For a while now i’ve felt that our group will (or perhaps should) need a way to share files.
@shirbo showed me a .yaml file last night that i’d like to get my hands on at some stage. I now have some logo files that i’d like to make available to anybody that has a use for them. I’ve had scripts that i don’t think anybody other than me particularly wanted, but i made them available anyway because they featured in a presentation that i gave earlier in the year. Surely our NixOS enthusiasts would like to peek over one another’s shoulders to see what they don’t know yet.
This Discourse forum has been filling that need to a certain extent, but i personally find that a lot of time passes between when i read a post in this forum, and when i’m ready to use the information posted there. Searching for old posts is not something i’m personally very good at.
We have a gitea instance, which is perfectly suited to managing the small code base for our homepage. I got a bit carried away with that idea and created a repo for this file sharing idea and created the shed repo. This post was as far as i went with explaining what my intention was for that repository. I’m the only person that ever made any commits in that repo, so i think it’s safe to say that git was not the way to go for this idea.
So, this post is to circle back to the original idea and bring everybody else along with me this time. Does anybody else think that a file sharing solution is something that this group would benefit from?
We are amassing quite a few self hosted solutions, all thanks to @zeeclor‘s generosity, both financially and in terms of his time. We’ve got gitea for our source code, the homepage itself, Jitsi for our online video chats and Discourse for this forum. I suppose before we race off and build something i should start with the question of our need…
Does anybody have any files (related to their homelab projects) that they would like to make available to the group so that they can easily reference them when talking to others, either in our meetings or on this forum?
I read this post from @Kangie just after i wrote this post, and i started to wonder if a wiki would be a better solution for this problem (if we agree that this “problem” even exists).
A wiki may not be a bad idea. I’ve put a few things on here that don’t necessarily need something as “formal” as git (e.g., a line or two from configuration.nix) and some notes and traps that I’ve run into (e.g., Secure Boot and nvidia drivers in Linux).
On the other hand, a wiki might rob a little from the Discourse. Putting things in Discourse stimulates discussion. Files being shared by the group are probably shell scripts, python, configuration files, etc. (rather than large binaries) so they’ll paste into Discourse. I think the kind of things that we’d put in a wiki are already happening in the Discourse with all the discussion and additional context added in each thread.
Well, maybe a user page where each of us can publish our interests. It might be handy for us to advertise our personal topics of interest so that people can learn the kinds of things they could/should direct to us. We could list noteworthy discussion threads there to keep the emphasis on Discourse. You’re dead right that Discourse is and should remain our focus.
I definitely had to click around to find the page myself. Not sure if it’s somewhere more obvious, but I found it in my user profile page (icon on the top right of Discourse) → under Preferences → then under Profile.
A generic URL is https://discourse.homelabbrisbane.com.au/my/preferences/profile which should take you to your own profile whenever you’re logged in (deliberately not made a hyperlink, as I’m not sure whether Discourse would then link it to “Belfry’s profile” instead of remaining a generic link). @zeeclor, @jdownie it might be a good idea to add that somewhere to the front page or a pinned “Welcome to the Discourse” type thread. I’m not familiar enough with Discourse to know what the best way to handle that is.
I’ve filled my About Me section out and see a few others starting to populate too. Top idea, @jdownie.
