Memos, a self-hosted, simple stream of your notes

03-28-2023 • Memos, Kubernetes, Note-taking

Memos is a self-hosted application that simplifies note-taking by allowing users to save notes in a simple, unordered stream. Whether it's text, links, images, or PDF files, Memos can help you to keep track of your notes.

Prerequisite

Before getting started, it's important to note that you'll need a running Kubernetes cluster to follow this post. If you don't already have one available, consider using kind for now.

Memos

Structured note-taking can be a challenge, and there are many open-source projects available that attempt to solve this problem in different ways. To see what's available, check out the up-to-date list on GitHub.

Structured note-taking is a pretty tough task on its own, there are a lot of open-source projects, that try to solve this in different ways. You can find an up-to-date list of available projects on GitHub.

Memos itself is only a server and a web app, that will store your notes, that are based on Markdown, within a SQLite database.

Despite providing a web application out of the box, there is also a project called Moe Memos, that provides clients for Android and iOS.

TIP

There is a memos demo available online!

Kubernetes

In order to deploy memos, we need several Kubernetes resources:

code/
├── deployment.yaml
├── kustomization.yaml
├── namespace.yaml
├── pvc-hostpath.yaml
├── pvc.yaml
└── service.yaml

kustomization.yaml

Let's start by creating a kustomization.yaml, that will be used to bundle all other resources:

kustomization.yaml

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization

namespace: memos

resources:
  - namespace.yaml
  - deployment.yaml
  - service.yaml
  - pvc.yaml

namespace.yaml

The most obvious resource is the namespace, so let's create it:

namespace.yaml

kind: Namespace
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: memos

pvc.yaml

After creating the namespace, we will create a PersistentVolumeClaim, that is used to persist our data:

pvc.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: memos
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteMany
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
  storageClassName: ssd

TIP

If you don't have a custom storage class available within your cluster, you can also use a volume of type hostPath.

pvc-hostpath.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: memos
spec:
  capacity:
    storage: 10Gi
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  hostPath:
    path: "/mnt/data"

deployment.yaml

As we have defined a persistent volume for our memos server, we can continue to deploy memos itself:

deployment.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: memos
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: memos
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: memos
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: memos
          image: docker.io/neosmemo/memos:0.11.2
          ports:
            - containerPort: 5230
              protocol: TCP
          env:
            - name: PUID
              value: "1000"
            - name: PGID
              value: "1000"
          volumeMounts:
            - name: data
              mountPath: /var/opt/memos
      securityContext:
        fsGroup: 1000
      volumes:
        - name: data
          persistentVolumeClaim:
            claimName: memos
            readOnly: false

TIP

This post might be outdated pretty soon, you might want to check the official Docker repository of memos to see if there is a new version available.

service.yaml

As you might want to expose the deployment by using a custom ingress controller, we also create a service.

service.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: memos
spec:
  ports:
    - name: memos
      port: 80
      protocol: TCP
      targetPort: 5230
  selector:
    app: memos

Access

After exposing the service to your local network, you can connect to memos by using the browser or the available clients mentioned previously.

TIP

A restart/redeployment of the server will cause all clients to lose their connection. This is a known issue and can be solved, by using the OpenAPI login within the mobile applications.

Verdict

Memos is a very simple note-taking application, that is pretty simple, but also powerful and can be easily deployed within a homelab.