Storm Isha cleanup

Storm Isha left an obstacle that needed cleared up in a hurry, here are some pics!

In the early hours of the morning, blocking our way out past our neighbours farm at the end of our track:

This was the start of my “lunch break”:

Things went quickly, this was about half way through:


All packed up (nearly – I went back for those big bits later!) and off back to work with about 10 mins to spare….

Firefox on Mac issue – finally fixed!

This one caused me some grief for the last few weeks, thought I’d share in case it helps anyone else…

Firefox is my prefered browser on Mac, it’s setup with all my passwords, bookmarks, extensions etc and I use Chrome for work, so when it stopped loading and started crashing for no good reason it was VERY annoying. Couldn’t find any cure for it, little mention of issues and nothing more helpful than the usual: update it, restart, disable extensions, clear your profile, reinstall etc etc.

The issue being that Firefox would hang on startup – nothing would load, not even the basic home page, and I had to force-restart the browser on a regular basis until it would eventually decide to work like nomal again…. ARGH!

The solution to my issue was to disable support for HTTP3. That’s very easily done and has completely fixed things on my Mac (in this case it’s an iMac Retina 5k, 27-inch with macOS Monterey).

Here’s how – it takes 5 seconds + a restart.

enter “about:config” in the address bar and then hit the “Accept the Risk and Continue” button…

filter the settings for “http3” via the search bar, click on the bottom right icon seen in this pic to change the value from true to false:

so that it loks like this:

then just restart the browser and if you had the same issue as me, it should now be sorted! Happy surfing.

Update: There is a some more detailed info here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749908
incluing reports that disabling all of the data collection features may solve this (without the HTTP3 disabling update). Looks like this has been around for a while but only started affecting me a couple of weeks ago, and was hard to debug as there’s no obvious/searchable error message.

Installing APKs on Amazon Fire HD with ADB

My notes on “sideloading” APK files to an Amazon Fire TV HD using ADB.

I don’t do this often and had forgotten how, so this may help me out next time.

Getting and using Android Debug Bridge (adb)

Useful info here:

https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb

download the stable binaries for Mac, linux or Windows from here:

https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools

you can either add the location of the binaries to your PATH, or cd to them and run them directly like I did, e.g.

./adb help

Download the APK files you want to install

For example

https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/en/

or Kodi

https://mirrors.kodi.tv/releases/android/arm/

I put the downloaded APK files in the same dir as the adb tools to keep things very simple.

Connect to your Amazon Fire TV

Find the IP address of your Amazon Fire device from Network Settings (From Settings, go to Device (or My Fire TV) > About > Network), for example mine was 192.168.0.176.

Enable ADB debugging in your Amazon Fire device via Settings.

connect from client laptop/pc to Fire TV, for example:

./adb connect 192.168.0.176:5555

you can also list local devices:

donaldsimpson@Donalds-iMac adb-tools % ./adb devices
List of devices attached
192.168.0.176:5555 unauthorized
192.168.0.59:5555 unauthorized

Install APK to connected device

Once connected, installing a new app should be as simple as

./adb install yourapp.apk

Note that if you have multiple devices you may get this message:

➜ adb-tools ./adb install smartyoutubetv_latest.apk
Performing Push Install
adb: error: failed to get feature set: more than one device/emulator

check the list of attached devices:

➜ adb-tools ./adb devices
List of devices attached
G070VM1904950F5U device
192.168.0.18:5555 device

then specify the device you are aiming for with “-s <address:port>” like this:

➜ adb-tools ./adb -s 192.168.0.18:5555 install smartyoutubetv_latest.apk
Performing Streamed InstallSuccess

I also had this response at one point:

./adb install smartyoutubetv_latest.apk
Performing Push Install
adb: error: failed to get feature set: device unauthorized.
This adb server's $ADB_VENDOR_KEYS is not set
Try 'adb kill-server' if that seems wrong.
Otherwise check for a confirmation dialog on your device.

… the last line promoted me to look at the Fire TV screen and notice it was asking me to approve the connection request from my laptop.
Doh.
Once approved the app installed no problem:

./adb install smartyoutubetv_latest.apk
Performing Push Install
smartyoutubetv_latest.apk: 1 file pushed, 0 skipped. 3.3 MB/s (7901934 bytes in 2.261s)
pkg: /data/local/tmp/smartyoutubetv_latest.apk
Success

Updating an existing app

I’ve had an outdated Kodi install for ages and wanted to update that while I was here. The process is simple, just add an -r for “replace existing application”:

./adb install -r kodi-18.8-Leia-armeabi-v7a.apk
Performing Push Install
kodi-18.8-Leia-armeabi-v7a.apk: 1 file pushed, 0 skipped. 3.5 MB/s (63508040 bytes in 17.391s)
pkg: /data/local/tmp/kodi-18.8-Leia-armeabi-v7a.apk
Success

This went very smoothly, all my settings, connections and shares etc were still there after the upgrade, and it looks a lot nicer for it too.

