Goals + Recap

  • Got Terraform working and the node is now up, exactly the way I want it!
  • The cluster also got installed perfectly and I was able to connect to it.
  • Today will work on Ansible, so that local updates are easy.

The Big Plan

  • The plan is to redo the cluster again and do my own instance of
    • K3s
    • Sealed Secrets
    • Certmanager (Not using it)
    • Letsencrypt (using pre existing Letsencrypt certs)
    • Get Traefik Ingress to work
    • Figure out a way to get certs automatically into the cluster
  • And once that is done, figure out an app to move (Miniflux or Hedgedoc?); 2025-12-03: Kanboard it is!
  • Begin by moving (lifting and shifting in popular parlance) Kanboard to the cluster
    • Cert will probably be needed (Wildcard cert works now, just like it does without the cluster)
    • Convert a docker-compose to kubernetes manifests
    • Learn how to configure an app with code
    • Learn how to store data and back it up
    • Figure out secrets, if there are any (for now sealed secrets ok, figure out vault and vault injection later)
    • Learn how to tunnel through and reverse proxy
    • Make Kubernetes manifests work with flux
    • Figure out how to automate deployment of manual manifests
    • Figure out how to migrate there if there is any in an old app
    • Figue out how to automate updation of images in manual manifests
    • Get another app (Miniflux) deployed
    • Figure out what needs to happen as part of the lifecycle. What you want in the cluster, what stays out, do they intersect, how do updates of cluster happen? VM (node) updates as well?
    • Then begin to think along the lines of Live Deploys. Prototype locally and once it works, migrate to production immediately
    • Convert Kubernetes manifests to Helm Charts (optional, based on energy)
  • Go live! Git is source of truth. Two repos.
    • One for the Main node and its update
      • Terraform will provision node and install package, setup firewall
      • Figure out how to get Terraform to get the node talking to the git forge
      • Structure repo, copy every thing node related there, and make sure stuff gets updated periodically and idempotantly, via ansible pull and a systemd timer
    • The other one for k3s and flux
      • Convert everything I have done locally to run on prod. Add more steps as you do them below

2025-12-09 09:00

  • 2025-12-09 10:13: The net is down, so am trying to work via codeberg. Makes me thankful, that I worked out of a private repo and didn’t commit private stuff to it
  • 2025-12-09 10:13: Tea break

2025-12-09 10:52

  • Back
  • 2025-12-09 11:21: Now learing the push/pull dance with ansible-pull. Making changes here. Pushing to the forge and then pulling in on the VM is a novel experience. As compared to editing conf files on the VM itself
  • 2025-12-09 13:12: Lunch. making steady progress though

2025-12-09 13:39

  • Back. Got ansible pull working as well.
  • Now, to take all the changes I’ve done, commit them to git and rebuild the cluster, hopefully, one last time
  • 2025-12-09 15:00: It worked! It all worked! Tea break.

2025-12-09 17:20

  • Bootstrapped flux on the VM cluster

2025-12-09 21:01

  • Bootstrapping a Letencrypt cert with lego is causing no end of problems.
  • Tomrrow will just import. and then use the current certs
  • And adapt the ansible playbook to just do an install

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