What do you use to document your home lab?

Well, whatever you end up using for documentation, print it out and actively maintain an up to date paper hard copy in a 3-ring binder somewhere. That way when all your shit falls over and you have a nonfunctional LAN you can still remember how everything was set up. Don't ask me how I know.....

I've been using Obsidian for a lot of other purposes for a couple years now, so I was comfortable adding my documentation into my existing vault there. I made a couple templates that I fill out for any hardware/software/networking equipment.

Since the app's selling point is storing all your notes in plain text I wouldn't put anything security-related in there without some encrypted container. I use KeePass for that part, and keep the file it generates in the same folder as Obsidian so I can link to it within notes. Click the link in the note, KeePass opens the vault and asks for its password.

Thoughts and Prayers.

Mine is, er, self-documenting, and my partner has instructions, in the event that I die, to plug the wifi router into the modem and unplug all the other crap. The router has a sticker saying ROUTER and the modem has a sticker saying MODEM.

Everything is containerized, so i just have a yaml file with all the information i need to rebuild each container. Easy! Has come in handy a few times.

For me, making a graph is the best documentation, everything else is in config files.

If I really do need to takes notes, It's currently in notion but I'm hoping soon I'll be able to self-host AnyType (https://github.com/orgs/anyproto/discussions/17)

Joplin synced to webdav/nexcloud.

Almost nothing haha. Some half-ass notes saved here and there, in a disorganized manner.

My stuff works, but I don't recommend my approach.

I use WikiJS for documentation. Simple, powerful and has a lot of features

ansible, self-documenting. My playbook.yml has a list of roles attached to each host, each host's host_vars file has details on service configuration (domains, etc). It looks like this: https://pastebin.com/6b2Lb0Mg

Additionally this role generates a markdown summary of the whole setup and inserts it into my infra's README.md.

Manually generated diagrams, odd manual maintenance procedures and other semi-related stuff get their own sections in the README (you can check the template here) or linked markdown files. Ongoing problems/research goes into the infra gitea project's issues.

Joplin has been my note-taking app of choice. Free (OSS); no accounts needed; simple; local; synchronizes through my Nextcloud instance to Linux, Windows and Android; markdown-based, etc. It's been a good workflow for me and makes taking and searching through notes quick and pretty painless.

I document my setup, backup and restoration procedures (done rarely enough that it's good to have it written down), etc. with it.

I use raneto, it is a small lightweight nodejs wiki. The files are stored as markdown.

I run wiki.js for documentation for my home lab, but also things like the custom rom setup for my phone. However it's hard to keep it up to date as I forget it exists. I mostly use it to document setting up windows server core with different roles as I don't need to do that often, but most tutorials on the web are SEO optimised with low quality

What is it that you all are documenting? I'm just getting started and have so far just set up docker and several containers (Plex, the *arrs, qbittorrent, gluetun) and not sure if I should be writing something down?

I'm not very good at deciding on where to document things, so I have a mix of BookStack, Dokuwiki, and Obsidian currently.

I really like Dokuwiki but I like the UI/UX of BookStack better so I'm working on a plugin to sync bookstack and obsidian. I'll probably get rid of Dokuwiki after that.

The main reason for syncing with obsidian is that I want documentation that isn't stored on the thing it's about, in case my servers completely die.

In another thread, someone reminded me that TiddlyWiki still exists, it's also a pretty cool little tool.

Mix of a Bookstack wiki and various git repos on my self-hosted Forgejo.

Org-mode

I use draw.io for diagrams. Netbox to keep track of devices, IP addresses, and cables. MediaWiki for how to articles. Both Netbox and MediaWiki live on a VM both at home and offsite and they sync nightly.

I went with dokuwiki forever ago. Super stupid simple single container to run (no DB) and writes down to plain text files. I sync it with git every now and then.

My only gripe about it is the dokuwiki syntax and not using normal markdown. I do now have a plugin for that but it's still just ok. But at this point I might be too engrossed in it to ever really switch. But other than that it works well, is lightweight, has other plugins (email, mermaid flow charts, etc. etc.) and really is pretty maintenance-free.

If there is some better one that is accessible via a browser and doesn't require a DB then I'd be interested.

I use trillium that gets backed up every hour to my pc.

I also do a lot of python development so my project ideas get written down there too.

I'm not a fan of code is documentation because what happens when you step away for a month and you need to figure something out? In trillium I have a search bar. What do you have in the code?

I use the wonderful https://draw.io to sketch up my homelab and which device hosting what service. More fun when it's vidualized the way I want it 😊

I'm using netbox, and I'm in the process of info dumping my brain to a media wiki. I may add ansible into the mix in the near future.

