$ cat 2025-03-31.txt
2025-03-31

               kube clusters, waiting for mame, gaming and noise

while we wait for a march release of mame ...

tech/

i recently went through the beginnings of playing with kubernetes. i started
with the okd project as an attempt to align with some future requirements. this
was an interesting experience. their doco is there but relatively out of date
with broken doco links being more prevelant than not and this is a 3 node bare
metal user provisioned infrastructure deployment, so okd in hard-mode

nodes are made up of 3 x i5 6400 2.70GHz with 32G RAM and a 256GB SSD in a
ThinkCenter M710s, the s being for SSF.

bootstrap is a qemu vm with an img attached as an nvme to match the nodes, this
is incidental in the final deployment but exists in this configuration as the
node was initially used to debug some fcos behaviours on the bare metal nodes.

`openshift-install` is used to generate the ignition configurations. the cluster
is intended to be 3 schedable control-planes (workloads can run on these). and
each node (plus bootstrap) is pxe booted first time (matched by mac addr) into
their respective modes.

the pxe boot process pulls the kernel, initrd, (as required) metal image and
ignition config over http to automatically setup the nodes and cluster.

dnsmasq is used for dns, static-dhcp, host-record and address-records (wildcard)
are setup as per the prereqs

nginx is used as a tcp load balancer although with the caveat that not having
nginx-plus we cannot easily do a /readyz health_check, so we rely on basic tcp
health checks for now. since this is a home cluster that should be fine for the
time being.

to get to this point i had to tidy up a number of external systems, dns, gitea,
pxe etc. i am glad i did it made the end result much more pleasent to use.

the nodes as purchased originally shipped wth 8G ram, this was enough to get the
genral process down for initial deployment and node registration, it was not
enough to complete the install (min req is 16G per node) resulting in the router
not deploying and kube-api having failed deps, this was resolved by providing
enough resources.

and so finally after many hiccups (stupidity on my part) and broken doco this
process works extremely well for (re)deployment of the 3 node bare metal okd
cluster. ultimately i haven't played with the workloads yet but the intent is to
run some basic containers and perhaps add in a couple of arm nodes for building
software without cross-compiling.

some things to take into account 
- there is a 24h lifespan for deployment certificates in the ignition configs,
  so if you are redeploying you will want to regenerate the configs
- no enough resources will fail in odd ways
- do not inject your own self-signed certs into the mix on the lb, it will fail
  to deploy
- there appears no way through `openshift-install` 4.17 to drop your own ca onto
  the fcos system
- there were more lessons here but my brain is again full of noise, so onto
  other things

gaming/

stumbled onto wolfenstein: blade of agony on flathub the other day, a mod for
doom2/gzdoom using oldschool wolf style assets. decided to give this a go. 

tl;dr this mod is incredible, you should play it

the mod is a story driven narrative by realm667 detailing an alternative wwii
timeline. the levels are long and well designed with an engaging story. the
combat may not be much for the seasoned doom player but it has been a while for
me and after just finishing selaco on steam i found i enjoyed the combat well
enough.

this game is a time suck where i was averaging around 4h per mission but i
didn't realise this until i reviewed the blackboard in the briefing room after
the first "episode" was nearly complete, still a very enjoyable title all
around.

i have to lean into the gzdoom thing for a bit, as mentioned i recently played
through selaco, now wolf:boa both of which i thoroughly enjoyed. gzdoom is a
little further on from core doom gameplay providing more modern features and
feel to the game. these mods (tcs?) take advantage of this and the results are
just fun.

this resulted in me getting into a doom mood so i also booted up the tnt pack
which i'd never played through before, long but fun with but some maps (the
mill) were a bit "meh". the game felt way too easy on whatever difficulty
setting i chose and this may have impacted the intended map population as a
result with a number of later maps having wide-open empty spaces. tnt felt long
and by the end i was in more of a "just get it done" mindset however as a whole
it was enjoyable. too be fair to this title rl challenges may be influencing my
mood atm.

... and with that mame0276 releases so it is time to sign off