homelab VS netboot.xyz

K3s is great, I use it on all of my personal clusters (here and here). It's lightweight and very easy to manage.

https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab if you haven't come across it yet. To add to your bookmarks.

I have my Kubernetes homelab public on GitHub, everything is automated and defined as code. Hope it will help you get started and see what's possible.

So I 've got inspired by https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab and initially after lurking this sub for a while I came up with a plan to consider some of these solutions: - openmediavault as a VM to use 2x4TB /w ext4 & mergerFS or TrueNAS in RAID1 - I think mergerFS gives more options to increase storage with extra drives later, but I don't plan to hoard lots of data. Also rather opted for tiered cache via SSD to save some power but if such lot of VMs would write this would work? - nextcloud VM to easiely manage files via browser and have mobile app sync for photos with some kind of gallery plugins etc - I think this may be optional if there's other solution as nextcloud seems to not be light. Or something like Seafile would be enough? - kubernetes - k3s/microk8s single VM node or 2 VM nodes - would I need more? and so - can then openmediavault be used as a storage for it like TrueNAS? - Rancher - if used k3s - I quite liked the UI of rancher desktop, more than portainer when I tried with microk8s, but I don't pass on using something else, eg. Lens - Gitea - for hosting code - tekton / teamcity - for running tests and commit build hooks - fluxCD / argoCD - for deploying builds to kubernetes

khuedoan/homelab

Here's my project (running on 4 mini PC) that I'm using for learning and self-hosting https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab, it's fully automated from empty disk to operating services.

You can checkout my repo If you'd like to do the same for your homelab (it's also modular so you can just use the OS installation part)

Here're the links to the Markdown source and the web view.

You can checkout my Kubernetes homelab, it's fully automated from empty disk, very customizable and extensible.

You can view the code here: https://github.com/khuedoan/homelab (the ./metal folder)

I learned about https://netboot.xyz/ the other day. Worked fantastic when I didn't have a big enough thumb drive. Not exactly the same though.

I replied to a reply of yours with this same info, but since you’re both sorta asking the same thing, I’ll post it here for you also.

https://netboot.xyz/

https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz

Knew about http://netboot.xyz, but had no idea iVentoy existed. Good to know.

Set the computer to PXE boot, or use a boot image with iPXE (such as netboot.xyz). That would quickly rule out a problem with Debian or the Linux kernel (at least until you download and boot one). I don't know anything about your network setup, but making sure DHCP is enabled on your router and there are enough unreserved IP addresses would probably help.

Hey thanks for the detailed response. You're saying you boot FCOS on bare metal over PXE, correct? I've thought about trying that approach, but have little experience with PXE and TFTP. I just checked out netboot.xyz and it looks surprisingly easy to get going. Last time I played around with PXE I used Synology's TFTP server and, while I got it working, I was more confused by the end than when I started. I think actually learning PXE end-to-end and understanding what I am doing there would be a solid foundation for building my environment the right way.

For netbooting we rely on a netboot.xyz inspired ipxe based setup.

[[UPDATE]]: The fix was as 'simple' as going into the 'bios', and selecting 'add a boot option', which automatically came up with the correct EFI file/path, then putting it at the top of the boot order. 'Simple' it wasn't, many new and temporary instances brought online while digging my way through it all, and finally just going with a brand new Debian Bookworm and migrating my data over from the old disk file. At least I learned a lot about recovering from this weird circumstance. The incorrect EFI file/path must be an artifact of using netboot.xyz to install Deb Bookworm over a previously provisioned Ubuntu instance. Makes sense I guess. Still loving netboot.xyz as a super fast way to spin up an unsupported OS.

I learned about GRML only a few years ago. Absolutely love the mixture of power and minimalism. Here is the only ISO which increases my mileage even more: https://netboot.xyz