I wanted to save my barely passable Python scripting from total extinction and write something quick/useful. So what had happened was…

Single webpage titled 'Systemd config generator for Podman' with form fields 'App Name', 'Port number mapping', and 'Volume name' with a 'Generate .service file' button. The table underneath shows the same fields as above plus a Delete column with the example data being Caddy with ports 80, 443, and volumes being ./data and ./site
FastHTML web app prototype

Instead of writing a quick script I decided to learn a bit of FastHTML to create a web app to generate systemd service files for Podman, so a total yak-shave (I used podman generate last week but wanted “cleaner” files).

FastHTML is a really neat approach to “templating” HTML and seems to scale nicely with your needs, which means it’s easy to get started. The fact that Pico.css and sqlite are built-in is really nice for out-of-box experience (can be disabled and extended). I’ll keep working on my toy app and maybe actually make it useful (I’m posting publicly for accountability, I hope).

I posted the above on my single-user GoToSocial instance (having migrated away from Mastodon in late January). I have been meaning to document my journey with that and revamping my infrastructure on the VPS but I have been more in a doing mode and connecting with people on Fedi mode than actually writing mode. But I want to avoid falling into my perpetual really-nice-post™ trap so I’m adding some color here.

I have been pretty happy with how things are set up at the VPS now. There’s a separate user that runs all the containers in podman through systemd user service. The data for the various containers are served out of a single data folder that is Syncthing’ed over to various machines (and there are backup snapshots), and I have monitoring via Uptime Kuman and Ntfy (which I plan to move to a different VPS on a different provider). Taking ownership of my Fedi presence with GoToSocial elevated my personal SLA and recovery needs quite a bit.

Well, I do still plan to write more about the VPS setup and crate a Start guide but the more I learn, the more I’m not sure where I would want someone else to start. Finding that balance between “best practice” / “I wish I had known when I started” / “this is way too complicated to start with” is a hard one to find. But it’s nice to be doing things, learning, and now sharing (a bit).