That’s the neat part, you don’t
Self-Hosted Main
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
For Example
- Service: Dropbox - Alternative: Nextcloud
- Service: Google Reader - Alternative: Tiny Tiny RSS
- Service: Blogger - Alternative: WordPress
We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.
Useful Lists
- Awesome-Selfhosted List of Software
- Awesome-Sysadmin List of Software
Infrastructure as code, the code that is your homelab should be the documentation of it.
Infrastructure as code
Just some scripts and config files in external git at the moment but usually I just get my refrence form other VMs. Probably going with obsidian or other markdown editor and upload notes to somewhere if disaster strikes.
I use Joplin for my wiki/documentation tool. I like that it supports markdown and can be exported as markdown if needed. Also the variety of plugins is a plus.
Joplin organizes my life. Without it, I'd be lost. Like, for anything.
What size tires do I need to swap my bike? How did I configure my samba shares? How do I setup VFIO passthrough? What's the name of that guy I hate at work? (Fuck you, Nick) How much did it cost to have the tree in my back yard removed? Can I see the invoice?
All these questions I can lookup and solve using my Joplin database. Without Joplin, life gets way harder.
Love Joplin
Mkdocs, grav
Logseq
Obsidian with it's folders/files in a location that gets duplicated to another drive by rsync.
self hosted git repository.
I setup gitea on my server and use it to track version changes of all my scripts.
And I use a combination of the wiki and .md (readme) files for howto's and any inventory I'm keeping, like IP addresses, CPU assignments etc.
But mainly it's all in .md formatted with markdown.
Poorly.
Document?
I've got a file called "TODO server stuff.txt" with some notes from 2019, does that count?
About 2 years ago I came to the conclusion that my personal documentation for tech stuff is non existent. Some excel sheet here, a saved TXT in c:\temp over there, the occasional "I still need tot rewrite and save this unsaved file in Notepad++" combined with a bunch of google keep notes.
I ended up installing Wordpress with https://basepresskb.com/docs/knowledge-base/basepress/
I use it for virtually everything. From documenting the build of a server to simply logging expensive household equipment with extended warranty.
I keep everything in my brain.
Has its perks.. no need to write things down.
But it's easy to momentarily forget the little things that come with, say, reinstalling everything.
I intend to be like that every time but now it's getting a little overwhelming.
I like writing docs in markdown, and using mkdocs with mkdocs-material for this. With a bit of trickery, you can do templating / transclusion, and you get a useful search too.
I like to blog it sometimes. But I think the best spot is searching for what you’re trying to do, the posting on that forum. I’ll make these loooong detailed posts, edit them again and again, pics, obfuscated pastebin text, screen shots, the whole kit and caboodle. It usually helps others that way, and sometimes, m searching for a bit of code that I can’t remember and find my own post again. Ha! Ftw
im surprised i didn't see it below but outline. https://github.com/outline/outline
its a really nice md editor with support for multiple backends, drop in photos, easy layouting and easy share links
Dokuwiki
If the self hosted goes down hard these flat files can be pulled up locally.
Zim wiki
Bookstack, MediaWiki, Joplin. These are three ways that I'd recommend.
Bookstack is such an amazing tool. Just make a shelf for Homelab, books for each aspect like VMs, docker, etc. Then have a chapter for each VM or app and them pages can be installation, running, issues, troubleshooting, significant upgrades, etc. It's important to actually take note of it all and not just grab URLs for your resources because if those pages are removed then you're screwed.
a notepad++ doc with links to a millon guides I used, end result urls and login info.
Yeah I document everything… inside my brain
How about just writing Ansible playbook/s?
Knowledgebase + OIDplus + scripts/configs in git repo.
I chose local instance of Wordpress for my knowledgebase a decade ago. Today I'd probably use Bookstack.
TRILIUM. https://github.com/zadam/trilium Dig into it and check out all the examples before giving up on it. I've tried every note app I can imagine, and it's hands down the best.
I am even using the API to pull shopping lists from home assistant and add them to my todo list via node-red.
With tailscale and 24/7 access, I never have to worry about missing a thought. While working out this morning, I heard a new word in a song, took me 5 seconds to stop and document that. It's now my home for every thought, idea, plan, code snippet, recipe, home inventory, etc...
It's 100% my trusted system. I roll GTD concepts into it with @contexts and whatnot, so I've even combined all other knowledge management systems into trilium.
I can't recommend it enough.
+1 for Trilium. I also tried a lot of note-taking apps that are out there and Trilium is by far the most robust one.
While working out this morning, I heard a new word in a song, took me 5 seconds to stop and document that
Not to be a party pooper but I guarantee you it took longer than 5s lol.
I roll GTD concepts into it with @contexts and whatnot, so I've even combined all other knowledge management systems into trilium.
Can you clarify on this? I use GTD with nextcloud calendar/tasks.