this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
 

My home lab has a mild amount of complexity and I'd like practice some good habits about documenting it. Stuff like, what each system does, the OS, any notable software installed and, most importantly, any documentation around configuration or troubleshooting.

i.e. I have an internal SMTP relay that uses a letsencrypt SSL cert that I need to use the DNS challenge to renew. I've got the steps around that sitting in a Google Doc. I've got a couple more google docs like that.

I don't want to get super complicated but I'd like something a bit more structured than a folder full of google docs. I'd also like to pull it in-house.

Thanks

Edit: I appreciate all the feedback I've gotten on this post so far. There have been a lot of tools suggested and some great discussion about methods. This will probably be my weekend now.

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[–] shertson 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In all honesty, it is a hodge podge. Some are in my dokuwiki, some are plain text, some are markdown, some in my phone, lots on scraps of paper. Just about the time I get it all in one place I scrap my systems and start over.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm kinda like that too. But I'm redoing my setup and I wanted to try and redo the way I document things. Or at least try.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know that I would keep forgetting to update the docs, so my documentation are the ansible playbooks and docker-compose.yaml files that I use to set it all up.

That leaves anything that has to be done in some Ui undocumented, so I try to keep that to a minimum, which isn't always easy (I'm looking at you authentik!).

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I use Ansible, Docker, and Emacs OrgMode files committed to Git. Diagrams are a mix of Miro and Graphviz. There's also a few markdowns in there too. Joplin is used for rough notes only.

[–] markr 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use bookstack. Simple selfhosted wiki.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I deploy as much as I possibly can via Ansible. Then the Ansible code serves as the documentation. I also keep the underlying OS the same on all machines to avoid different OS conventions. All my machines run Debian. The few things I cannot express in Ansible, such as network topology, I draw a diagram for in draw.io, but that's it.

Also, why not automate the certificate renewal with certbot? I have two reverse proxies and they renew their certificates themselves.

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[–] grimer 2 points 1 year ago

Any chance you wouldn't mind sharing the SSL renewal doc? Redacted of course. Mine is coming up and I'd like to do it correctly this time. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why not push it up to GitHub? Then you also get a commit history to see your changes overtime.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wow that sounds convinient, where can i find a guide describing this? Has zero experience with git 😅

[–] cpo 2 points 1 year ago

There are tons of tutorials around, but the basic gist is that you only use a couple of commands (or even a good frontend) in git, especially when it's a one (wo)man show.

I highly recommend it!

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[–] ludw 2 points 1 year ago

I'm using anytype.io, it's been pretty neat so far.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have a git repo for it, needless to say. And so README.md plus a network diagram from https://app.diagrams.net/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I run a local MediaWiki appliance from turnkeylinux, super easy to spin up in proxmox.

[–] gobbling871 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Comments inside the docker-compose.yml files?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hackmd.io for simple markdown docs.

[–] ComptitiveSubset 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I write down everything I built so for plus future plans in OneNote. This kind of defeats the purpose of self hosting but I want to keep a written copy complete off site in case if a complete loss. Plus I like OneNote. It’s actually a well designed product. Scripts, docker compose files and such are in GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I won't argue. I do think OneNote is a good product and I use it a lot for work.

[–] 6xpipe_ 1 points 1 year ago

I document steps for configuration or installation of a service. Normally, only if it's not pretty obvious and I have to combine multiple sources to figure out what I need to be doing.

I also document all of my static IP address in one place. That way I know which service is on which IP and I have a list of used IPs so I don't try to reuse them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Some stuff is in Joplin, some stuff is in wiki.js. Joplin lacks organization features. Wiki.js stores stuff in database and has problems with search, both are possible to fix, I believe...

Occasionally I remember about problems with this setup, but I'm too lazy to fix or replace it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I constructed a simple kbase for myself using Docbase. I love it.

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