Posts

This post covers exposing an NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti (Blackwell architecture) as a schedulable Kubernetes resource with time-slicing support, allowing multiple pods to share the GPU. Hardware Node GPU Memory Compute Capability polycephala NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB 12.0 (Blackwell, sm_120) The RTX 5070 Ti uses the new Blackwell architecture (GB203 chip) with compute capability sm_120. This creates compatibility challenges with some software that hasn’t been updated yet. ...

OPNsense includes Suricata for intrusion detection, but the built-in alerts page provides limited visibility. This post covers forwarding IDS alerts to Loki via syslog and visualizing them in Grafana alongside firewall logs. Architecture ┌─────────────────┐ UDP/514 ┌──────────────────┐ │ OPNsense │ RFC5424 │ Promtail │ │ ┌───────────┐ │ ───────────────▶ │ (syslog recv) │ │ │ Suricata │ │ │ 192.168.2.221 │ │ │ filterlog │ │ └────────┬─────────┘ │ └───────────┘ │ │ └─────────────────┘ ▼ ┌──────────────────┐ │ Loki │ │ (log storage) │ └────────┬─────────┘ │ ▼ ┌──────────────────┐ │ Grafana │ │ (dashboards) │ └──────────────────┘ Prerequisites OPNsense firewall with Suricata IDS enabled Kubernetes cluster with Loki deployed MetalLB or NodePort for exposing the syslog receiver Step 1: Enable Suricata IDS on OPNsense Navigate to Services → Intrusion Detection → Administration. ...

Certificates expire. In a Kubernetes homelab with Linkerd service mesh, this means the identity issuer certificate needs renewal annually. Without automation, this becomes a manual task that’s easy to forget until mTLS breaks across the cluster. This post covers installing cert-manager on a bare-metal kubeadm cluster and configuring it to automatically rotate Linkerd’s identity issuer certificate. The Problem Linkerd uses a two-tier PKI: Certificate Purpose Default Lifetime Trust Anchor Root CA for the mesh 10 years Identity Issuer Signs proxy certificates 1 year The identity issuer expires annually. When it does, new proxy sidecars cannot obtain valid certificates, breaking mTLS. The trust anchor rarely needs rotation, but the identity issuer requires attention. ...

k9s displays CPU and MEM columns for pods and nodes, but on bare-metal kubeadm clusters these show “N/A” by default. This occurs because k9s relies on the Kubernetes Metrics API, which requires metrics-server to be installed. The Problem Without metrics-server: NAME CPU MEM k8s-master01 N/A N/A k8s-worker01 N/A N/A Managed Kubernetes services (EKS, GKE, AKS) typically pre-install metrics-server. Bare-metal kubeadm clusters do not include it. Solution Install metrics-server via Helm with configuration for kubeadm’s self-signed certificates. ...

I was updating my blog’s Hugo version and PaperMod theme when I realized I hadn’t touched these dependencies in months. The Hugo Docker image was 8 versions behind, and the theme had accumulated dozens of commits. Not broken, just stale. I wanted something that would automatically check for updates and create merge requests - something I could review and merge on my own schedule, without having to remember to check. ...

My homelab has a dedicated DMZ network (192.168.4.0/24) that’s physically separated from my main LAN. The only machine currently on this network is minis, a Fedora workstation that also serves as a Kubernetes node for DMZ-facing workloads. I’ve been running a basic router on this segment, but I picked up a faster unit and wanted to document the before/after performance difference. Network Topology ┌─────────────────┐ │ OPNsense │ │ Main Firewall │ └────────┬────────┘ │ ┌──────────────┼──────────────┐ │ │ │ ┌─────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴─────┐ │ LAN │ │ WLAN │ │ DMZ │ │192.168.2.x│ │192.168.3.x│ │192.168.4.x│ └─────┬─────┘ └───────────┘ └─────┬─────┘ │ │ K8s Cluster ┌─────┴─────┐ (4 nodes) │DMZ Router │ ← Upgrading this └─────┬─────┘ │ ┌─────┴─────┐ │ minis │ │192.168.4.50│ └───────────┘ Baseline Performance (Before Upgrade) Date: 2025-12-31 Router: Netgear GS110TP (8-port Gigabit Smart Switch with PoE) Test Machine: minis (Fedora 42, connected via ethernet) ...

I’ve been using Claude Code (Anthropic’s CLI coding assistant) for a few months now, and one thing that kept bugging me was being tethered to my desk. What if I wanted to kick off a long-running task while away from my computer? Or review what Claude had done while sitting on the couch? The solution turned out to be surprisingly simple: tmux on a home server + Termius on my phone. ...

If you’re running a homelab with multiple network segments, there’s a good chance you have at least one machine connected to more than one network. Maybe your workstation has a wired connection to your DMZ and wireless to your trusted WLAN. Convenient? Yes. A potential security hole? Also yes. The Problem My workstation sits on two networks: wireless connected to my home WLAN (192.168.3.0/24) and wired into my DMZ (192.168.4.0/24). The DMZ is intentionally isolated—it’s where I run services exposed to the internet. The WLAN is where everything else lives: personal devices, management interfaces, the stuff I actually care about protecting. ...

I run a Hugo blog on my homelab Kubernetes cluster, and I wanted a proper GitOps workflow where pushing to main automatically deploys changes. No manual kubectl apply, no SSH-ing into servers, no scripts to remember. Just git push and walk away. This post covers how I set up ArgoCD to deploy this blog with automatic image updates using the ArgoCD Image Updater. The Goal ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ │ Git Push │────▶│ GitLab CI │────▶│ Container │────▶│ ArgoCD │ │ (main) │ │ (build) │ │ Registry │ │ (deploy) │ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘ └─────────────────┘ └─────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ ▼ │ │ ┌───────────────┐ │ └─────────────▶│ Image Updater │ │ │ (detect new) │ ▼ └───────────────┘ Tags image with │ git SHA (d67fe5d) ▼ ┌───────────────┐ │ Kubernetes │ │ (updated) │ └───────────────┘ The workflow: ...

When I needed to add a node from my DMZ to my Kubernetes cluster on the LAN, I discovered OPNsense has a comprehensive REST API that lets you manage firewall rules programmatically. No clicking through the UI - just curl commands that create rules properly tracked in the configuration and included in backups. The Problem My Kubernetes cluster lives on my LAN (192.168.2.0/24), but I wanted to add a machine from my DMZ (192.168.4.0/24). By default, DMZ traffic can’t reach the LAN - that’s the whole point of a DMZ. I needed to punch specific holes for Kubernetes traffic while keeping everything else blocked. ...