this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
88 points (98.9% liked)

Selfhosted

46113 readers
507 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I am looking for some recommendations on how to secure the data of my physical servers (against physical theft), that I am about to set up. I am new to selfhosting but have a few years of experience running Linux on a desktop.

My usecase is a simple debian(?) server at home with Paperless ngx and Tailscale for when I am away from home. 

The question is how to encrypt the data while still being able to keep the server updated.

Coming from Desktop my first thought was to simply enable FDE on install. But that would mean supplying the password everytime the server needs to reboot for an update. Could someone provide some insights on how often updates to debian require a reboot? 

My second thought was to use an encrypted data partition. That way the server could reboot and I could use wireguard to ssh in and open the partition even when I am away from home for a longer time.

I am open to other ideas!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] InnerScientist@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Somethign I haven't seen mentioned yet is clevis and tang, basically if you have more than one server then they can unlock each other and if they're spatially separated then it is very unlikely they get stolen at the same time.

Though you have to make sure it stops working when a server get stolen, using a mesh VPN works just as well after the server is stolen so either use public IPS and a VPN or use a hidden raspberry pi that is unlikely to be stolen or make the other server stop tang after the first one is stolen.