That’s it – there’s a ton of useful info on other commands and options from

./adb help

I found some more useful info on connecting from ADB to Fire TV here:

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-app-builder/connecting-adb-to-fire-tv.html

Starting up Kodi on Amazon FireTV remotely

After getting the above sorted out, I wanted to find a way to start Kodi on my FireTV without having to switch my projector on & off to do so.

I use Kodi as an AirPlay target for music during the day, and it switches itself off overnight. I could probably change that.

Using ADB tools, I connect to the device remotely, as before, with:

./adb connect 192.168.0.176:5555

though normally that comes back with “already connected to…

then start up Kodi using the “Android activity manager”, “am“:

./adb shell am start -n org.xbmc.kodi/.Splash

this takes a little while to start, but after about 30 seconds I can connect to the Kodi web interface on port 8080 of my FireTV, and the AirPlay target becomes available.

It looks like there are many other interesting things you can do with “am”.

Uninstalling packages with adb

List installed packages

./adb shell pm list packages

and filter for whatever you’re looking for (e.g. “guard“)

./adb shell pm list packages | grep -i guard

then unsinstall that package name:

./adb uninstall com.adguard.vpn

Update on smartyoutube to fix ads

Quick update specifically on Smart Youtube TV on Android. This was brought on by my initial install of Smart Youtube TV starting to show adverts (a lot).

I had installed Smart Youtube TV, version 6.17.739 (at time of writing this is still the latest stable release available) on my Android Fire – details above. This worked very well for months, but has started to not filter out youtube advertisements.

Having not found an update and while looking for another solution, I found “SmartTubeNext Beta”, which looks to be pretty stable and widely used, for a beta version:

https://www.apklinker.com/apk/liskovsoft/

From that site, it looks like around 4 months since SmartYouTube was updated, but SmartTubeNext is actively being developed, so could be worth a try – here’s how:

Get the latest smarttube beta APK (via wget, or download via browser from here: https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/)

wget https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext/releases/download/latest/smarttube_beta.apk

connect to your Android device (update the IP to match yours):

./adb connect 192.168.0.176:5555

install the APK:

./adb -s 192.168.0.18:5555 install -r smarttube_beta.apk

All done.

I wasn’t sure if this would replace the existing SmartYouTube (which is why I added the -r switch that wasn’t necessary), but it’s ok: it’s installed as a different app so the stable version is kept and available should there be any issues with the beta version.

This version of SmartYoutube looks a lot better than the previoous/stable one.

List of improvements from their site:

  • 4K support
  • runs without Google Services
  • designed for TV screens
  • stock controller support
  • external keyboard support

Personally I really like the better controller support, and the overall look is much more suitable for a large screen. It’s also a lot more customisable. And, most importantly, it removes all the adverts.

Chicken

We had this awesome chicken for about 6 or 7 years, she was an amazing character, always stood out from the flock and did her own thing. She insisted on getting involved whenever I was doing anything outside, and used to run about 100m to greet me at the gate whenever I came home.

RIP funny bird.

HTTPS Certs for WordPress Multisite with Let’s Encrypt

Intro

This post looks at creating and maintaining HTTPS/SSL/TLS Certificates for multiple WordPress sites running on the same host.

Some background…

This website is one of several different domains/sites/blogs hosted on my single Google Cloud server, with one public IP address shared for all websites. I’m using WordPress Multisite to do this, based on a very well put together Appliance provided by Bitnami.

WordPress Multisite allows me to cheaply, easily and efficiently serve multiple sites from the one host and IP address, sharing the same host resources (CPU, Mem, Disk) which is great but makes seting up HTTPS/SSL Certificates a little different to the norm – the same cert has to validate multiple sites in multiple domains.

I’d banged my head against this for a while and looked at many different tools and tech (some of which are mentioned below) to try and sort this out previously, but finally settled on the following process which works very well for my situation.

There is some good info on why you may want SSL/TLS certificate for your website(s), background info and some popular providers reviewed: https://makeawebsitehub.com/free-ssl-tls-certificate/

“WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging and content management platform. With WordPress Multisite, conserve resources by managing multiple blogs and websites from the same server and interface.”

CERT PROVIDER

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority created by the Linux Foundation in collaboration with the Internet Security Research Group. There are many other certificate providers available, but I’m using this one.

