this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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108
How do you document your setup? (piefed.social)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by BruisedMoose@piefed.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Like soup-to-nuts. I know I need to document what I'm doing and I've started several times, but then I never go back and make updates. I don't know if it's just the ADHD or if I'm just going about it or thinking about it in the wrong way.

So I'm curious about:

  • what you use for your documentation
  • how you organize it
  • what information you include
  • how you work documentation into your changes/tinkering flow

Edit: Dang, folks! You all have given me a lot to read through, think about, and explore. Thank you!

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[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It is hard, if even possible, to keep documentation up-to-date. Better use a configuration management system (salt, ansible etc.) for your servers. Yes, you need to learn how to use it. Yes, it will take a longer time to make changes in your configuration. But as a result you'll have a self-documented configuration-as-a-code that will allow you to scale your setup as you need. Reproducing something won't require reading your notes, remembering your actions etc.

[–] IratePirate@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

But as a result you’ll have a self-documented configuration-as-a-code that will allow you to scale your setup as you need. Reproducing something won’t require reading your notes, remembering your actions etc.

Until you realise that

  • you don't really need to scale a homelab that much
  • if something breaks, you just want to quickly fix it manually because "doing the Ansible" is more of a pain
  • now idempotency and documentation-as-code is out of the window. ;)

(I'm being tongue-in-cheek here. I don't doubt this may work for you, but it takes much more discipline than I have.)

[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

you don’t really need to scale a homelab that much

Maybe. But you never know this beforehand.

if something breaks, you just want to quickly fix it manually because “doing the Ansible” is more of a pain

In most cases you just need to replay a playbook for quick fix. But I agree that the proper fix will likely take a longer time (while downtime is much shorter).

now idempotency and documentation-as-code is out of the window.

Let @BruisedMoose@piefed.social decide.

P. S. I don't like Ansible, other tools can be easier to use. But I don't want to recommend something concrete.

[–] IratePirate@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

I don't like Ansible, other tools can be easier to use. But I don't want to recommend something concrete.

Which ones do you like to work with? (Even though it's not a recommendation ;) I've only dabbled in Ansible so far and found it overkill for most of the things I do, but maybe one of yours isn't?

[–] magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah as someone who does both ansible is for repeatable multi-system commands like telling everything to update or configuring a local agent on every machine at once.

[–] IratePirate@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

That's what I use it for as well. Updating 7+ VMs is no fun. With Ansible? No worries.