What do you use for your server administration?
I was using webmin, but since my last server died and I'm making a new one, I decided I'd look into something different, personally I liked webmin but didn't use most of its functionality and felt a little clunky for my basic use. I've also testran casaos but felt weirdly limited and couldn't smoothly migrate docker containers to interact with its interface.
I can do with just the terminal, but it's nice having a gui that I can glance at my phone and quickly do stuff like update and reboot.
I personally haven't seen or found much conversation into the topic so I figured I'd ask and see what you peeps use and why.
51 replies
ssh
Power button
ssh
🤔 yeah, that and I guess docker?
SSH and Ansible using SSH
The moment you discover anything else, you're gonna be so pleased. It'll seem so modern! So fast!
Hey, you're the "Ansible is toxic" guy.
What do you use?
So what's your preferred solution and why?
The cli.
I have used management interfaces like coxkpit in the last but i do not really like it that much. I have E-Mail Notifications setup for updates via aptitude and monitor using prometheus and grafana and get additional notifications via prometheus alarm manager.
For an easy to use docker interface i use dockge, since i found it in this use case to be faster with a good, working, independend Interface.
But for the Linux underneath, for all 10-20 servers i managae, CLI.
Cockpit is nice for that. The Podman integration of it is also useful.
+1 to cockpit. My entire network is domain managed and cockpit makes managing everything so much easier
Ansible or ssh
Exactly this! Oh, and gatus for the nice view (mostly own php talking to gatus api)
NixOS and SSH I guess?
ssh, git and docker compose files.
Same, just replace docker compose with cloud-init. Gitea runners for deployment.
Those for basic stuff, ssh for everything else.
I guess, K3s & argocd? Not sure exactly what you're asking
I run k3s and use Argo CD at work, but it always seemed overkill for my home server. I also would want to use self-hosted Forgejo instead of an external service, but I don’t care to spend time on a setup that bootstraps Forgejo, PostgreSQL and Argo CD, then has all of the above managed by Argo CD.
Forgejo, I can't help ya with that one
Even though me and another guy set up Argo at work, I wasn't gonna do it all over again - I pretty much just copied our manifests from work, swapped out the secrets and github urls, and was on the path to success. And the benefits cannot be understated
Whatever you interpret that as since my main goal here is to seed conversation, but the thing that I was thinking of when asking was a web gui with some live stats, doing some simple maintenance stuff, maybe manage or glance at docker/podman status and other services, etc.
Since I've seen some conversations about documenting setups so they can be picked up and troubleshot by someone else unfamiliar with the setup like a family member, I expected it would be common to lower the friction for basic maintenance but seeing the amount of ssh comments makes me think otherwise, maybe more people use their servers exclusively for personal entertainment than I expected.
Uh-huh, think of it like jigsaw puzzles...
That said, I prioritize ease of maintenance and simplicity, still wouldn't expect my family to pick it up in any reasonable amount of time, nor have the motivation, more's the pity.
I've moved to podman (quadlet) containers mostly, easy to read and edit, secure (mostly userspace), systemctl integration, autoupdate. I've done my distrohopping, fedora (in my case bazzite immutable) isn't going anywhere, does everything I need. I run fairly lean, but have a bunch of stuff that can be spun up at a whim that I don't use daily. It's entertaining without being a burden, and useful stuff just happens.
Honestly, ssh and btop cover most of my monitoring needs, serious stuff gets a notify-send to my laptop. I've tried the web gui stuff and I don't look at it enough to justify it, I'm not a sysad monitoring hundreds of computers, it's just a hobby.
Proxmox to manage my VMs, SSH for anything on the command line and portainer for managing my docker containers.
One day I will switch probably switch to dockge so my docker-compose files are stored plain on the hard drive but for now portainer works flawlessly.
dockge needs me to maintain my dockercompose on its own folder in /opt/ as root.
I just wanna keep my compare in its own repos
Huh, that's not my case at all, I run everything from the home folder with my user
Yeah, that would be the ideal scenario I guess.
