So I’ve discovered that after a while, it get a bit messy to keep track of all the passwords, API keys, which services are connected to which databases and such. Do you use anything to organise all the info?
I’m using Bitwarden for passwords that have a webui and Notesnook for other stuff, but it feels kinda clunky.
I keep a wiki using obsidian.md. The hard work is in working up the motivation to keep it updated. API keys and such I like to keep in Bitwarden/Vaultwarden
Obsidian is so good
It is, I use it to write anything down.
It’s not FOSS sadly :/ I really thought it was.
It really is. I used notion for years and finally got fed up with the slowness and inability to use offline… tried obsidian with git syncing and switched everything almost overnight. I managed to recreate everything I liked about notion plus some stuff I couldn’t do with just a couple plugins
I like this approach because it doesn’t require someone to stand up a database to read it. I have this worry in my head that I’ll be gone for some reason and my family will need to figure things out. Them not having to deal with a database right from the beginning seems very worthwhile.
Secrets etc in 1Password, for reasons similar to above even though it doesn’t fit the self-hosted mindset.
Secrets in BitWarden, documentation in Bookstack.
Bookstack looks good :) But I’m to much tied to Obsidian.
As others have mentioned, there are two things required. A space to document information, and a separate secure space for password/secretes.
Personally I use Joplin and BitWarden. I used to use DokuWIki and KeepassXC.
I keep all secrets and passwords in a selfhosted Bitwarden instance. I don’t maintain any kind of “documentation” since my deployment files and scripts are clean and tidy, so I can tell what’s going on at a glance by looking at them directly. They’re also constantly changing as I continuously harden services according to ever-changing standards, so it’s more efficient for me to just continue keeping my codebase clean than it is to maintain separate documentation that I myself will likely never read again once I’ve published it.
I’m the only one that needs to know how my own services are deployed and what the infrastructure looks like, and it’s way faster for me to just look at the actual content of whatever deployment files or scripts I have.
It’s a different story for things I work with professionally, because you can’t trust someone else working to maintain the same things as you has the same level of knowledge to “just know where to go and what to do”. But that doesn’t apply to personal projects where I just want to get things done.
I use bitwarden for my passwords etc. Would it be beneficial to self-host my own bitwarden instance? (my server is unraid with a number of dockers) just started thinking about what else I can self-host etc.
To be more accurate, I actually self-host Vaultwarden, which is a Bitwarden-compatible server built in Rust. I highly recommend it, it’s quick and easy to setup, light-weight, and works with all of the Bitwarden apps, browser extensions, etc.
Right now: Keepass and a note-taking app I’m hoping others will post far better options so that I can improve my organization…
Secrets in password manager, documentation in NixOS configuration files.
Half of my passwords are stored with “password manager”, which can be easily plugged to anything. For the rest, I use ansible to manage all my services and thus some secrets are also stored in an ansible vault file. The way my ansible playbooks are organized/commented serves as documentation.
KeePass, mainly.
Keepassxc for passwords plus a big emacs .org notes file for documentation. The latter could be better organised but it’s easy to search with emacs tools so it’ll do.
