My home lab has a mild amount of complexity and I’d like practice some good habits about documenting it. Stuff like, what each system does, the OS, any notable software installed and, most importantly, any documentation around configuration or troubleshooting.

i.e. I have an internal SMTP relay that uses a letsencrypt SSL cert that I need to use the DNS challenge to renew. I’ve got the steps around that sitting in a Google Doc. I’ve got a couple more google docs like that.

I don’t want to get super complicated but I’d like something a bit more structured than a folder full of google docs. I’d also like to pull it in-house.

Thanks

Edit: I appreciate all the feedback I’ve gotten on this post so far. There have been a lot of tools suggested and some great discussion about methods. This will probably be my weekend now.

  • DeebsterEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I love Mermaid, although I don’t think you can currently do network diagrams. I’ve seen Kroki recommended here for doing that, which supports Mermaid plus many similar markup-based diagrammers.

    [Edit: added link and more info]

    • ShertsonEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      This is the first I’ve heard of Kroki. A quick glance at their site and wow! So many options for markup. I’ll be trying this out for sure

    • @[email protected]English
      2•1 year ago

      I would not consider Mermaid complete enough for network diagramming. The very basics are possible, but try to describe anything more complicated throws off the placement and makes the pathing whacky.

      Straight flow charts are the closest you can get to a network diagram, so if you try to draw a link that travels back up the chart, it breaks mermaid’s brain trying to figure out the order of decision points (network devices).

      The allure of text based diagrams is so tantalizing - but if you need them to be functional, it’s not going to happen

      There’s an issue tracking the need a new diagram type to handle it.