It should technically be possible by mapping the compose files into the opt folder via docker mounts but I think that's an unreasonable way to go about this since every compose file would need a mounting point
ssh and portainer.
Unpopular answer, but Unraid; as i have mixed sized drives.
I had started out with CasaOS and ran it for a year or so. Last week, I took some time to move everything out of Casa's file structure and cleaned up the compose files.
For container management, I'm using Dockhand. It's been great.
Otherwise, like most others have said, SSH when I need to do more.
Terraform, ansible and kubernetes (microk8s).
K8s in particular has been a huge change to simplifying my network despite the complexities involved and the initial learning curve. Deploying and updating services is much easier now.
So many things. Mostly Kubernetes and FluxCD, but also doco-cd for managing a few deployments on my NAS with GitOps.
@Fierro the terminal? i try to keep overhead to a minimum, its simpler to just learn the commands and use the terminal, can use it from my phone remotely, ssh is pretty secure and using other tools that act as middle-ware just adds to the attack surface.
My setup is a barebones Alpine Linux with ssh and docker, and everything I run on it is a container (except backups).
Those I manage remotely (remote Docker context), so the only time I have to log in is to do an update for the few system packages and that's it. And for that ssh is more than enough
I'm currently in the process of setting up my home server again but this was basically my setup before. Alpine Linux + SSH + Docker and I kept everything to a minimum.
This time I'm setting up rootless Podman in place of Docker and as of today the switch over is complete.
I'm thinking of trying to use wireguard as a way to secure my ssh port but I'm still trying to learn and figure out if that's possible.
With all the security and trust issues hitting the self-hosting headlines, less and simple is completely fine with me.
For system and docker stats I can only recommend beszel. Portainer for docker management and anything else ssh.
I second Beszel, it's such a clean interface, and I can also have it send alerts through Gotify if my shit breaks!
Opentofu for all the looking after the config on my proxmox boxes and networking gear. Ansible for everything else.
I don't currently have any monitoring set up but it's in the to do list when I feel like it.
Check out gatus. Super easy to get up and running depending on what type of monitoring you want to do.
It doesn't do SNMP. That's ... bold.
I’m running OMV with the Docker Compose plugin and I just SSH in for everything else. I run this stack both at home and work. It’s a good middle ground for me of stability and customizability.
Virtualmin and cockpit
Bash? (and Ansible)
@osanna The problem in breaking the system and building it back manually, is documentation.
I am a visually impaired person and many instructions are provided by screenshots.
I can't deny that lately AI has helped me through image description, but it allucinates often. So it means, AI or not, that for us (blind and visual impaired) a 5-minutes operation becomes one hour, and one hour becomes one day. Or week.
@osanna Especially when you have commands. I was born with commands as I used ms-dos at the beginning of 90s. But now, I honestly prefer something semi-automated for the "dirty" activities, as for configuration files it's very difficult to find the issue if you have a conf file made of dozens of lines, a long serie of indentations, punctuation signs and apostrophes everywhere, just forget one and you are screwed.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that this can take double time of work, than an ordinary sighted administrator. I'm somehow envious of those who create a self-host platform on their very own, starting from a blank page.
Does proxmox count? Then I run lots of docker containers in lxcs
Proxmox gui and ssh for my LXCs
...and nix config and podman in the lxc for me
Ssh, dockhand, beszel. They have nice GUI and setting up notification providers is easy. I am using ntfy, so if my CPU is peaking at 90% for a while, or I if any of the containers become unhealthy I get notification to my phone.
What kind of problems do you catch with beszel?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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Home server for me is mostly Ansible for provisioning and systemd for everything else. The trick is keeping it simple enough that you can recover from a broken state without Google. For daily tasks I reach for bare metal SSH or a web interface if it needs to be friendly. K8s is great but I found myself overcomplicating things until I stepped back and remembered: I already know how to SSH into a box.