That got me thinking: how do other self-hosters/homelabbers here go about automating their server setups? None/purely manual? One big shell script? Multiple scripts wrapped in a Makefile (or justfile, or other command runner)? More enterprisey provisioning/automation tools like Ansible, Puppet, etc.?
If I would do basically the same over and over I'd probably go with a script, ansible cookbook or similar, but as of now the manual route is totally fine.
What's nice about is that it doesn't require any specialized knowledge beyond bash - and that's something which is pretty easy to learn and great to know. It also attracts, IMO, the type of developers who avoid chasing new trends.
This sets up everything I need so I can treat my servers as livestock instead of pets - that is, so I can easily slaughter and replace them whenever I want, instead of being tied to them like a pet.
It’s like Ansible, but you write Python directly instead of a YAML DSL. Code reuse is as simple as writing modules, importing them, and calling whatever functions you’ve written in normal Python.
I find it almost as easy as writing a shell script, but with most of the advantages of Ansible like idempotency and a post-run status output.
Written in bash also
Most of my actual tools now are running in docker via Nomad.