Submitted 4 months ago by Hellmo_Luciferrari@lemm.ee to selfhosted@lemmy.world
Hi all!
So I want to get back into self hosting, but every time I have stopped is because I have lack of documentation to fix things that break. So I pose a question, how do you all go about keeping your setup documented? What programs do you use?
I have leaning towards open source software, so things like OneNote, or anything Microsoft are out of the question.
Docker and docker-compose are nice because every service you want to run follows the same basic pattern. You don’t need much documentation beyond the project docs and the compose files themselves
So I want to get back into self hosting, but every time I have stopped is because I have lack of documentation to fix things that break. So I pose a question, how do you all go about keeping your setup documented? What programs do you use?
Joplin or Obsidian? Or… plain markdown files with your favorite text editor.
I use Joplin and it works great for this exact thing. Anytime I discover a new command that fixes something I’ll throw it into my Joplin notebook. “New Server Cheatsheet” goes to list in order common operations and commands for setting up SSH, UfW, making a non-root user, configuring wireguard, etc. I have hundreds of notes by now and they’re easily found via search bar.
My documentation is a folder with the docker compose files I am using. And some notes in Nextcloud Notes if needed.
My reverse proxy is Traefik, since it’s docker aware. :)
Traefik or Caddy are the 2 I am bouncing back and forth between currently. I may spin up a nextcloud instance.
This might be a bit late, but from my perception Traefik has a touch more of a learning curve, but it integrates much better with solutions like Authlia/Authentik and Prometheus than Caddy does.
I might be wrong, I’ve never used Caddy, but that’s my perception.
Came to write basically this. I would try caddy but my compose file is 600 lines long now and half of that is traefik labels, I can’t be arsed with the migration.
I’m adding documentation about what I do to in Joplin and using Nextcloud to keep it synced.
For reverse proxy I use Nginx Proxy Manager for its simplicity. I really don’t need anything more fancy… nginxproxymanager.com
You could try Logseq, it's like Obsidian but open source. I use Obsidian for most notes and I also have a personal wiki built with Otterwiki.
I use NGINX for my reverse proxy, you could check out NGINX Proxy Manager which uses Certbot to automate the SSL certificates.
I've heard a lot of people also like Caddy and Traefik. Can't remember which is easier to use, maybe Caddy.
I will likely dabble with Logseq.
I used NGINX Proxy Manager for a while, then had some issues that ultimately killed my homelab setup, so not sure that I want to go down that route again, or if I want to investigate Caddy, Traefik, or another.
Yeah, I could never get NPM to work right on my system either. I use the NGINX Docker image and set up my certs manually.
If I were to do it all over again today, I would probably go with Caddy since it now has a bunch of that stuff built in with automatic HTTPS by default and the basic reverse proxy setup is literally 2 lines of code.
I use markdown text files which are synced to my nextcloud instance.
This is somewhat tangential to your post, but I think using infrastructure as code and declarative technologies is great for reliability because you aren’t just running a bunch of commands until something works, you have the code which tells you exactly how things are set up, and you can version control it to roll back to a working state. The code itself can be a form of documentation in that case.
I think I need to utilize this strategy because I get lazy and don’t update external documentation.
Some examples of technologies which follow that paradigm are docker compose, ansible, nixOS and terraform. But it all depends on your workflow.
Personally I use Linkwarden for keeping snapshots of websites as well as a bookmark manager and Memos for a simple note-taking app. Both can be installed on mobile as PWAs, so it makes it easier to access on-the-go.
I’m using Nginx Proxy Manager, which I highly recommend for new users due to how simple it is get set up and running! NPM renews SSL certs automatically before they expire as well (afaik).
Today I learned about Linkwarden, and I am so excited to check it out. Thank you!
NPM I did use, however it was ultimately the catalyst as to why I quit homelabbing. But when it did work, it was simple even for SSL cert renewal.
I hope you have fun with Linkwarden!
If you don’t mind me asking, why did NPM push you to quitting homelabbing?
My documentation problem was largely fixed by using Nixos. The actual OS instances are self-documenting that way.
As far as the documentation for the network setup itself goes, a simple wiki does the rest of the trick for me.
I still want to get familiarized with NixOS and the concepts behind it. Just haven’t taken the time.
Wiki.js Nginx Proxy Manager.
I’m also using ansible everywhere in my home / private infra and lab. Occasionally I get slightly annoyed that I have to open an inventory file or a role var to find something. But in general I’m so grateful that there is one place to find this information, and the same is used to set up everything from scratch.
Is it extra work to write the roles and playbooks? Yes. Does it solve the documentation and automation problem completely? Absolutely. 10/10 would recommend. And for the record, most things I host run on containers, but the volumes and permission management alone make it worth your time.
I have an Ansible playbook that I use to setup everything and all troubleshooting steps I ever had to take to fix something get written down in an Obsidian.md vault.
I use obsidian for my notes/wiki. I use the git plugin to backup/sync my notes. I self-host forgejo as my gut server. Works great!
Caddy is my favorite reverse-proxy. The setup is just a config file.
Dokuwiki (dokuwiki.org) is my usual go-to. It’s really simple and stores entries in markdown files so you can get at them as plain text files in a pinch. Here’s a life lesson: don’t host your documentation in the machine you’re going to be breaking! Learned that the hard way once or twice.
