Posts tagged: self-hosted

The Right Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab

2025-12-10T09:48:14Z

Running kubernetes in your homelab is a fantastic way to learn, explore, express yourself, and run services that you use.

The Right Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab #

There are not many

You want to learn kubernetes
You like kubernetes
You want to learn to scale

There are also The Wrong Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab

You want to learn kubernetes #

Homelabbing is a such a great way to learn new skills, deploy real apps that you use. Create new custom apps for your specific use cases that no one else has. You should absolutely run kubernetes in your homelab if you want to learn it.

I would recommend to start locally, pull up kind, minikube, or k3d and start from your local machine before putting it on a server.

When you decide you are ready for a server, you probably don’t need any crazy hardware. You can probably run on some old retired Dell Optiplex or an old desktop someone is throwing out as it no longer runs windows.

You like kubernetes #

Hell Yeah Brother, 100% no better reason to run kubernetes at home than because you enjoy it. I’m with you. There’s nothing quite like having git ops kick in and deploy new services, updates, watching deployments rollover with zero downtime. Watching your cluster heal itself when a node goes down. Never ssh-ing in to do deployments. Still owning your entire hardware.

You want to learn to scale #

This is probably a stretch reason, maybe not a good one, there are probably better ways, but here we go.

Don’t claim that you need scale in your homelab, you don’t. But it sure is fun to run a cluster of nodes, and load balancing services that run across them. Solving these hard problems to scale across machines is hard. There’s no way around it, there’s a lot to think about. Doing so in a low stakes environment that you have skin in the game is a great way to learn.

I run kubernetes in my homelab #

I run it and I really like it

What flavor of autism did you guys get, I got the kind where I run kubernetes in my basement.

Here are some things I really like about it, and Yes I know you can achieve most of these without kubernetes.

I don’t have to ssh, hardly ever.
I can see everything I’m running, and its defined in a manifest
k9s is amazing, and I use it all the time.
- shell into running pods
- restart deployments
- scale deployments
- trigger cronjobs
- watch logs
- I can scale our minecraft server to 0 in seconds if we are in a different season of life
ArgoCD is amazing
- I ❤️ gitops
Ingress just works
Longhorn
- makes snapshots and backups easy
- makes multi node easy
zero-downtime deployments
self healing health checks

I mostly do very simple things, deployments with a container, a volume and ingress. Probably things that you could easily run on fly.io. Theres nothing really fancy. I just like how easy this setup works for me.

The Wrong Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab

2025-12-06T09:46:47Z

Running kubernetes in your homelab is complex, time consuming, there are almost no docs to help you (homelab focused docs for things you want to install), and nothing is copy paste. You have to make everything happen yourself.

The Wrong Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab #

I run compose and think kubernetes is the next logical step
Techno Tim runs it
I heard it’s what cool kids do
Kubernetes BTW
Talos Linux looks cool
I found a cool helm chart on GitHub
I need scale

There are also The Right Reasons To Run Kubernetes In Your Homelab.

I run compose and think kubernetes is the next logical step #

No it’s not. It’s much different than running docker, compose, swarm. It’s meant for scale, it’s complex, it’s made for enterprise, not your local development or your homelab. It can do these things, it can do them quite well, but it’s not the target audience.

Techno Tim runs it #

I heard it’s what cool kids do

You need to rethink who the cool kids are, touch some grass. Tim also does it for his job, he likes it, he knows it, he wants to lean on it and learn more.

Kubernetes BTW #

Kubernetes does not make you look cool, it makes you look like you are trying to over optimize and over engineer your life. It’s not worth it, in fact nothing in life is worth worrying about what everyone else thinks of you.

Talos Linux looks cool #

Talos is an S tier OS wherever you deploy it. It is a secure, minimal, kubernetes first OS. They also have some really great people working there putting Talos in some really cool places like backpack or Apple Power Mac

I found a cool helm chart on GitHub #

No you didn’t. Everything in homelab is compose first. A few things have a k8s option, but almost nothing is k8s first.

