just messing around on https://shell.cloud.google.com is good for a beginner to unix enviroments.

For self hosting plex, sonarr and radarr etc… I recommend the trash guides. https://trash-guides.info/ When you don’t want your self hosted apps available from outside your network you don’t need nginx. And for the port security, as long as you are not port forwarding there is no security issue. Keep in mind that when you host things on your local network that other people on your home network could be able to access your apps. Which is not a big deal when living with family or on yourself.

I learned a lot from the tutorials of https://ibracorp.io/

You’ll find rather advanced things there, but they are easy to follow and well explained.

I’ve compiled a list of resources for someone else just getting started:

• https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
• https://github.com/awesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin
• https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted
• https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab
• https://selfhosted.show/
• https://www.youtube.com/@RaspberryPiCloud <- german
• https://www.youtube.com/@TechnoTim
• https://www.youtube.com/@AndreasSpiess
• https://www.youtube.com/@bitlunislab
• https://www.youtube.com/@Level1Linux
• https://www.youtube.com/@LearnLinuxTV
• https://www.youtube.com/@WillieHowe
• https://www.youtube.com/@LAWRENCESYSTEMS
• https://www.youtube.com/@CrosstalkSolutions

Depends what you’re trying to learn, and how much of a beginner you are. If you want to learn the shell, try the Software Carpentry tutorials:

• The Unix Shell - Software Carpentry
• Version Control with Git

If you know the basics, you might try honing your skills with CLI Mystery (murder mystery puzzle).

You’ll probably want to learn how to use the following:

• SSH
• Command-line text editor. Choose one of the following:
  • Nano <- Smallest learning curve
  • Vim (or Neovim) <- My favourite (See Mastering the Vim Language)
  • Emacs <- Some people like it

The final tip is: It’s usually better in the long run to spend 2 hours reading the documentation than 2 minutes searching the web. Reading the documentation helps you to understand the big picture, and gives you a much better foundation. Of course, if you’re reading the documentation and don’t understand something, searching the web is an OK way to figure it out.

Some Youtube-Channels I can recommend, but with varying levels of “noob”-friedlieness. Just watch a few and decide for yourself which can help the most:

https://youtube.com/@DBTechYT

https://youtube.com/@christianlempa

https://youtube.com/@TechnoTim

https://youtube.com/@LearnLinuxTV

https://youtube.com/@linode

As for a reverse proxy, it depends how you want to access your services. If you’re just gonna host your services on docker and then publish ports on the host you can just access them that way. But that way they are of course not encrypted, which in your home LAN can be fine. To really use a reverse proxy you also need to have a way to rewrite or add dns entries in your local network. All the domains and subdomains you’d want to use must point to the reverse proxy which would then forward the requests to the services.

The way I have it configured right now is that I have a reverse proxy on my docker host which has the ports 443 and 80 published on the host, while all the services I use in docker on that host do not have published ports. They’re all then in a network with the reverse proxy so it can forward the requests to the services. That way I can encrypt everything with SSL/TLS and have trusted certificates on everything. I use nginx proxy manager which also handles my certificates.

The really vulnerable open ports are the ones you forward to your router. But you only need those when you want to access services from outside your network. But I would wait on that until you feel comfortable.

I acknowledge it’s all surely basic but I’m not sure where to find a comprehensive source of learning instead of googling bits and pieces.

I think a challenge you are likely to run into is that self-hosting many services really ISN’T basic, and there simply aren’t comprehensive sources… and really can’t be. It’s too varied and complex. Every network environment is different, and every network environment is so complex that it takes a networking expert to understand. No tutorial can cover all the possibilities, or even help you figure out what scenario you’re in.

As an example, I’m currently migrating from docker-compose to podman-kube-play for my container management. I’m a a professional engineer who works with containers every day, and I’ve spent the better part of a week trying to get my first non-trivial container to run.

• I’ve had to read tutorials to see how to get started.
• I’ve had to read podman docs to see what k8s config options are supported.
• I’ve had to read bug reports and examples from people using podman to see how specific features get strung together for complex use-cases like mine.
• Even after getting many things right, DNS resolution didn’t work in my container. I spent many hours researching and found nothing. I finally had to start installing debugging tools like dig and nmap in my container to find that I couldn’t speak to the DNS server at all. I eventually found firewall logs showing that UFW was blocking the traffic from the container to the DNS server. UFW has nothing to do with Podman. Arch and Fedora users would not have been affected by this issue. Ubuntu users like me still wouldn’t have been affected if they were using host-networking or rootless podman. My specific environment and use-case was affected.

There is simply no single resource on the internet addressing my personal scenario. To get to the bottom of it, I had to know enough about podman, k8s, DNS, networking, firewalls, UFW specifically, where interesting data on my system tends to get logged, and enough about “normal” logs to sift through the garbage and find the logs that lead me to a solution.

So I recommend switching your perspective. Stop looking for a one-stop-shop that doesn’t exist. Instead, try to learn when the thing you’re trying to do is really 5 different things lashed together with duct tape. Then start deep-diving on each piece until you know enough about that thing to relate it to your specific environment and move on to the next thing. This is time consuming, especially as you’re getting started… but it’s fractally deep and remains time consuming forever as you continue to learn new things and aspire to do more complicated stuff. This breaking down of complex topics into a series of simpler (but not necessarily simple) topics is the hallmark of every successful engineer I’ve ever met.