Setting up a Linux server
Got a free Oracle Cloud VM up and running. Here's what I did.
Got myself an Oracle Cloud free tier VM and spent some time getting it set up properly. Nothing groundbreaking, just documenting what I did so I have a reference later.
Spun up an Ubuntu 22.04 instance, got SSH working with key-based auth, locked down the default config a bit. Disabled root login, password auth off, that sort of thing.
Threw UFW on it for a basic firewall, opened the ports I needed. Ran into the classic Oracle double-firewall problem where you have to open ports in both the OCI console and iptables on the OS. Got me the first time but makes sense once you understand it.
Got Nginx running and serving files. Installed an SSL cert from Porkbun. Site’s live.
Overall pretty smooth once you know the quirks of Oracle’s networking setup. Free compute is free compute. Can’t complain.