Obsidian synced via git.

🧠 + a few slapdash notes in a password manager. It’s very organic, very human.

Occasionally leads to situations like this.

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.

I had that same problem, then I saw some YouTube videos where the guy recommended using Ansible to do stuff and it’s been night and day, not only it’s reproducible so if I ever want to move a service to another machine all I have to do is move a couple of roles around and possibly copy stuff over to keep the data but also it acts as documentation, because if I ever forget something I can look at the code.

Also I decided to write the roles myself instead of relying on pre-existing ones, so there’s some logic to how my stuff gets deployed and it’s easy to extend for any new stuff I want to add.

I am the note taking king probably. I worked in the construction industry for 20 years. The rule was, ‘if you didn’t write it down, it didn’t happen.’ That has just carried over to every other aspect of my life including selfhosting. Whenever I sit down to my terminal to do anything, I open Notepad++ and a regular windows notepad session. The windows notepad session is a little script I came up with that opens windows notepad with 1000 empty lines. It’s one of the many quirks I have, but I hate having to hit the enter key to start a new line. I like to be able to click on a new line for a new line of thought and start typing.

@echo off
(for /l %%i in (1,1,1000) do echo.) > empty_lines.txt
start notepad empty_lines.txt

(Save as a bat link on desktop)

Anyways, the Notepad ++ session is for after things get worked out, I make an official entry into the Notepad++. The windows notepad session is just a scratch pad or ‘thinking paper’ from which I transfer to the Notepad ++ doc. Convoluted, no? LOL You asked, and I just pulled back the curtain for you a bit. Careful what you ask for, could stain your brain.

I try to document everything. I feel like, if I’m going to take the time to learn something, I might as well write it down. I take my Grok sessions and distill them down if I found the info relevant. I also do all of this because after my TBI which gave me a seizure condition as well as other mental/neuro issues, my memory is shit, even for someone of my age bracket. But I can stand up a server and secure it, just from my notes in a step by step manner conducive to my limited mental acuity. I’ve often wondered if anyone would be interested in my notes, like maybe some newcomer to selfhosting wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel since I have a penchant for fucking things up.

Secrets go in Keepass.

For server configs, a LibreOffice Writer file per machine (except for RPs, I only have one for those), written as a didactic manual explaining how to install and configure everything (I work on bare metal still). I started that way since diving into self-hosting was also a way to learn Linux, Sys-Admin and web-hosting. I don’t do anything without updating the relevant chapters, or creating new ones. Not gonna lie: it’s tedious. But also a life-saver, and the rationals for my choices remain available years later, which is priceless in many ways.

Once upon a time I had neat network gear running, and I mostly YOLO-ed the doc for those, relying instead on the firmware/config backups. I had to put those devices away, but when I finally get to play with them again, I’m going to suffer re-learning and re-discovering everything.

Recently, I got to hack and old console, and just did a chronological log-file with actions taken and URLs to guides, instead of writing down everything myself. It got me thinking I might add a simple log-file to track my actions, on top of my usual guides.

Or not. Having a life is nice too 😅

If it need documentation means things are over the line when comes to complexity and I should scale down / simplify. :)

Complexity and over-engineering are a serious problem, I really try to keep it as simple as possible so I don’t have to waste time managing it, dealing with updates and potential security issues. Simple code/infrastructure breaks less and has less potential insecure points.

I tried since the very beginning to build everything in ansible and terraform, so everything is in the code or in its associated README files.

But apart from that I have a hodge podge of dozens of note documents in Obsidian.

NixOS’s declarative configurations basically document themsleves: add some comments and you’re good to go and can back then up to wherever whenever

Lol.

Here: https://wiki.gardiol.org/

Based on Dokuwiki and my own experience. Mostly started to track what and why I do stuff, and published because I truly believe in a free internet.

In gitlab.

In the terraform project that builds it. Or in the cinc.sh config that makes it go.

MD lets me add diagrams.

I’m curious how everyone documents their core/critical configs to allow the non-technical in our homes work with it if needed. For instance if I’m on work travel and the Pi-hole goes down for whatever reason my wife wouldn’t be able to use pretty much anything online. I can remote in and fix it but that could be hours/a day or two later. Same then for the proxmox stack that everything runs on.

Along the same lines, how are folks documenting for EOL? It may not be a happy thought but we are all going to go someday, so what is your plan and how have you ensured loved ones can access/save important data?

The Ansible playbooks I use to deploy it are the documentation.

Every time I set up anything, I do one of two things:

• If it’s container based, it gets a commented docker compose file in my custom orchestration

• If it’s on a host system, the changes are scripted and commented in a setup script, which are run on new machines. If the acrit is specific to one machine, it is configured as such

I find in-setup docs to be best for a home lab, plus if I have to replace hardware, it’s fast.

Fun fact, I do it for laptops and desktops, too.