How do you document your Homelab?

Comments

• atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I build my infrastructure with the terraform, Ansible and helm charts. The code is it’s own documentation as well as comments in that code explaining why I’ve done things if it’s not obvious.

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  • ch8zer@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This really is the way.

    It goes beyond documentation too - it allows me to migrate to new hosts or to easily automate upgrading the OS release version.

    I have a docusaurus site for my homeland and I have ansible and terraform generate files for the docs so I don’t have to record anything. Some of the stuff I note down:

    • DNS leases
    • General infra diagrams
    • IP info
    • Host info

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• thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I have it in a git repo, broken down by the nodes and vps names. In each of these folders is a mixture of Ansible playbooks, docker compose or just markdown files with the descriptions. Some is random stuff - my VPS allows the export of the cloud firewalls as JSON for instance. All the secrets needed by Ansible are in an Ansible vault, the rest in KeePass.

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• voklen@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I just have NixOS on mine and I write everything in comments in my configuration.nix. Usually I’ll write notes about why I set a certain option above the line where I do it but I also have a section at the start that describes anything to be aware of if I’m moving this configuration to another machine. For example “This assumes a drive is mounted on /mnt/backup0”

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• 30p87@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I just try to make everything as self documented as possible. Eg. no stray scripts, everything is either implemented in other software (eg. my main wireguard peer in systemd-networkd, without any non-obvious external dependencies) or tracked as a part of an arch pkg with a simple PKGBUILD. I usually either have very simple nets (eg. my VPN’s net only consists of four peers, in the order main - secondary - laptop - phone) or leave it to DHCP and SLAAC. I try to avoid using ports for local servers as much as possible and use unix sockets. Stuff like LVM/Luks pretty much documents itself.

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• Cyber@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A combination of Logseq (what, why, hiw) and KeePass for IPs and passwords (obviously)… I use the heirarchy in Keepass to show a device and then the services on it and then their configs, ie

  • Hypervisor1
    • VM1
      • root user details
    • VM2 (Etc)

  I used to do Visio drawings, but they were always out of date.

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• justcallmelarry@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Image

  Jokes aside, I do keep some harder to remember stuff written down in a README.md in my repo, but mainly most things are undocumented

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  • nfreak@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My wife was mentioning the other day that if something happened to me she’d have absolutely no idea how to work any of this shit and that convinced me to actually start documenting it LMAO

    Good time to start doing it too. Aside from setting up a NAS this weekend, I’ve got this project right where I want it for a long while.

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  • jagermo@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “Shit, i hope i remeber the key words i searched for”

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  • foggy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I operate on the philosophy that it is better for me to relearn things that lean on old documentation that may no longer be accurate/relevant.

    The best way to implement a safe connection to my home lab today might not be the safest way tomorrow.

    Old dog, new tricks, etc.

    Also! Your documentation is an attackers wet dream.

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    • CapitalNumbers@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      while security might be compromised if an attacker found your documentation, it could equally be compromised by having zero documentation

      the easier it is for you to get things back up and running in the event of a data loss / corrupted hard drive / new machine / etc, the less likely you are to forget any crucial steps (eg setting up iptables or ufw)

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    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m gonna try this neat trick at work

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    • negativenull@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Security by obscurity, baby!

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  • redlemace@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Guilty too. There are names on router- and switch interfaces. Servers get fixed IP from dhcp so is in the note field there too. That’s about it

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• brayd@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I just created a note in Obsidian with the Excalidraw plugin.

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  • neatobuilds@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I use obsidian and ezcalidraw also, I didn’t realize we can put one in the other

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