LEGO – the Let’s Encrypt Go Client

Here’s the high level plan:

  • Install the Lego client – see Step 1 here
  • Generate a Let’s Encrypt certificate for your domain
  • Configure the Web server to use the Let’s Encrypt certificate – see Apache or Nginx options on Bitnami site
  • Add a cron job to run every <90 days

I used this excellent Bitnami article to work through the process, it explains the steps in greater detail:

https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/how-to/generate-install-lets-encrypt-ssl/

Stop services

sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop

Get/renew certificates

Once lego is set up, you can request multiple certs like this – just make sure to change the --domains="whatever" entries and add as many as you need. Remember all of your sub domains (www. etc) too.

sudo lego --tls --email="my@email.com"--domains="donaldsimpson.co.uk" --domains="www.donaldsimpson.co.uk" --domains="www.someothersite.com" --domains="someothersite.com" --path="/etc/lego" run

Noe you’ve got the certs, move them in to place and chmod them etc:

sudo mv /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.crt /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.crt.old
sudo mv /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.key /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.key.old
sudo mv /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.csr /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.csr.old
sudo ln -sf /opt/bitnami/letsencrypt/certificates/DOMAIN.key /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.key
sudo ln -sf /opt/bitnami/letsencrypt/certificates/DOMAIN.crt /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.crt
sudo chown root:root /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server*
sudo chmod 600 /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server*

Restart services

sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

PLUGIN – JSM’s Force SSL / HTTPS

By this point I was happy that the nice new HTTPS certs were finally working reliably for all of my sites, but was aware that Google and external links would still try to get in through HTTP URLs.

After trying a few WordPress plugins that sounded like they should correct this neatly for me, I settled on JSM’s Force SSL/HTTPS plugin. As the name suggested, it quickly and easily redirects all incoming HTTP requests to HTTPS. It was simple to install and setup and works very well with WordPress Multisite too – thanks very much JSM!

CRONJOB

Now that the process works, the certificates need updated every 90 days which would be a bit of a pain to remember and do, so adding a simple script to a cron job saves some hassle.

OTHER OPTIONS and things I found interesting…

Many other clients are available, there’s a large list here:
https://letsencrypt.org/docs/client-options/

One of the more popular is Certbot: https://certbot.eff.org/

Tech links

SNI – Server Name Indication:
https://www.digicert.com/ssl-support/apache-multiple-ssl-certificates-using-sni.htm

SAN – Subject Alternative Name:
https://www.digicert.com/subject-alternative-name.htm

Kubernetes – with Minikube and Helm – part 2

This is the second half of the Kubernetes with Minikube and Helm presentation, the first half explains all of the steps we went through to get to this point, and is available here:

In this section we cover the following:

  • Helm and Tiller – what they are, when & why you’d maybe use them
  • Helm and Tiller – prep, install and Helm Charts
  • Deploying Jenkins via Helm Charts
  • and WordPress w/MariaDB too
  • Wrap up

The below are mostly my technical notes from this session, with some added blurb/explanation.

Helm and Tiller – what they are, when & why you’d maybe use them

From the Helm site:

“Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application. Charts are easy to create, version, share, and publish — so start using Helm and stop the copy-and-paste.”

https://helm.sh/

Helm is basically a package manager for Kubernetes applications. You can choose from a large list of Stable (or not so!) ready made packages and use the Helm Charts to quickly and easily deploy them to your own Kubernetes Cluster.

This makes light work of some very complex deployment tasks, and it’s also possible to extend these ready-made charts to suit your needs, and to write your own Charts from scratch, or pass your own values to override default ones, or… many other interesting options!

For this session we are looking at installing Helm, reviewing some example Helm Charts and deploying a few “vanilla” ones to the cluster we created in the first half of the session. We also touch upon the life-cycle of Helm Charts – it’s similar to dockers – and point out some of the ways this could be extended and customised to suit your needs – more on this at a later date hopefully.

Helm and Tiller – prep, install and Helm Charts

First, installing Helm – it’s as easy as this, run on your laptop/host that’s running the Minikube k8s we setup earlier:

Get & chmod the get_helm script, then run it:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/helm/master/scripts/get > get_helm.sh

chmod 700 get_helm.sh

./get_helm.sh

Tiller is the client part of Helm and is deployed inside your k8s cluster. It’s set to be removed with the release of Helm 3, but the basic functionality wont really change. More details here https://helm.sh/blog/helm-3-preview-pt1/

Next we do the Tiller prep & install – add RBAC for tiller, deploy via helm and take a look at the running pods:

kubectl create serviceaccount -n kube-system tiller

kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-rule --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller

helm init --service-account tiller

kubectl --namespace kube-system get pods

Helm Charts – look at the list of available stable Charts, then deploy a couple. The github repo is here

https://github.com/helm/charts

Update the local helm repo info:

helm repo update

then, for example, install Redis from its Helm Chart to the k8s cluster as easily as this:

helm install stable/redis

or helm install stable/mysql and check the console output that explains how to access the newly deployed app.

