homelab 🔬

Ansible playbooks and Terraform modules for managing my homelab. You can read more about this project here.

Terraform

terraform/ includes Terraform code for managing virtual machines.

Gotchas and helpful commands

Various things I have found that I will likely forget unless I write them down here.

cloud-init

When creating a VM via Terraform, the cloud-init doesn't run on the first boot (user error? something with the way I'm attaching the cloud-init drive? Proxmox bug?). When (re)creating a new VM, go to (VM) > Cloud-Init > Regenerate Image and then reboot the VM

---

Run a single cloud-init module

$ cloud-init single --name ansible --frequency always

Collect logs

# this will put a tarball in `pwd`
$ cloud-init collect-logs

Look at logs

$ tar -zxvf cloud-init.tar.gz
$ less cloud-init-logs-<date>/cloud-init.log

k3s

Create a deployment and generate YAML for it

$ k create deployment hello-world --image hello-world -o yaml > hello-world.yml

Roadmap

Here is an unprioritized list of some things I want to do next:

• Store secrets using something like Ansible vault. Need to find a way to put the vault pass in the VM before cloud-init runs
• See if I can upgrade the Debian base image. I think recent versions of cloud-init have ansible as a final module, so that would eliminate my need to override cloud_final_modules in my modules in terraform/main.tf
• Explore using LXC for k3s hosts to move things a little closer to the metal
• Move "role" VMs (media, monitoring, etc.) into k3s - monitoring should probably have its own namespace
• Pass role in Terraform and have it generate the right Ansible cloud-init stuff. DRY things up if I make Ansible cloud-init config a first-class citizen
• Figure out some best practices in deploying k3s resources. Helm? ArgoCD? k apply -f k3s/*.yml?