If you’ve ever relied on public pastebin services to share code snippets, logs, or sensitive configurations, you’ve probably worried about privacy and longevity. Public pastebins can delete content at any time, expose data to unwanted eyes, or fail to give you fine-grained control over who sees what.  And what if they get hacked?  Even if you’re anonymous, logs and other data could possibly trace things back to you.  And if you’re stored anything sensitive there, they could be exposed.

The good news is that you can easily set up your own self-hosted Pastebin.  That’s the LowEnd DIY way!

Advantages of Your Own Self-Hosted Pastebin

• Security & Privacy: Your data stays in your environment, not a third-party service.

• Customization: Add custom themes, logos, etc.

• Longevity: Decide how long pastes live and what happens when they expire.

• Integration: Tie it into internal systems, like issue trackers, or use it for logging and debugging.  You control the backend so it’s easy to script things.

Choose a Self-Hosted Pastebin Project

There are several open-source pastebin projects available. A few popular ones include PrivateBin, Hastebin, and Pastey.  For this guide, we’ll use PrivateBin because it only requires PHP and a web server.

Don’t feel like running your own server but still want your own PasteBin?  Check out PikaPods where you can run a PrivateBin for only $1.20/month.

Step-by-Step Setup

Get a Low-Cost VPS

A basic VPS from providers featured on LowEndBox is more than enough.  In this example I’ll use a spare 1GB/1 core VPS I have.  You don’t need to dedicate an entire VPS to this, of course.  I’ll use Debian 12 and my site is paste.lowend.party.

Install Dependencies

apt update && apt install -y nginx php-fpm unzip

Download and Configure PrivateBin

cd /var/www
wget https://github.com/PrivateBin/PrivateBin/archive/refs/tags/1.7.3.zip -O privatebin.zip
unzip privatebin.zip
mv PrivateBin-1.7.3 privatebin
chown -R www-data:www-data privatebin

Set Up Nginx

Create a new site config in /etc/nginx/sites-available/paste.lowend.party:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name paste.lowend.party;

    root /var/www/privatebin;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri /index.php;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
    }
}

Enable the site and reload:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/paste.lowend.party /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
systemctl restart nginx

Secure with SSL

Use Let’s Encrypt for free HTTPS:

apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
certbot --nginx -d paste.lowend.party

Success!

Here’s what it looks like:

If you look at the top, you can see some of PrivateBin’s cool features:

• Password-Protect Pastes: PrivateBin supports optional passwords.

• Expire Pastes: Configure default expiration times in cfg/conf.php.

• Burn After Reading: SnapChat for your pastes

• Formats: supports plain text, source code, and Markdown

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.