Comment

Comment on Sanity check: am I crazy for wanting to wipe everything and do/learn from scratch?

I would like to have a system when I know what I did, what is opened/installed/activated and what is not

You sound like you need to to look in to Nix and NixOS. The TLDR is that everything is declared in a configuration file(s), which you can and should back up in git. The config files tell you exactly what you did , and the config file comments together with git commit history tell you why.

The whole system is built from this configuration file. Rollback is trivially easy, either by rebooting and selecting an older build during the boot manager, or reverting to an older git commit and rebuilding (no reboot required, so usually faster)

Now fair warning, Nix (and NixOS) is a big topic, very different from normal way of thinking about software distribution and OS. Nix is not for everyone.

You should also at the very least have a git repo for docker-compose files for your services. Again, that will declaratively tell you what you did and why.

Also, if NixOS is too extreme, you should also look in to declarative management tools like Ansible etc

source

Sort:hotnew top

klangcola@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Reading your post again, you should start by moving your docker management from CasaOS to vanilla docker-compose files, and keep them in a git repo.

I still think you definitely should look in to NixOS and what it can offer, cause it seems like that is where your mindset is going.

But NixOS is a drastic change, you should start by just converting your individual services one by one from CasaOS management to docker-compose files. One compose file for all services is possible, but I would recommend one compose file for each service. Later you can move from Debian to NixOS while using the same docker-compose files.

source
- InnerScientist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I recommend switching to NixOS only after you have a basic but broad understanding of Linux, many things in NixOS are more complicated than in “normal” Linux, which is needed to archive what it does, but is overwhelming for someone who doesn’t know the what and why and where that using Linux brings.
  
  A picture showing the NixOS learning curve/cliff
  
  source
  - klangcola@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Lol, I’m just over a week in to learning NixOS and this feels so true 😂
    
    I feel like I’m just starting on the incline, luckily I don’t have any sturdy rope on hand 😂
    
    source
- whysofurious@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  One day I will look into NixOS, I am eyeing it for a while now, but I don’t feel confident enough with my Linux skills to switch. However, I do agree with you, and it’s exactly what I am doing, stripping the compose files of all the CasaOS stuff, use one per service, and versioning them in git. I am also learning about .env files and other things that I wasn’t really aware of before, it’s fun and very customizable :)
  
  Thanks for all the suggestions :)
  
  source