this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years 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 2 years 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] 2 points 2 years 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 2 years 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 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years 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!

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

Gotcha. Git is useful in so many way, but it can be confusing to learn. I don’t have a guide on hand but searching for ‘getting started with git’ will get you pretty far.

Another great way to do this that I just thought of this second is using Notion. It is in markdown.

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

Seems a lot of people are doing that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 2 years ago

I use logseq to record any manual steps as well as any administrative actions that I take on a service. That being said, all of my homelan infrastructure is codified and stored in git in various ways so, it can be recreated as needed. There are very few manual steps in reconfiguring any of my services.

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

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

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

Comments inside the docker-compose.yml files?

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

I'm just starting to dip my toes in docker. Most of my stuff is kvm and physical.

Due to a desire to get off Ubuntu I have a goal to rebuild everything on Debian and/or containers and would like to document as I go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (4 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Hackmd.io for simple markdown docs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

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

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

I use bookstack. Simple selfhosted wiki.

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

+1 for bookstack. I also selfhost a kanban with the services basic info and it's related status (pilot/test, production and to be decommissioned). At the beginning I used Planka, but now switched to Nextcloud Deck.

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