I need scale #

No. You’re homelab does not need scale. If you think it does, you have some real shit hardware, some bad optimizations, or somehow you have a startup you need to launch cause you got more users than most.

💭 Repository Mirrors | Forgejo – Beyond coding. We forge.

2025-08-29T00:50:50Z

Repository Mirrors | Forgejo – Beyond coding. We forge.

forgejo.org

Forgejo supports repository mirrors, I think this is how I am going to handle migrating all of my github repos into forgejo. over time I’ll probably go through and delete a bunch of unnecessary one from github, ones that might have a user or two I might keep on github. I have such small scale projects with almost no users I am not sure that It really matters for me or not.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Explore - Forgejo

2025-08-27T20:38:36Z

Explore

Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge. Easy to install and low maintenance, it just does the job.

Forgejo · git.dbushell.com

damn david has been busy, this is sick seeing all of the repos, I’m ready to jump in!

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

trying forgejo

2025-08-12T11:57:42Z

WIP

networks:
  forgejo:
    external: false
services:
  server:
    image: codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo:11
    container_name: forgejo
    environment:
      - USER_UID=1000
      - USER_GID=1000
    restart: always
    networks:
      - forgejo
    volumes:
      - ./forgejo:/data
    ports:
      - '3000:3000'
      - '2222:22'
  docker-in-docker:
    image: docker:dind
    container_name: docker_dind
    privileged: true
    command: ["dockerd", "-H", "tcp://0.0.0.0:2375", "--tls=false"]
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [forgejo]
  runner:
    image: data.forgejo.org/forgejo/runner:4.0.0
    container_name: forgejo-runner
    user: "1001:1001"
    depends_on:
      - docker-in-docker
    environment:
      DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker-in-docker:2375
    volumes:
      - ./runner-data:/data:Z,U # will hold .runner + cache
    command: /bin/sh -c "while :; do sleep 1; done"
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [forgejo]

💭 GitHub Ensloppification – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)

2025-08-12T02:29:16Z

GitHub Ensloppification

The one where I say goodbye to GitHub

dbushell.com · dbushell.com

David’s got me looking at Forgejo. I’ve seen a lot of GitHub jumpers just this week, and I’ve been tempted for a long time to self host one anyways, so it might be time. I don’t have hard issues with anything, I just like self hosting my own personal stuff.

On the flipside, I hope this does not turn yet another thing to shit. I lived through the download software from sourceforge and hope you get the right download now button and not the one from the virus ad. I’m not putting my really public/useful projects on a self hosted platform… well not as the only source, I see how that comes off edgy. I like having some trust in the platform. Currently theres a lot of issues with M$ and GitHub using you for your data, but I don’t think injecting virus, malware, bitcoin miners is a worry I have coming from a GitHub release, unless it was put there by the author.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 Note-taking & Editors - awesome-selfhosted

2025-08-11T14:27:23Z

Great list of self hosted markdown editors. Looking for a good one for my wife and family to use that does not look like editing code.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 csi-driver-smb/deploy/example/smb-provisioner at master · kube...

2025-08-01T19:50:39Z

csi-driver-smb/deploy/example/smb-provisioner at master · kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb

This driver allows Kubernetes to access SMB Server on both Linux and Windows nodes. - kubernetes-csi/csi-driver-smb

GitHub · github.com

Great guide to setting up a samba server right in kubernetes. I tried it out after too long of playing with trying to get connected to a samba share on ucore, no idea what was wrong, but this just works, and will live in my homelab no matter what distro I’m on, no playbook required to set it up, just good ol k8s manifest. TBH I cheated and haven’t set up the secrets yet, so its not quite in argocd or in my github repo, but POC is there and it works as advertised without issue.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

💭 How I Use Computers Now - YouTube

2025-07-26T14:41:22Z

Ben is always good for a banger of a video, this images app is something that i really want in my homelab, he did some great polish here! The idea of building vibe coded applications for your own personal use with all of your own personal opinions and workflows is something that has been an appealing part of ai, I’ve definitely tossed a few apps in my homelab that I use occasionally and they do what I ask of them pretty accurately.

