Hello everyone :)

My Linux learning and Homelab setup is going smoothly and after a long period of stagnation, I’m in a new learning curve :D ! I just learned the magic of hard links and implemented them with bind mounts (yeah hard links only work on the same file system :P) to my Qbittorrent scripting to automagically move them as hard links to a bind mount accessible to Sonarr, Radarr, Jellyfin… and move, rename and do all other things without even touching the original files: PUR MAGIC !

Everything is a file? Naah, everything is a hard link ! (Or inode? xD)

While I’m overjoyed I learned and have a better understanding of files, hard links, soft links, file system, docker, web, all kind of things related to IT… I’m getting kinda overwhelmed of what’s happening on my system !!

  • I have a dozen docker compose on my server, all behind traefik resolved by my piHole DNS on a raspberry pi, some have a custom image made by myself for certificate purpose or some manual changes I added.

  • I have some .config files in my ~/ to improve my micro experience and make it more integrated over SSH with my Mac and Desktop. If also have some config files in my /root directory for my miniCA for all my service with my personal local domain name and other config files like /etc/bash_aliases and some changes in /etc/bash.bashrc

  • I have some python .venv for learning and scripting with python

  • I have a complex and long bash script backup for all my docker containers to back up my volumes, config files and media files separately

  • Installed some useful and needed packages like resolvconf, wireguard, samba…

  • I have a few samba shares, all accessible in my LAN with sometimes some exotic configuration for Mac integration

  • My docker containers have some bind mounts shared volumes

[…]

And now I also have some hard links lying around in the mix ! So I have to say it out loud: I’m OVERWHELMED !

Yes, I do keep some notes in Obsidian and also have a self-hosted Forgejo to keep my notes updated and have some kind of version control of changes in my scripts, but I do feel like I’m not sure anymore what I have… Not to say I didn’t mention all the other stuff related to my phone (baikal, ntfy…) or how to keep everything updated (WUD does the trick for containers :)) and tidy…

I guess I’m looking for something magic, something that could In ONE blink give me what’s doing what and where? And changes my life for an ever-growing IT space ? Preference something visual…?

I hope to hear from you guys on what I can do to take away this feel of being lost and not being able to fully track my systems and my LAN !

Thank you !

  • fin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    10 hours ago

    It maybe off topic but I’ve been using coolify for my homelab setup and it’s been working great. It manages all the docker compose files for you and you can edit and deploy them, all from the nice webui it comes with. You can even access the terminal without leaving your browser. Drawback is that you well not get “hardlinking everything” type of flexibility.

    • N0x0n@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      9 hours ago

      This seems cool and is not off topic at all :) It does seem to answer to my “question” and seems a nice thing to have :) However, someone suggested Terraform but after some reading it’s not the tool I was looking for… Ansible seems more the like I guess ! But coolify seems also very interesting ! Different and more similar to my current setup.

      I think Terraform, Ansible, Tofu are the next generation tool to solve my current issue… They are declarative tools ! But I don’t want to rush things and have another dead setup lying arround !

      Thanks for your reply !

      Edit: There’s also an alternative https://github.com/Dokploy/dokploy in case you didn’t know :) If you know, can you tell me why you choose on over the other?

      • fin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        7 hours ago

        I didn’t know about dokploy tbh, thanks. It seems to have more refurbished UI. If I knew this first I would have given it a try. The reason why I’m using coolify right now is that I saw it on Hackernews. I didn’t do much research because it was already opensource and self-hosted ( which are the most important features I require for a software).

        Since Coolify is working fine on my environment for now, I’m not going to get rid of it immediately, but it’s always a good thing to have many other alternatives so that we can cope with enshittification (aka Plex)