I would get multiple drives and do RAID. Here’s a helpful calculator to figure out drive quantity, size, and configuration. The reason to do RAID is redundancy. Hard drives will fail (even NAS branded drives). You do not want your photos, media, etc to be lost in that case. I personally do not go with anything below RAID5 (and for super sensitive things, I’ll even go RAID6 - despite the hit on overall capacity. If the optiplex has drive capacity for multiple drives, I strongly recommend you go this route.

Okay, then I’m thinking your router/NAT maybe causing the problem. Typically, your ISP won’t block subdomains for dns, they may outright block Source NAT (SNAT), but if you could get through via the IP, you should be good to go.

An easy way to check is to visit a site like this and check for port 443: https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/. You don’t need to be on the server that’s hosting your portfolio, just any thing that’s on the same network as your portfolio (something behind your external router)

Just to make sure.

1. When on your home network, doing nslookup (or similar), your fqdn resolves to your public IP
2. When on a hotspot, if you go to https://fqdn/ it does not connect (probably with the ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT that you mentioned below)
3. When on hotspot, if you to telnet to port 443 on 206.x.x.x, it connects

What happens if you, on the hotspot, try browsing to https://206.x.x.x? When you are on the same network as the portfolio, can you reach https://[internal ip]?

What I’m leaning towards is a router/firewall that may be causing some issues. To help with troubleshooting, does your website server have any local firewalls (for ubuntu that would typically be ufw, but it could be iptables or firewalld)?

Try this command from a terminal on the system from which you’re attempting to connect:

nslookup <yourfqdn>

It should come back with something like this:

~ ❯ nslookup stronk.bond
Server:         127.0.0.53
Address:        127.0.0.53#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   stronk.bond
Address: 172.67.174.80

If it says something like “can’t find” that means that your dns isn’t configured appropriately. Does your IP address start with 192.168, 10., or 172.? That would be a private IP address (something which isn’t accessible from the internet.

Oh! And where is everything - is your workstation/laptop on the same network as your portfolio? Is the portfolio on a different network? That could effect things as well.

What does your nginx config look like for ssl? It should specify a certificate and key file - that certificate subject needs to match your fully qualified domain name (fqdn). Certificate can have subject alternative names (SAN) for other names and even IP addresses.

For instance, you could have a single certificate for foo.bar with a SAN for just foo and an IP SAN for 192.168.1.30.

Certificates also need to be signed by a certificate authority (CA), and in order for your browser to visit https://foo.bar/ without a warning your browser must trust that CA.

If you did a self signed cert, this is most likely the problem you’re running into.

It’s important to know that your communication is still encrypted because of SSL, but since your browser doesn’t trust the CA (or the subject doesn’t match the FQDN) the browser will say it’s not secure.

Heroic is good for handling install/playing Epic games, but it still farms out to a web browser frame for accessing the store itself.

I’m thinking OP has something like the GOG Galaxy in mind (which afaik will never come to Linux and I’m still pissed about it).

We were visiting for about a week and I think it took three separate days, about 20 minutes each day before she felt comfortable doing the VPN stuff herself.

It was definitely painful, but if you’re patient, it’s doable.

Good luck with whichever option you choose!

Speaking as someone who has recently taken on a far-remote (e.g. about 22 hour drive away) support for a MIL, the best thing you could do is set up a VPN.

1. It works both ways (typically) so you can easily remote in to their system when they’re on the VPN for updates/troubleshooting
2. it minimizes the hardware “on-site” at their location
3. Depending on your VPN client, it can have an easy to use GUI, further lowering the barrier if your remote person is tech-inept

For me, I’m still on Plex with a very old lifetime account with my MIL using a dedicated user account - that access is over the Internet. The VPN is to provide access to Overseerr so that she can do things like request specific movies/TV shows without having to email/call.

It’s not perfect - one day I woke up to 26 seasons of “Into the Country”, but it works fairly well.

I sat down with her one day while visiting about a year or so ago and walked her through connecting to the VPN, then getting to the hosted site, then disconnecting from the VPN - basically running drills and making her take notes until she felt she could do it by herself.

I use netbox too - and if you’re careful about it, you can actually use terraform to create the netbox details. I use one manifest file to handle deployment to Proxmox, set up DNS in PowerDNS, and create the relevant netbox entries.

If you still have Mini thief I’d give it a go!

I bought a car that comes with a “free” 300k/30 year warranty, but only if to do oil changes every 4k miles or 3 months. Maybe this guy has something similar?

For me, I may try And keep it up for a bit, but driving to one particular dealer every 3 months just to get a ridiculous warranty that will probably never actually pay out isn’t worth it.

Also of note - if you’re using docker (and Linux), make sure the user is/group id match across everything to eliminate any permissions issues.