Kubernetes on unixorn.github.io

Install Argo CD in a homelab cluster

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 09:21:34 -0700

In part five of my kubernetes homelab series, we will install Argo CD into a homelab cluster so we can use gitops practices instead of ad-hoc kubectl commands.

This will make it much easier to recreate the cluster exactly if we decide to move it to new hardware or just want to reset things to a known-good state after experimentation.

Why bother with gitops? It’s a homelab, and I’m the only administrator

Using gitops to configure your cluster instead of running kubectl apply commands directly makes it possible to reproduce the exact state of the cluster later if you need to revert to a known-good state.

Back up your Talos etcd cluster to a smb share

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 12:20:42 -0700

In this post, I will show how to access smb shares outside the cluster from a Kubernetes Pod. The example is backing up the etcd cluster in my Talos k8s cluster to a share, but you can use this for any service (like Plex or Jellyfin) that need access to files on a NAS.

This is part four of my Homelab Kubernetes series.

Secret Management with SOPS

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:19:03 -0700

This is part 3 of my Kubernetes homelab cluster setup series - Secrets Management with SOPS.

Add SSL to Kubernetes using Cilium, cert-manager and LetsEncrypt with domains hosted on Amazon Route 53

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:17:37 -0700

In part two of this homelab kubernetes setup series, we’re going to install & configure cert-manager to use LetsEncrypt with Route 53 so we can use SSL to connect to our services.

Part 1 - Setting up Talos with a Cilium CNI on proxmox
Part 2 - Add SSL to Kubernetes using Cilium, cert-manager and LetsEncrypt with domains hosted on Amazon Route 53
Part 3 - Set up Secret Management with SOPS
Part 4 - Back up your Talos etcd cluster to a SMB share
Part 5 - Install ArgoCD
Part 6 - Install MQTT into a k8s cluster

The tutorials I’ve seen for using cert-manager with a DNS challenge all use CloudFlare. I have my lab domain on Route 53 so this post will cover that instead.

Creating a Talos kubernetes cluster with a Cilium CNI on Proxmox

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 09:27:42 -0700

I’ve been meaning to set up a Talos linux kubernetes cluster in my homelab for a while and set one up over the holiday break. Here’s how I did it.

Weird shit is afoot with macOS and iTerm

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:54:19 -0700

So here’s a fun macOS weirdness I ran into this weekend where I couldn’t connect to a port on another machine from a shell session inside of iTerm, even though I was able to ssh to other hosts.

Backing Up the Cluster with Duplicacy

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 15:47:23 -0600

Do not use duplicacy!

TL;DR: duplicacy is unusable if you’re serious about backing up your data. Use restic instead!

I wanted to ensure any data I put into my ARM k3s cluster is backed up to prevent data loss.

I no longer recommend duplicacy. Instead, read my article on restic backups on TrueNas instead.

2025 edit: This post is only here for historical reasons. Do NOT use duplicacy. It does not report backup errors in its exit code. You will have to parse its logs yourself and hope your regex didn’t miss an error condition. And every update, you’ll have to check and make sure it hasn’t changed anything that your regex was catching. Backups are supposed to be something you set up once and ignore other than to do periodic restore tests, and duplicacy fails that simple criteria.

Trying K3s on ARM, Part 1

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 09:02:31 -0600

Why k3s and not stick with k8s?

I wanted to experiment with k3s. They package everything you need in a single binary, don’t package in deprecated parts of k8s, and it works on Intel, ARMv7 and ARM64. It seemed like it’d be a less painful way to runn Kubernetes on my ARM cluster.

Parts list for the ARM cluster

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 21:49:17 -0700

ARM cluster parts list

Getting an ARM kubernetes cluster up and running

Sun, 17 Feb 2019 16:00:05 -0700

In the beginning, there was bare metal