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This is the home for a most excellent book about self-hosting.

Welcome!ยถ

Steadfast Self-Hosting is an authentic and inspiring self-hosting tutorial by seasoned tech entrepreneur and self-hosting expert Adam Monsen. Benefit from Adamโ€™s decades of applied effort distilled into this quick and exciting initiation to data sovereignty.

Save money, time, and sanity
Learn an easy and reliable method to self-host services for your small group of beloved users.
Batteries included
Corresponding source code is provided under a Free and Open Source software license.

Tools in the bookยถ

The book details why and how to use these tools to self-host:

  • bare metal physical server
  • Ubuntu operating system
  • Ansible provisioner
  • Traefik reverse proxy
  • Docker container manager
  • Docker Compose service manager

It comes with mario, a program to help you set up your server and install a few services recommended by the author: Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Wallabag, Watchtower, and Scratch.

Origin storyยถ

I researched and wrote the book over several years. Iโ€™ve been working on related technologies professionally and personally for the last couple of decades.

I wrote this book after having realized the power and potential of self-hosting. I used the method it describes to provide a robust data haven for myself and my family. I havenโ€™t found other books like it.

Iโ€™ve given lectures on self-hosting and received feedback from attendees: they are already experienced at learning tech, they are seeking the motivation to self-host along with high-quality information on how to do it well. In response to this feedback I wrote a large Background chapter. In it, I approach self-hosting with a good deal of justification for why someone should self-host at all. I use anecdotes, figures, and tenants of relatable value-based living to provide sufficient motivation for getting through the learning and implementation stages of self-hosting.

Audienceยถ

Steadfast Self-Hosting primarily targets aspiring self-hosters looking for a quick and reliable method to get started. Some basic IT and networking skills are required. A reader should be familiar with Linux, command-line basics, and transferring files to and from a server.

Experienced self-hosters will also benefit when they read, compare, and improve their existing homelabs.

Authorยถ

Adam is a kind and savvy FOSS enthusiast. Heโ€™s been in tech for over 20 years: building, producing, coding, debugging, architecting, leading, managing, debugging some more, lecturing, writing, administering and securing systems and processes, ensuring privacy and compliance; in markets of all maturities, sizes, and scales; startups to big enterprise. Heโ€™s most proud of his family, growing Mifos, founding SeaGL, selling C-SATS, and writing a FOSS book about self-hosting FOSS.

Adam is privileged and lucky to have given talks and workshops at a handful of conferences (LFNW, SeaGL, LibrePlanet, OSCON, FOSSY) and various other engagements. Thereโ€™s a full list here.

You can follow Adam on Mastodon.

Identifiersยถ

  • Standard quality paperback
    • ISBN: 979-8-9908615-1-0
    • Library of Congress Control Number: 2024911437
    • commit: b0eecd5a
  • Premium quality paperback
    • ISBN: 979-8-9908615-3-4
    • commit: b0eecd5a
  • EPUB
    • ISBN: 979-8-9908615-0-3
    • commit: d57d4275
  • PDF
    • ISBN: 979-8-9908615-2-7
    • commit: d57d4275
  • HTML
    • commit: d57d4275

Last updated: August 2024

Copyright ยฉ2024-2025, Adam Monsen. Some rights reserved. Content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.