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How should I properly document my homelab? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by enchantedgoldapple@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reading earlier comments in this community made me consider documenting the workings of my homelab to some extent, ie. docker configuration, credentials, ports and links of my services. I've tried to make it consistent and organised but it still feels half baked and insufficient. Everyone suggests documenting everything you do in your homelab but don't state how. Since I've hardly had experience running my own server, I would really appreciate observing the blueprint of some other fellow selfhoster for copying or taking inspiration from rather than considering documentation to be 'left as an exercise for the reader'.

Edit: I already have a note-taking solution with me. What I wish to ask is to know what needs to be documented and what the structure of the documentation should be to accommodate the information.

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[–] henfredemars 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have a simple pile of Markdown files that I edit with Obsidian. I like the simple text file format because it keeps my documentation forwards-compatible. I use OpenWRT at the heart of my network, so I keep I right there in root’s home. Every long while I back it up to my general Documents which is then synced between my high-storage devices with SyncThing.

[–] enchantedgoldapple@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for your response. I already have Joplin synced with my server as a solution for my documentation. However I meant to ask how you structure your documentation, know what and how to mention, and organise it for future reference.

[–] unimalion@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Don't know if this helps since dokuwiki lets me link pages, but I have a main page where I just do a one paragraph description of every big thing in use.

each page has:

an in depth description,
how it's set up,
a list of features i use,
how it connects to other services,
and a miscellaneous for everything else

I'll also add any notes in the misc section in case I need to reference them later. If a service is mentioned, I'll create a page for it and link to it every time I mention it. That way nothing is more than a few clicks away and the documentation grows naturally as long as you don't have any monolithic application. Example: (main -> Docker -> Project_Ozone_2 -> custom configurations Or main -> Joomla -> wysiwyg ->JCE Editor)

I also had a professor tell me to just write everything down first and then focus on formatting to find what kind of structure suits your needs best.