Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

thomas_stringer · 2016-12-29 15:45:16

As I dive into Arch more and more, obviously I run into environment/machine specific issues. Not necessarily and deficit of the Arch wiki, but more like things I personally deal with that would probably only clutter the Arch wiki.

I've been taking some random ad-hoc notes (sadly not really centralized... yet), and I'm wondering what everybody else does. Do you have your own Arch wiki/notebook/whatever? Where do you store it?

I'm a firm believer of version-controlled-everything, and some of the info may be sensitive in the future (although I haven't had any personal documentation at the moment that couldn't be conceived to be public). So thinking that a GitHub repo for my notes would suffice, or if I do end up wanting to make my notes private then Gitlab would be the best route.

Anyways, just looking to see what the more seasoned Archers are doing out there for this.

ayekat · 2016-12-29 16:01:03

I use a wiki software to maintain my own, private "knowledge wiki", i.e. everything I know goes into that wiki (so not only Arch Linux specific).

In my case, it's ikiwiki, which can generate static pages from markdown files (and other markup formats, I believe).
I can then put everything in a git repository, and have a server-side git hook regenerate the content whenever I push something to it. It's simple, and it's all I need (GitLab seems overkill for that, and Github is public).

Trilby · 2016-12-29 16:11:48

There are both machine-specific pages, as well as user pages on the arch wiki. You are certainly allowed to put such content there. There are high standards for what goes in major pages on the arch wiki, but machine-specific pages are certainly open to whatever you've experienced with that machine. And user pages can be anything at all (notwithstanding some common sense inappropriate content) so these are good places for not-yet-organized or hard-to-organize notes.

Although all of this would be public. I think there may be some not-public "scratch space" for users on our wiki - I don't use such things. And while this may not be readily public, I'd certainly not put any sensitive information there.

If you want to roll your own, mediaWiki is easy to install and set up - but it is a ginormous beast. I used it once on one of my servers and quickly got rid of it. Parsedown in contrast is ridiculously light weight and very easy to use if you're ok writing a little of your own php to manage the markdown files or a database. I use parsedown on several servers I use. Drop in one little php file, then you can readily display any markdown formatted text as a nice html like a wiki page would. Parsedown doesn't manage version history or user access, or anything else, it just does the markdown->html conversion, so if you are up for building your own, parsedown + a local git repo would give you a single-user wiki. Add a database or other user management system and a login page, and you have a "proper" wiki.

thomas_stringer · 2016-12-29 16:21:29

Trilby wrote:

There are both machine-specific pages, as well as user pages on the arch wiki. You are certainly allowed to put such content there. There are high standards for what goes in major pages on the arch wiki, but machine-specific pages are certainly open to whatever you've experienced with that machine. And user pages can be anything at all (notwithstanding some common sense inappropriate content) so these are good places for not-yet-organized or hard-to-organize notes.
Although all of this would be public. I think there may be some not-public "scratch space" for users on our wiki - I don't use such things. And while this may not be readily public, I'd certainly not put any sensitive information there.
If you want to roll your own, mediaWiki is easy to install and set up - but it is a ginormous beast. I used it once on one of my servers and quickly got rid of it. Parsedown in contrast is ridiculously light weight and very easy to use if you're ok writing a little of your own php to manage the markdown files or a database. I use parsedown on several servers I use. Drop in one little php file, then you can readily display any markdown formatted text as a nice html like a wiki page would. Parsedown doesn't manage version history or user access, or anything else, it just does the markdown->html conversion, so if you are up for building your own, parsedown + a local git repo would give you a single-user wiki. Add a database or other user management system and a login page, and you have a "proper" wiki.

Ah, very cool! So when you say "user page", do you mean this? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Us … s_stringer I just created my wiki user. So basically I can add notes to that page and it's my own little "note silo"? That wouldn't be infringing on anybody else?

Last edited by thomas_stringer (2016-12-29 16:22:13)

Morn · 2016-12-29 16:36:47

I use Oddmuse running on sthttpd for notes. MediaWiki and Apache are nice, but Apache configuration has become so annoyingly difficult that I have given up on MediaWiki for the moment. Sometimes simple tools work best. sthttpd even does virtual hosting by default, so the wiki is not accessible from the LAN.

Last edited by Morn (2016-12-29 17:14:19)

Trilby · 2016-12-29 16:37:29

thomas_stringer wrote:

So basically I can add notes to that page and it's my own little "note silo"? That wouldn't be infringing on anybody else?

Yup. You can explore other user's pages to see how they use them. Some use it much like a social profile, others collect random notes of things they had trouble with in installing. You can have sub pages, as seen in Alad's.

You'd have to ask those more familiar with our wiki on whether or not there is any private space though. Certainly user pages can be obscure enough to not be found unless you tell someone where to look - but they're certainly not private. I don't know if there are any formalized rules on how much content you can put on your user page(s) - but I suspect common sense would dictate here. Wiki page source is very small, so unless you are doing something to explicitly abuse that space, it'd be hard for it to be an issue.

jasonwryan · 2016-12-29 17:53:07

Moving to Forum & Wiki

adamlau · 2016-12-30 09:35:37

I stick with plain text. Because my notes do contain what I deem to be sensitive data:

gpg -c --s2k-cipher-algo AES256 --s2k-digest-algo SHA512 --s2k-count 65536 arch.notes

ratcheer · 2016-12-30 14:55:49

I just keep my Arch notes in my Zim Desktop Wiki.

But, I think you can make your GitHub pages private.

Tim

thomas_stringer · 2016-12-30 14:59:27

ratcheer wrote:

I just keep my Arch notes in my Zim Desktop Wiki.
But, I think you can make your GitHub pages private.
Tim

Yes, for a price. Private repos on GitHub are not free. Gitlab on the other hand does have free private repos. As well as Bitbucket, if I recall correctly.

jmontano · 2016-12-30 16:25:13

I also use Zim Desktop and keep it sinced with Dropbox.

thiagowfx · 2017-02-28 22:03:39

Orgmode is great for that...well, if you happen to be an emacs user. I used it extensively at the time I was one, but nowadays I am mostly using vim, so I am seeking for an alternative of similar or better quality.

Last edited by thiagowfx (2017-02-28 22:03:54)

jasonwryan · 2017-02-28 22:10:10

### Simple notes ###
n() { 
local arg files=(); for arg; do files+=( "$HOME/.notes/$arg" ); done
${EDITOR:-vi} "${files[@]}" 
}

nls() {
tree -CR --noreport $HOME/.notes | awk '{ 
    if (NF==1) print $1; 
    else if (NF==2) print $2; 
    else if (NF==3) printf "  %s\n", $3 
    }'
}

# TAB completion for notes
_notes() {
local files=($HOME/.notes/**/"$2"*)
    [[ -e ${files[0]} ]] && COMPREPLY=( "${files[@]##$HOME/.notes/}" )
}
complete -o default -F _notes n

I have a Zsh version as well...

Arch Linux

#1 2016-12-29 15:45:16

Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#2 2016-12-29 16:01:03

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#3 2016-12-29 16:11:48

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#4 2016-12-29 16:21:29

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#5 2016-12-29 16:36:47

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#6 2016-12-29 16:37:29

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#7 2016-12-29 17:53:07

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#8 2016-12-30 09:35:37

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#9 2016-12-30 14:55:49

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#10 2016-12-30 14:59:27

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#11 2016-12-30 16:25:13

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#12 2017-02-28 22:03:39

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

#13 2017-02-28 22:10:10

Re: Do you maintain your own mini Arch wiki?

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