How to get a real world 1 node Kubernetes cluster, in less than 10 minutes.

What is Talos Linux ?

A very versatile Linux distribution, which ships with Kubernetes, with an API which can be accessed with a CLI client.

How to get things going on real hardware that maybe sits around your house, like a Raspberry Pi 5.

1. The local tooling

brew install zstd talosctl

2. Prepare the RPi

Find out on MacOS diskutil list which disk is your SD-Card.

Download, unpack metal-arm64.raw.zst from https://github.com/talos-rpi5/talos-builder/releases/tag/v1.10.2-rpi5-pre3 and dd to a SD-Card with:

sudo dd if=./metal-arm64.raw of=/dev/disk4 conv=fsync bs=4M

Plug-in the SD-Card and the network cable and power up the RPi. Let's assume the RPi gets an IP inside your network and that is 192.168.1.155.

Talos is now in a recovery mode, awaiting 2 more steps, one for configuration and one for boostraping Kubernetes.

3. Generate Talos config

mkdir talos-8afb && cd talos-8afb 

talosctl gen config ll-8afb https://192.168.1.155:6443 \
    --with-examples=false \
     --with-docs=false

talosctl generated the YAML configuration under 2 files, a controlplane and a worker YAMLs. In the controlplane.yaml you need to touch very little things for start. Go over it, set debug: true and persist: true and the disk where Talos config should be persisted. We are going to use the same SD-card so it's disk: /dev/mmcblk0

And apply it:

talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig apply-config -f ./controlplane.yaml --insecure

Once the configuration is applied, which takes less than 2 minutes, you can verify it:

talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig version

4. Boostrap

talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig bootstrap 

5. Verify

At this moment also you can follow the Linux kernel logs via:

talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig dmesg -f 

Or see Talos dashboard:

talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig dashboard  

6. Get Kubeconfig

export KUBECONFIG="kubeconfig"
talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig kubeconfig

Verify with

kubectl get nodes -A -o wide 

7. Misc

Reset the node if you want to start all over again

talosctl -n 192.168.1.155 -e 192.168.1.155 --talosconfig=./talosconfig reset

Also use the wipe: true

talos-8afb/controlplane.yaml

Lines 19 to 20 in df92dec

	wipe: true
	features:

---

Links:

siderolabs/sbc-raspberrypi#23 (comment)