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.
Edit: I didn’t want to add another post and annoy people, but had another inquiry:
What ReverseProxy do you use? I plan to run a bunch of services from docker, and would like to be able to reserve an IP:Port to something like service.mylocaldomain.lan
I already have Unbound setup on my PiHole, so I have the ability to set DNS records internally.
Bonus points if whatever ReverseProxy setup can accomplish SSL cert automation.
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.
I think I am going down the docker compose route. When I started using docker, I didn’t use compose, however, now I plan to. Though, Ansible has been on my list of things to learn, as well as nixOS.
Another suggestion for you, I highly recommend specifying a version for the docker image you are using for a container, in the compose file. For example, nextcloud:29.0.1. If you just use :latest, it will pull a new version whenever you redeploy which you may not have tested against your setup, and the version upgrade may even be irreversible, as in the case of nextcloud. This will give you a lot more control over your setup. Just don’t forget to update images at reasonable intervals.
That is good advice, and honestly never really occurred to me to set specific versions for containers.