Over this last Christmas break I had nothing but time as I was stuck down with covid. All my Christmas and new years plans were abruptly cancelled or moved and I was bed-ridden for a week. So, I decided to make good on a promise that I made myself some time ago to refresh my homelab. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while as I had some 13 different VMs some of which running a single service, many of which could have simply been containers instead. And now I finally had the time to commit to such an endeavour.

I was thinking on the train today about how, although I basically despise social media, I still use it somewhat regularly. However, I don’t use it in as much as I don’t post on it or interact in any way but liking things. The thing I use social media for is finding happysad, and it seems to me that the algorithms (mostly of instagram, youtube, and tiktok) are good places to look.

Over the last two weeks my partner and I have seen both Oppenheimer and Barbie at the movies. I have to admit that initially I was only intending to see Oppenheimer at the movies and then watch Barbie at home, as by my estimation, Christopher Nolan movies are almost always better seen at the cinema. Both movies were fantastic, and they framed an interesting set of thoughts for me that I would like to delve into a bit here.

This is being published well after the config was finished, I don’t care much for blogging, so I never properly finished writing this.

So I have, for the last six or so months, been really trying to learn to use Neovim. I started with Vim, as I imagine many people do, and had a simple single file configuration with a couple of plugins and little else interesting going on. This original setup was stolen from Luke Smith, who really introduced me to Vim and why it’s so great. However, it didn’t take me long to learn about Neovim, and quickly I wanted to switch.

Say hello to my little odroid kubernetes cluster project.

Details are: 5 x Odroid-MC1’s as worker nodes. All up 10gb RAM and 40 cores. 1 x Odroid-N2 as master node. Plus 5v 20a power supply and Netgear GS108.

Got parts as a Christmas present to myself some years ago with no plan as to what I was going to with them. While putting it together I though I could use it to learn Kubernetes as I’ve seen others do similar things.

Intro

I have had a little kubernetes cluster up and running for some time on a collection of Odroid MC1’s and an N2. However, recently (I mean not so recently now but for the sake of the story) I attempted to update it and all went wrong, I got rancher set up on it but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is compiled for armhv7. So, I gave up. I’ve actually now put linux mint on the N2 and use it as a home theater PC which works quite well.

DISCLAIMER

This is not really a guide, it’s essentially my notes from when I set up k3s on my Odroid MC1 cluster.

Setting up an Odroid MC1/N2 K3S cluster

I initially saw a video by NetworkChuck about setting up a Raspberry Pi k3s cluster, see his blog post here. I first went and tried to set up k3s on my Odroid cluster using his method, however as noted at the bottom of this post, I had some issues with it. So, after some time trying to fix the issues that were preventing me from getting his method working, I went looking for another option.

This website has existed in one for or another for upwards of 10 years at this point. It is essentially the catalyst for my love of programming, technology, and for my choice of study at university, and my career. When I first created it I was in my early teens and it was created using solely HTML and CSS. Since then each time I learn of some new technology through uni, on my own steam, or at work, I rework the site a little bit. The current design is my favourite so far. It’s also the most complex.