Talos 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
Part 7 - Add an ArgoCD git generator ApplicationSet
Part 8 - Add Traefik to the 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.

Using a NFS Provisioner with Talos

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 23:49:23 -0700

I’ve been experimenting with running Talos in my home lab. I really like the idea of an immutable OS layer under Kubernetes and wanted to stand up a cluster to run some of my services that are currently run with docker-compose.

I decided to use my Synology to store k8s volumes, here’s how I set that up.

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.