redirect a local domain name to your server. For example you could create the yunohost.local domain redirecting to your server in your router, and now every device on the network will be redirected to your server when accessing yunohost.local. More information on how to setup a local domain can be found here.

Administration password

This password will be used to access to your server's administration interface. You would also use it to connect via SSH or SFTP. In general terms, this is your system's key, choose it carefully.

  • If you're self-hosting at home and without a VPN, you need to make sure to correctly forward ports on your router/Internet forward ports on your router/Internet box ;
  • If you're using your own domain name (i.e. not a .nohost.me / .noho.st), you need to configure it according to the recommended DNS configuration recommended DNS configuration ;
  • If you cannot configure your domain name yet (because you didn't register it yet, or because this is a test domain), see last paragraph here here for a workaround ;
  • Don't be too afraid of the certificate warning, you'll probably be able to install a Let's Encrypt certificate install a Let's Encrypt certificate :).
  • Have a look at the available apps available apps !