This feels great to use, but also seems to kill any startup idea I have, as most of them feel like they could be vibe coded out by someone with a bit of skill and they just host their own. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe we are moving into an era of more people owning their own app they use for themself, maybe i need a security related startup?

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

tinyapps

2025-05-22T14:31:29Z

I’m working on replacing my usage of google inline search apps with real apps, these are ones that I create and host on my own homelab. The first three that I created are mostly chatgpt based, with a bit of hand edit after the fact, uploaded to minio and become an app on my k8s-pages

renamed

The original title of this post was "Replacing Google Search Apps With Self Hosted Web Apps"

I’m leaning on web wakelock to keep the screen on while these apps are running, primarily clos, timer, and stopwatch.

Clock #

A large displya clock.

Timer #

A simple timer that counts down from thet set time.

Stopwatch #

This is the one that inspired it all, I need to run a few stopwatches at work, and chose to just do it right in the google search with a few tabs running.

Dice #

A simple dice roller, this one is the one that I decided to start adding ? for help.

UUID #

It displays a uuid, thats it. ctrl + c to copy.

b64 #

Today i spent some time on b64, it is a base64 decoder/encoder. Just start tying to enter text, or paste, escape to deselect the text box, d to decode, e to encode, ? for help. It took a bit to get all of the keymaps right with the differnt modes and make sure that for instance you don’t keep typing in the input box while in help mode, or decode/encode while in the input box.

PocketCal #

This one is not mine, it’s made by Cassidy Williams), but is within the ethos and deserves a mention here. Its a single page calendar that is a static site completely rendered on the front end, data is stored in the url as you interact with it. None of your data goes to a server.

qrcode #

Today I wanted to finish an article that I was on afk and It killed me to get it from my work computer to my phone, so I made a qrcode generator. Paste in or type in your message and it shows up as a qr code live. This one needed an event listener for window resize since the library creates a rigid canvas qr code that does not fit on the screen once you create it then resize the window.

I even added query params to pass hex codes in for color and bg.

💭 Install a Zulip server — Zulip 9.2 documentation

2024-10-16T15:12:47Z

Zulip was just featured on a changelog clip as a self-hosted chat offering. I’m interested to give this a go and see how it compares to matrix. glancing at it, it looks a lot like slack.

Note

This post is a thought. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts

Looking for a Heroku replacement, What I found was shocking!

2023-12-04T20:29:46Z

Your browser does not support the audio element.

I’ve long hosted my personal blog as a static site on waylonwalker.com. It’s all markdown, converted to html, and shipped as is. It’s been great, I’ve moved it from GitHub Pages, to Netlify, tried Vercel for a minute, and have landed on Cloudflare Pages. Each migration has not really been that hard, it’s just pointing ci to a different host after the site has built.

What about server side #

Now the part that I have struggled with is how to cheaply host a server rendered application that can just live on forever without me paying for it. This is a harder problem as it costs more to keep servers spinning, memory, and disk all ready for you to use at a moments notice.

Honestly #

I never really deployed anything that useful on heroku, but it seems like the klenex of the bunch that’s why they are in the title. I’ve moved between digital ocean and fly.io, and have had some great experiences with both. I just don’t want to build something that is going perpetually cost money, I’m cheap and dont want to feel the burden of paying for something that I might not be using all the time.

fly.io #

fly is absolutely amazing to get off the ground. Their cli is top notch. They have servers all over the place and have a great interface to get your application deployed close to your users. You just can’t run all that much on it before you end up off the free tier.

serverless #

These platforms so far have just not felt right for me, again, I have to pay for them, many of them I have to worry about how hard they would get hit, and often they are focused on javascript.

