Initial commit: Obsidian KDB with templates

2026-05-14-tier2-setup-retro.md

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+---
+name: tier2_setup_retro
+description: Tier 2 knowledge database setup retrospective 2026-05-14
+type: project
+---
+
+## Setup Session: 2026-05-14
+
+**Goal:** Set up Tier 2 local knowledge database (kiwix-serve + zim-llm)
+
+### What Worked ✅
+
+1. **Docker installation** - Successfully installed Docker Engine on Debian
+2. **User permissions** - Added to docker group, can run without sudo
+3. **zim-llm setup** - Repository cloned, venv created, dependencies installed
+4. **CPU-only PyTorch** - Corrected initial CUDA download issue for ROCm machine
+5. **Zeal installation** - Installed via apt, configured with setup script
+
+### What Failed ❌
+
+1. **ZIM file downloads** - kiwix.org servers slow/unreachable
+   - 134GB Stack Overflow ZIM was corrupted/truncated
+   - Smaller files also stalled at 0B download
+   - aria2c with 16 connections didn't help
+
+2. **External docset hosting** - Kapeli/Dash discontinued public hosting
+   - dash-docs.github.io returns 404s
+   - kapeli.com/docsets redirects to homepage
+   - Zeal-Docs community feeds repo doesn't exist
+
+3. **Proxy bypass** - proxychains helped reach GitHub but docset URLs still return HTML
+
+### Current State 📊
+
+- **Zeal**: Installed, basic config ready, 1 placeholder docset
+- **zim-llm**: Dependencies installed, config points to `/home/tr/kiwix/zim`
+- **kiwix-serve**: docker-compose.yml created, waiting for ZIM files
+- **No ZIM files**: Library directory empty
+
+### Lessons Learned 💡
+
+1. **Large downloads need integrity verification** - Don't trust files without checksums
+2. **Network issues may require torrents** - Kiwix provides .torrent files
+3. **External hosting can disappear** - Kapeli discontinued docset hosting
+4. **CPU fallback works** - zim-llm runs fine without GPU for embedding generation
+
+### Recommended Next Steps
+
+1. **Try torrents** - Download ZIM files via torrent (more reliable for large files)
+2. **Start with small ZIM** - Try Project Gutenberg or compact Wikipedia (~1-5GB)
+3. **Use Zeal as primary** - For API docs, Zeal + manual docset addition works
+4. **Defer zim-llm** - Can revisit when network improves or torrents available
+
+### Files Created
+
+- `/home/tr/kiwix/docker-compose.yml` - kiwix-serve config
+- `/home/tr/zim-llm/config.json` - Points to `/home/tr/kiwix/zim`
+- `/home/tr/zim-llm/requirements.txt` - Updated with CPU PyTorch
+- `/home/tr/.local/bin/setup-zeal-docsets.sh` - Zeal setup automation