Selfhosted

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.....

Thoughts and Prayers.

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.

Mine is, er, self-documenting, and my partner has instructions, in the event that I die, to plug the wifi router into t he the modem and unplug all the other crap.

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 a section in the readme (you can check the template here). Ongoing problems/research goes into the infra gitea project's issues.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Joplin synced to webdav/nexcloud.

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.

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'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 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.

Org-mode

Git based static site generator, like gohugo or Jekyll.

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.

I use raneto, it is a small lightweight nodejs wiki. The files are stored as markdown. I also have a script I use to write all of common configs I've modified to the wiki as code blocks in addition to my diagrams and notes.

In my case I didn't want a git based solution or a database. They get synced to my laptop via syncthing on a monthly basis as part of my container backup script.

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

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

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

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. :)

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.

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