network_inventory

I started this project in order to have solution for keeping an inventory over my various servers and other network equipment.

Production Setup

1. Clone the repository
2. Copy the .env-example file to .env and change the POSTGRES_PASSWORD and DJANGO_SECRET_KEY variables to something secure.
3. Run docker-compose up and connect to http://localhost

Development Setup

There are two ways to work on this project. For the first one you will need to install the Nix package manager¹. Afterwards you can enter the development environment with nix develop.

For the other way you have to install poetry² and then run poetry shell to enter the virtual environment.

Please note that I will only use and test the first method.

After you've entered the development environment with either method you can start the server. With the nix version you can start it with dev run. With poetry ./dev.sh run. This will start a PostgreSQL database running inside a docker container and start the Django development server. You can then access it in the browser under the FQDN of your computer. E.g. mypc.domain.local. Run the dev command without an argument to see all options.

Environment Variables

To customise the application in the Docker container you can use environment variables in the docker-compose.yml file. Currently the following variables are supported.

• DJANGO_SECRET_KEY the secret key is mandatory, otherwise the application doesn't run. Make sure that it is some long random string.
• DJANGO_DEBUG settings this variable to any value enables the Django debug mode. Make sure that you don't set it on a production server.
• DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE the path to the settings file to use in the container. This requires a dotet syntax. The default is network_inventory.settings.docker.

Documentation

Currently there isn't a lot of documentation present. I try to document my thoughts and other related information in the Notes file.

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1. https://nixos.org/download.html ↩︎

2. https://python-poetry.org ↩︎