Documenting self-hosted network reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Green_Rich6353 · 2023-09-27 21:57 Hey there I'm quite new to self-hosted and I have absolutely fallen into chaos between all my post-its and loose flying papers. I want to self-host something like a wiki for my home network structure, as well as for all my running docker stacks. It will be hosted behind a reverse proxy on a Raspberry or maybe my Synology NAS. What do I want to achieve? Clearly, there needs to be less loose papers and clear and structured documentation. I need: \-Access for friends (which I 100% trust), so they can look up how to use or even adjust certain services e.g. FoundryVTT. \-A separate documentation for every open source software I have installed, because sometimes their documentation is missing some parts which I had to google for a while. When reconfiguring something this should make it easier for me. \-Which Dockerfile runs on which PI (right now it's 4 PIs, 2 Synology) \-My network infrastructure (which ports are open on which device) \-To-do List in a manner of 'I want to install this next' // 'this open source software could be cool' \-Maybe even some kind of bug documentation and reporting What is my hardware setup? \-2 Synology NAS \-4 Raspberry Pi's \-Unifi Controller as Router and Firewall So I found 3 solutions and wanted to hear your opinion about them, maybe you even have some additional ideas for me. Option 1 (preferred): I'll run a Wiki that needs a password login (managed via nginx reverse proxy header authentication). My question here would be: Do you have any recommendations, is there a wiki designed for that kind of documentation? Option 2 (safer): Split it up into private and public wiki for my docker containers. Option 3: (safer and better than option 2) I set up a network documentation tool (e.g. Docusnap) and set up a wiki for my installed containers. I'm curious about your opinions about this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zfa · 2023-09-28 00:12 OTT: It's funny when I was actually working in IT I was a documentation evangelist. Everything was spic and span. Nowadays I mess around that much that it'd be a fulltime job to get everything documented and keep uptodate. I've just an excel spreadheet tracking where what services are on which of my VPSes; my network layout showing what devices are on what VLANs and what talks to what; and a draw.io from about 3 years ago I can't be bothered to update lol. Outside of that I assume my config is my documentation - backup of router config for network, back up of compose files nd other bare metal config files. I feel if I went down this route I'd be all in and have no time to play with the tech itself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NikStalwart · 2023-09-28 01:34 i keep my network documentation in a Joplin notebook. If I wanted it shareable, I'd look up wiki engines. There are simple options like wiki.js, and there are beasts with authentication and fine-grained access control so you can run a single instance with public and private data. The answer for documentation is truly "whatever works for you". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- javijuji · 2023-09-28 02:19 Note-Mark might suit your needs. It's pretty new though so it might need some time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Gatherix · 2023-09-28 02:28 Be particularly conscientious of tradeoffs involving ease of *recording* information and ease of *accessing* information. Structure, formatting, presentation, and software-specific workflows can all be barriers to capturing the info you want. This seems like information that'll change regularly; as other commenters have alluded to, something simple like a spreadsheet, text file, etc may be more useful - whatever works best for you. Since this includes server info (e.g. setup guides, configs), you might not want access to be dependent upon your servers; they won't be very useful if you can't access them because your server or network infrastructure is offline, which is precisely when you'd want them. Local or external solutions (like a Google doc, Joplin, etc) protect against these risks. Hosting wikis is still of course fun, so you could have one for sharing with folks. Another option is to store everything locally in markdown (ex. Obsidian), and then sync those to the server where they're ingested by a static site generator (ex. Mkdocs) that can then be shared, which let's you keep them local while still looking pretty for sharing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Green_Rich6353 · 2023-09-28 04:22 >spreadsheet, text file, etc may be more useful I'm afraid this would explode under the mass of information and i'll never find anything again. ​ >they won't be very useful if you can't access them because your server or network infrastructure is offline Oh you got a good point there. Didn't think about my docu not beeing acessible ​ > Another option is to store everything locally in markdown (ex. Obsidian), and then sync those to the server where they're ingested by a static site generator (ex. mkdocs) that can then be shared, which let's you keep them local while still looking pretty and being password-protected for sharing. Nice! I love this solution. Obsidian looks super aestetic and nice to handle. Thank you so much for this tip! This will be the way to go for now! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xstar97 · 2023-09-28 07:36 I originally self hosted my [docs](https://docs.xstar97thenoob.com/) site but i made it public and moved it to cloudflare pages instead, the code is on my github. Its powered by docusaurus and it uses markdown for docs. Simple to use and has a nice gui. Gotta learn markdown for the docs and a bit of react to make custom components if you like. You can def self host it and just make it lan only accessible for internal docs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GremlinNZ · 2023-09-28 08:44 Amateurs... Excel is the one true path!... For everything... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 66towtruck · 2023-10-04 17:23 I keep everything in a private GitHub repo. Accessible from anywhere. I keep config info/files, compose files and documentation.