What I am looking for #

easy to deploy
cheap to host
free to use
generous free tier
no chance of big bills
reliable, not 9 9’s, but mostly up.
allows me to run a bunch of stuff that I lightly use
that buttery smooth cli that I get out of fly.io
runs containers

The last one is probably the most important. I don’t get tons of time to work on side projects, and they are mostly ideas I just want to get out there and play with, the idea may flop quickly, but I want that DX to be easy to go from nothing to publically deployed.

What about going back to self hosting?? #

I have a Gateway FX6860 built in 2011, and was gifted to me around 2016. She doesn’t have much power to her, but she does have more than free tier power. I have 8 dedicated cpu, 16GB RAM, 500GB boot disk, and a 4TB hard disk.

Cloudflare tunnels #

Cloudflare Tunnels allow me to route traffic to my own server sitting right next to me and have it publically accessible. They take care of ssl certs, they support wildcard routes, and configuration is pretty easy. I can map addresses to a port on the machine, wildcard to a reverse_proxy, and end with a 404.

I’m missing that buttery smooth cli #

At this point I’m hosting a few things that I use frequently, but I don’t have that buttery smooth deploy experience that I get from fly.io. I have to log into the machine, edit some files, and docker compose up every time I want to deploy.

I was certain there was a better way #

I knew there was something better out there that was not a complex pain in the ass to setup. I know small companies run their own infra with a small team. There has to be tools that don’t take an enterprise to manage.

What about kubernetes #

In my search I keep seeing kubernetes as the solution, just run k8s, k3s, k0s, minikube, or kind. But EVERYTHING I have heard about kubernetes is that its a pain in the ass to deploy, takes a team to manage, and if you don’t have a $1M problem to solve don’t bother cause k8s will create a $1M problem for you. For this reason alone I turned my nose up to k8’s and nearly didn’t even give it a chance. Everyone jokes about blogs and simple sites running on k8s, and how rediculous that must be.

If you don’t have a $1M problem to solve don’t bother cause k8s will create a $1M problem for you.

Let’s jump on k3s #

I’ve never ran kubernetes myself, but after seeing it so many times in my searches for a fly.io replacement, I decided to give it a shot. I chose k3s as it seems like a nice balance of easy to setup, maintain, and feature complete kubernetes service.

# install and start k3s
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -
# check to see if your nodes are started
sudo kubectl get nodes

My main hiccup so far was the machine I am running on runs a fairly new ubuntu install with zfs on root, and it would not start the master node. Rather than figuring out how to make zfs play nice I just pointed k3s to a drive that is not zfs.

# manuallly
sudo k3s server -d /mnt/vault/.rancher/k3s
# without editing systemd service
sudo ln -s /mnt/vault/.rancher/k3s /var/lib/rancher/k3s

Next I needed to be able to completely manage my k3s cluster form my main machine while this one sits far away in a closet.

# from the server
sudo cp /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml ~/.config/kube

# from my local machine
scp falcon@falcon:~/.config/kube/k3s.yaml ~/.config/kube/falcon-k3s.yaml
sudo cp /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml /home/waylon/.config/kube
sudo chown -R waylon:waylon ~/.config/kube
export KUBECONFIG=~/.config/kube/k3s.yaml

kompose #

Since everything I was running prior was in docker compose, I found kompose.io to be a fantastic tool to help me start converting my docker deployments into kubernetes.

A Month Later #

I started this post a month ago, and I am still enjoying k3s. For clarity, I did have a bit of k8’s experience going in, but zero experience running it by myself. k3’s seems to have made it pretty straightforward so far. My worst issues have been with ingress. Docker registries were a bit of a pain due to their large blob sizes, and a service I wanted to try to self host (sshx) required grpc, which is not supported by cloudflare tunnels.

TLDR #

Don’t believe everyone’s pre-conceived notions about tech you have never tried. Most of these things come from the echo chamber that is twitter anyways. Create your own opinions by trying new things, learning for yourself, and forming your own opnions.