My lab is a bit large and complex and I'm currently in the process of trying to train help to run it, from the pool of people that make use of it. They know how the front end works, a few of them need to learn the back end.

Ibrun my own gitlab instance where i have a repository with all my configs, scripts etc.
As well as a wiki that contains the admin guide with (hopefully) all the relevant infos in form of text and PlantUML graphs.

The nice thing is.. You can just 'code' the diagrams and use a PlantUML instance to render the graphs live

When I had home lab I used to use racktables - https://www.racktables.org/

but I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for.

I'm defining my service containers via GitLab and I deploy them via tagged and dockerized GitLab Runners.

If something fails, I change the runner tags for a service and it will be deployed on a different machine.

Incl case of a critical failiure, I just need to setup a Debian, install docker, load and run the GL runner image, maybe change some pipelines and rerun the deployment jobs.

Some things aren't documented well, yet. Like VPN config...

Ah yes, my router is able to access GitLab as well and pull the list of static routes etc. from it.

I use a combination of netbox for the physical/logical network and server connectivity, and outline for text documentation of the different components.

Git based static site generator, like gohugo or Jekyll.

I made myself a wiki in my helpdesk system - I use osticket to send me various email alerts to so I can track issues I need to fix, and they have a little wiki option.

Then one day that host was down and I needed some info and I was very irritated. Now all of those notes are in my Apple notes backed up in iCloud and searchable on whatever I’ve got handy so if I need info I can get the info

I use my gitea instance to backup my compose and config files. I've also enabled the Wiki on it to use for documentation.

This seems pretty vanilla based on what other have suggested but I use regular markdown files in a git repo.

For data flows or diagrams, mermaidJS syntax within the markdown file works wonders and when I need to link one document to another or one section to another, you can use the normal link syntax of markdown.

Easy to use, hardly any setup and easily accessible.

Obsidian. I love that it uses simple markdown files so it's platform agnostic. Documenting my setup has been a lifesaver.

I use logseq to record any manual steps as well as any administrative actions that I take on a service. That being said, all of my homelan infrastructure is codified and stored in git in various ways so, it can be recreated as needed. There are very few manual steps in reconfiguring any of my services.

In all honesty, it is a hodge podge. Some are in my dokuwiki, some are plain text, some are markdown, some in my phone, lots on scraps of paper. Just about the time I get it all in one place I scrap my systems and start over.

I know that I would keep forgetting to update the docs, so my documentation are the ansible playbooks and docker-compose.yaml files that I use to set it all up.

That leaves anything that has to be done in some Ui undocumented, so I try to keep that to a minimum, which isn't always easy (I'm looking at you authentik!).

I use Ansible, Docker, and Emacs OrgMode files committed to Git. Diagrams are a mix of Miro and Graphviz. There's also a few markdowns in there too. Joplin is used for rough notes only.

I'm using anytype.io, it's been pretty neat so far.

I deploy as much as I possibly can via Ansible. Then the Ansible code serves as the documentation. I also keep the underlying OS the same on all machines to avoid different OS conventions. All my machines run Debian. The few things I cannot express in Ansible, such as network topology, I draw a diagram for in draw.io, but that's it.

Also, why not automate the certificate renewal with certbot? I have two reverse proxies and they renew their certificates themselves.

I use bookstack. Simple selfhosted wiki.

Any chance you wouldn't mind sharing the SSL renewal doc? Redacted of course. Mine is coming up and I'd like to do it correctly this time. :)

I have a git repo for it, needless to say. And so README.md plus a network diagram from https://app.diagrams.net/

Why not push it up to GitHub? Then you also get a commit history to see your changes overtime.

Comments inside the docker-compose.yml files?

I run a local MediaWiki appliance from turnkeylinux, super easy to spin up in proxmox.

Hackmd.io for simple markdown docs.

Some stuff is in Joplin, some stuff is in wiki.js. Joplin lacks organization features. Wiki.js stores stuff in database and has problems with search, both are possible to fix, I believe...

Occasionally I remember about problems with this setup, but I'm too lazy to fix or replace it

The only thing I save in Google Drive are my notes just in case of disaster.

I write down everything I built so for plus future plans in OneNote. This kind of defeats the purpose of self hosting but I want to keep a written copy complete off site in case if a complete loss. Plus I like OneNote. It’s actually a well designed product. Scripts, docker compose files and such are in GitHub.

I constructed a simple kbase for myself using Docbase. I love it.

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