This is a personal blog focused on computer software and hardware. Most projects are implementing software and hardware for a homelab. What is a homelab? I would say a homelab could be a single computer or dozens of computers connected in a network. You can also integrate with computers in the Cloud.
Ubuntu 22.04 was released in 2022 and is a long term support server Linux distribution. We can reasonably expect the publishers of Ubuntu to maintain security and kernel updates for Ubuntu until 2027. This distribution is a good choice for using as a base template for virtual machines. If you are not familiar with creating virtual machine templates for Proxmox, check out a previous post that is more focused on getting started.
For linux distribution Fedora version 37 and newer, if you are using an AMD graphics card (gpu), the main package repositories no longer provide the drivers needed to decode video streams in browsers and other applicationns that utilize libraries such as vdpau.
Fortunately along with other non-free software such as codecs, the RPMFusion repository can be added to your system to install the drivers needed to decode videos using your GPU.
As of November 15, 2022 Fedora 37 is available. Compared to the previous release, Fedora 36, there are not a large amount of changes that a desktop user will notice. The newest release brings newer versions of the Linux Kernel and GNOME 43 if you use the GNOME desktop environment. If you like running virtual machines, this release includes an image all prepared for running in the Linux KVM hypervisor.
When it comes to running containers, docker is the most widely used tool with millions of container images available on the public docker hub. If you are not familiar with docker, check out a previous post to get an introduction. I am looking at Alternatives since docker is no longer used as a container runtime in the kubernetes platform. I use kubernetes in my homelab to orchestrate container based services accross multiple computers. If you are not familiar with kubernetes, check out a previous post for an introduction.
I will be using nginx to serve as a reverse proxy for my network. With Nginx, I can manage my proxy configurations in a single server. Nginx is one of the most widely used web servers and can also function as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy, and HTTP cache. Nginx is free and open-source software.
On Linux distributions, nginx should be available in the software repositories. Once installed and enabled, you will need to open port 80 and/or 443 to access from other systems.
updated: 2024-02-01
Once you have a kubernetes environment running, a tool like argoCD can help you manage applications that you want to deploy on kubernetes. ArgoCD expects a pattern of using git repositories as the source of truth for defining the state of your applications. You can communicate with the kubernetes API by submitting requests in YAML or JSON format. I am going to be focusing on managing applications with helm charts.
ArgoCD automates the deployment of applications in kubernetes. Application deployments can track updates to git branches, tags, or pinned to a specific version of manifests at a specific commit.