jason’s dgplug blog

Notes and Research, while I fiddle with the servers (2026-10-23)

The Big Idea

  • Move from Debian to something on the main server.
  • Noodling on what that something might be …
  • Two main yet conflicting needs are
    1. It should be stable and boring and well known like Debian
    2. It should be amenable to being controlled with code
  • One approach will be to just having an OS that is completely configurable.
    NixOS beckons. But I think that is a project for a machine at home, not for something that I want to run on the wide net and in production. (this is just a matter of comfort and opinion. Not fact. Other folks routinely do run workloads on the net with NixOS)
  • The other approach is what I’m doing. Nothing matches what I’m looking for more than Talos. But I’m a bit hesitant, because at least now, Talos (despite the MPL) is Sidero Labs. Not community owned like Debian.
  • After a bit of thought, well, if this is the risk to take, I’ll take it. And see how it goes. After all, I say I want something long term, but in the long term I figure out said something’s shortcomings (like I hate not being able to update Debian like an appliance) and then want to switch anyway.
  • So, I already learned all about containers and how to create and write them last year. So this year, the big change, in addition to Talos is Cilium.
  • The other thing I’m dropping is provisioning the Hetzner instance with OpenTofu/Terraform. A single node does not quite warrant that level of work.
    Am pushing this to when I scale this up to AWS.
  • Think the VM should handle this. My current idle load seems to hover at a few % cpu and about 50% of my 8gb ram

Tentative Plan

  • [ ] Create a Hetzner instance with Talos and Kubernetes on it
  • [ ] Cilium
  • [ ] Flux
  • [ ] Traefik
  • [ ] Letsencrypt
  • [ ] Move workloads from the other cluster to this one. (Examine and drop the ones I don’t need)

2026-10-23 17:20

  • Got the instance up with Talos installed. Now to figure out more next week.

Notes while I fiddle with the servers (2026-10-22)

The Big Idea

  • Move from Debian to Flatcar on the main server.
  • I wanted to move to something completely black box and appliance like Talos, but I am not that brave. I still want my K3s, and my instance is not that large that I can run full fat Kubernetes.

2026-10-22 09:45

  • Good I decided to review my files. If I had just generated a new instance on Hetzner, I might have paid double for the instance I use (CPX32)
  • Moved my terraform state from s3 to local.
  • S3 meant my self hosted Garage instance. Found that I did not use it as much as I intended. So will retire it. (That will probably be phase two when I revamp the home network). Since last December I’ve hardly touched the state of the VM. So makes sense for me to maintain state locally.
  • Found that OpenTofu can encrypt at rest local tf state files. Time to move from Terraform to OpenTofu
  • 2026-10-22 10:45: Buggered it up enough, between backups and moving VMs that the current thing will destroy my VM. that is what I don’t want! will need to see what to do. But the dream of just changing enough stuff is gone now.
  • my dream of an entirely gitops driven workflow is undone by the ai-pocalypse
  • options? am too used to this machine to downgrade. so will manually nurse it.
  • worst case option? will downgrade if it comes to that.

2026-10-22 11:05

  • Just realised that the PHP world is on fire.
  • Taking a break from doing things above to adapting two images for my containers
  • 2026-10-22 11:31: mistakenly created the wrong server. twice Grr!
  • 2026-10-22 12:17: New server up and running. Had to change my ip in just two places. Good boy, old Jason for using variables everywhere. Break time.

2026-10-22 13:20

  • Back to thinking ’bout what to do with Flatcar now
  • 2026-10-22 13:55: Just realised I should go back and figure which of my workloads run PHP, and then upgrade them to the latest safe images/versions
    • Sendy (14:37: done!)
    • Baikal (17:45: done! vendored and adapted the unofficial, yet official ckulka image)
    • Kanboard (left as is and will let flux automatically handle the upgrade. fguillot is pretty good at keeping his work, shipshape) (Update 2026-10-23 11:25): I was right. A new image shipped and the cluster moved to the patched version overnight

2026-10-22 17:50

  • enough for today. will figure out the new node and flatcar tomorrow.

Temporarily writing here while I move servers.

These will move to my main blog when I’m done

wotw, leisure

And to tell the truth I
don't want to let go of
the wrists of idleness, I
don't want to sell my life
for money, I don't even
want to come in out of
the rain.

And with this delightful Mary Oliver quote, this little blog, bids you adieu awhile.
I want to go and play in the rain :)

wotw, APROSDOKETON is a figure of speech in which an expected word in an idiom is replaced with an unexpected one – e.g. “Rome wasn't built in a teacup”

have fun with the thread

https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1176149224326483970

wotw, gut punch

means something knocks the wind out of you literally a punch to the gut. means to be suddenly be emotionally wound up, because of something you see or hear.

like I am about to do to you …


wotw, antifragile

to be someone, who is more than resilient. to be someone, who thrives when the world breaks you!

to learn how, spend an hour and watch the videos below.



wotw, myth

the stories we tell ourselves as a culture, to explain what we could not really explain.

to help use make sense of the world, so that we’d not fuss over the unexplained and let us get on with our lives and make progress with the things we do understand.


wotw, kind

i can afford to get preachy this week, because i turned a year older.

so, be kind! to your parents, your significant other,
your family, your friends, the folks around you, to your dog and stray dogs and all the animals, to whoever you can. and most importantly

Be kind to yourself!

And while I think Bezos is a kook, his grandpa certainly was not.

My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

It’s harder to be kind than clever. So it’s no small thing I ask of you. Do a kind deed every day. Your life will be the better for it.



wotw, feminism

does not mean equality in the literal sense.
more for women to have the freedom, to be themselves.
the freedom, to work and play and live in peace.
means, a movement to get from under the thumb of millennia of social mores and things have always been this way, so suck it up.

means to actually live to the basic ideal of live and let live.