For reverse proxies, I’m a fan of HAProxy. It uses pretty straightforward config files and is incredibly robust.
OPNSense router handles auto SSL certificate renewals, Unbound (DNS) and HA Proxy ( for reverse proxy ).
Gitea instance for all of my docker-compose configs and documentation.
Joplin server and Joplin clients for easy notes available on all my devices.
Traefik for reverse proxy. Tag your container with the route and let traefik take over.
I think Traefik is going to be what I investigate using. However the last time I tried, I was a little lost. I will have to comb over the documentation better this time.
Traefik is powerful and versatile but has a steep learning curve. It also uses code to control its configuration which is a bonus for reliability and documentation as discussed elsewhere ITT. Nginx proxy manager is much simpler and easier to use, may be a good one to get started with, but lacks the advantages of traefik described above. Nginx proxy manager does support SSL cert automation.
Jim’s garage has some videos on it.
i recently made the switch from doing k3s+flux to have everything in code with bundlewrap and anemos/makeimg
I have a couple Libre Office files where I document the non-technical stuff for my own quick reference, like network layout in Draw, or IP and port assignments in Calc. I use a git repo to store and organize podman scripts, systemd unit files, configs, etc. Probably not the most elegant solution, but it’s simple and FOSS.
Reverse proxy is Nginx Proxy Manager.
One day, I moved all services I really wanted from a couple of random VPS to a nice little proxmox machine at home (and then added some more services, of course). That was the day I swore to document stuff better, and I’m pretty satisfied with how well I was able to keep up with that.
In the proxmox web interface, you can leave notes per container. I note down which service the container is running including a link to the service’s web interface if applicable, plus the source, and a note about how it auto-updates (green check mark emoji) or if it requires manual updates (handiman emoji).
Further I made a concious effort to document everything into a gollum wiki running on that proxmox host (exposes a wiki like web interface, stores all entries as plaintext .md files into a local git repo - very “portable”). Most importantly, it also includes a page of easy to understand emergency measures in case I die or become unresponsive, which I regularly print out and put into a folder with other important documents. The page contains a QR code linking to itself on the wiki too in case the printed version might be outdated here or there.
The organization of the wiki itself (what goes into which folder) is a bit of a work in progress, but as it offers full text search, that’s not too much of a problem imo.
I use nginx for reverse proxy. You can get certbot working to automate ssl fairly easily. There is a learning curve, but most services I use have documentation for hosting their stuff with it.
I write everything in markdown, and I mean just about everything. Tech notes, recipes, work procedures, shopping lists…everything. If you check my comment history from today, you can see a quick example of the kind of tech notes I keep (firewalld in this case).
I keep all of my plain text files synced across multiple devices using Syncthing. For desktop editors, I use mostly vim and VSCodium (though Kate is nice too), and I use Markor on Android. This workflow has been efficient for many years now and I no longer waste time constantly reviewing the latest note-taking app.
I use BookStack and with Node Red I export to PDF the books as soon as pages get updated, so if everything goes feet up, I have all the documentation in PDFs (locally and automatically uploaded to a free DropBox account, still done with Node Red).
I may have to check out BookStack. I dig the looks of it.
I've been using YunoHost for some time. Cosmos seems good, too. Both do most of the stuff for you and should come with documentation. I think that's the way to go if you can't set it all up yourself, or lack time to maintain it.
I've also used Docker containers and plain Debian. I use NGinx as a reverse proxy.
I document things in text files (markdown). At some point it'd like to upload them with something like mkdocs or to a wiki. But since it's just me, having them just sitting in a directory on my laptop is fine.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| HA | Home Assistant automation software |
| ~ | High Availability |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
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StandardNotes for me
Right now, I’m using Obsidian. I think I’d like to transition to keeping docs in a wiki, but I worry that it’s part of the self-hosted infrastructure. In other words, if the wiki’s down, I no longer have the docs that I need to repair the wiki.
I have looked at Obsidian, it looks nice, but the closed source part is why I can’t personally use it. Though, from discussions I have seen Logseq be thrown out when talking about similar software.
The wiki idea is a good one. The way to handle that is to have the wiki backed up incrementally.
I’m writing documentation in obsidian. I then expose it to the web so I can access from all my devices and share to others with quartz. Everything is markdown. It’s tunneled out of my network with cloudflare tunnels, which do handle SSL for me.
suswrkr@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
I run a k3s cluster for selfhosted apps and keep all the configuration and docs in a git repo. That way I have history of changes and can rollback if needed. In that repo I have a docs folder with markdown documents about common operations and runbooks.
There are other ways to do this, but I like keeping docs next to the code and config so I can update them all at the same time. Deployed several wikis in the past but always forget to update them when I change things.
Hellmo_Luciferrari@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I really should spend time familiarizing with maintaining a git repo. I’ll likely find one I can self host.
suswrkr@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
forgejo.org selfhosted has been good for me, FOSS fork of Gitea.
TCB13@lemmy.world 4 months ago
If you want a git “server” quick and low maintenance then gitolite is most likely the best choice. gitolite.com/gitolite/index.html
It simply acts as a server that you can clone with any git client and the coolest part is that you use git commits to create repositories and manage users as well. Very very or no maintenance at all. I’ve been using it personally for years but also saw it being used at some large companies because it simply gets the job done and doesn’t bother anyone.