this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
26 points (96.4% liked)

Sysadmin

5591 readers
1 users here now

A community dedicated to the profession of IT Systems Administration

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Programs with custom services, virtual environments, config files in different locations, programs creating datas in different location...

I know today a lot of stuff runs in docker, but how does a sysadmin remember what has done on its system? Is it all about documenting and keeping your docs updated? Is there any other way?

(Eg. For installing calibre-web I had to create a python venv, the venv is owned by root in /opt, but the service starting calibre web in /etc/systemd/system needs to be executed with the User=<user> specifier because calibre web wants to write in a user home directory, at the same time the database folder needs to be owned by www-data because I want to r/w it from nextcloud... So calibreweb is installed as a custom root(?) program, running in a virtual env, can access a folder owned by someone else, but still needs to be executed by another user to store its data there... )

Despite my current confusion in understanding if all of this is right in terms of security, syntax and ownership, No fucking way I will remember all this stuff in a week from now.. So... What do you use to do, if you do something? Do you use flowcharts? Simple text documents? Both?

Essentially, how do you keep track?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

We use a mix of FreshDesk for tickets/(some) projects/helpdesk articles and Teams/Sharepoint for documentation and distribution of info/help to techs, analysts, end users, etc.

As for the non-technical side of the answer: Basically, yeah, just document everything you can when you come across anything that needs documented.