Project Overview

This project documents the deployment and hardening of a Debian 13 (Trixie)) virtual machine. The primary goal was to create a stable, localized development environment for web hosting and technical experimentation.

Technical Environment

  • Operating System: Debian 13 (Stable)
  • Local IP: 10.0.0.38
  • Deployment Platform: [Proxmox]
  • Key Services: Hugo (Static Site Generator), OpenSSH

1. Initial Setup & System Hardening

After the base installation, the following steps were taken to prepare the server for development:

  • Package Updates: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
  • User Management: Created a non-root user with sudo privileges to adhere to the principle of least privilege.
  • Firewall Configuration: Enabled ufw to restrict traffic, allowing only necessary ports.
    • Port 22 (SSH)
    • Port 1313 (Hugo Local Dev)
    • Port 80/443 (Web Traffic)

2. Developer Workflow Optimization

To reduce friction and avoid unnecessary cloud builds, I implemented a Local Development Sandbox.

The hugodev Alias

I configured a custom shell alias in ~.bashrc to allow instant site previews across my local network:

alias hugodev='hugo server -D --bind 0.0.0.0 --baseURL [http://10.0.0.38](http://10.0.0.38)'

3. Hugo

I’ve been tinkering with Hugo in order to document my homelab journey. Forcing myself to document my homelab.