keep an eye on the pods to see what’s going on: watch kubectl get pods -o wide

Deploying Jenkins via Helm Charts

helm ls

helm delete <things you don't want any more to free up resources>

helm install --set serviceType=NodePort --name jenki stable/jenkins

again, watch kubectl get pods -o wide

now get the URL for the Jenkins service from Minikube:

minikube service --url=true jenki-jenkins

Hit that URL in your browser, and grab the password in UI from Pods > Jenki and log in to Jenkins with the user “admin”:

That’s a Jenkins instance deployed via Helm and Tiller and a Helm Chart to our Kubernetes Cluster running inside Minikube via a VirtualBox VM… all done in a few minutes. And it’s all customisable, repeatable, highly scaleable and awesome.

and WordPress w/MariaDB too

This was the “bonus demo” if my laptop wasn’t on fire – and thanks to some rapid cleaning up it managed fine – showing how quickly we could deploy a functional WordPress with MariaDB backend to our k8s cluster using the Helm Chart.

To prepare for this I did a helm ls to see all the things I had running. then helm delete --purge jenki, gave it a while to recover then had to do

kubectl delete pods <jenkinpod>

before starting the WordPress Chart deployment with

helm install --set serviceType=NodePort --name wp-k8s stable/wordpress

watch kubectl get pods -o wide for a while – note the chart is configured with the mariadb pod as a pre requisite of the wordpress instance:

Once it’s started we requested the service URL from Minikube again, making ingress nice and easy:

minikube service --url=true wp-k8s-wordpress

Hit that in the browser, using https and accepting the cert warning…

then logged in as `user` and qureied for the password in the k8s secret…

echo Password: $(kubectl get secret wp-k8s-wordpress -o
jsonpath="{.data.wordpress-password}" | base64 --decode)

and logged in to WordPress:

Wrap up

That’s it – we covered a lot in this session, and plan to use this as a platform to explore Helm in more detail later, writing our own Helm Charts and providing our own customisations to them.

minikube delete; rm -rf ~/.minikube

Cleans up everything we’d done:

Leaving just the local tools to remove if you want to – see the first half for a reminder.

Cheers,

Don

Update: this follow-on post runs through setting up Jenkins with Helm then creating Jenkins Pipelines that dynamically provision dockerised Jenkins Agents:

Milling Chilling and Flattening

Intro

Here are some pics and updates on my recent attempts at milling my own wood. This had been on my wood-related TODO list for a long time. The aim was to free up some room in my woodpile by creating planks that I can then try and make things out of – and to have some fun doing so.

All of the wood is local beech, I’m using up old trunks first but plan to do some green milling later, including milling another fallen tree with a nice straight trunk “in situ” then bringing the planks home to dry.

Tools & Setup

Chainsaw: you need a powerful chainsaw for milling, especially if you want to run a long enough bar to mill wider trunks, which I hope to do later. I really really wanted a large Husqvarna or Stihl but the cost for something of the right spec for this job was waaaay over my budget.

Searching for >60cc chainsaws I found this one by Parker:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/62CC-20-PETROL-CHAINSAW-CHAINS/dp/B00M9BBTT4

£80-odd quid for a 62cc Chinese chainsaw with 2 year guarantee and some extras bits ‘n pieces!?! Sounds far too good to be true, but further reading led me to reviews of similar cheap gear being used, mostly with good results, and folk referring to it as Chinese Milling, or “Chilling” 🙂

Bar & Chain: the 20″ bar that came with the Parker was ok but too small and the chains were cross-cut. I ordered a 28″ bar and Archer ripping chain from these guys – very happy with the parts and the service:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/chainsawbarsltd

Mill: there are some very cheap Chinese mill, bar & chain sets on eBay, but I went for this Eco Mill one which gets lots of good reviews:

https://www.frjonesandson.co.uk/products/eco-mill-36-chainsaw-mill/

Pics of the end result – cheapo Chinese saw, 28″ bar, ripping chain and EcoMill together:

First attempt

The first cut is not only the deepest, but the most important and most difficult too – I tried the old approach of screwing a straight plank to the top of the log, then running the saw/mill over this to give me a flat initial cut.

It went ok, but I think the log rolled a little towards the end – it was only small so easy done. This means that all subsequent cuts follow the same slight curve – the planks are still ok, but a lesson learned. These planks are narrow enough to run through my planer/thicknesser later anyway.

The waste/kerf from the ripping chain is noticeably smaller (narrower) and much finer than with a cross-cut chain. The saw runs surprisingly well and starts really easily. It makes a fair bit of noise but for the money it’s superb. I didn’t try to rush or force the cut, pretty much let the chain pull itself through, and I am very happy with the results.

Pics of the first small-scale test – the chicken was grudgingly impressed.

Second attempt

This time I tried using a bigger plank sitting on a crate at either end for the first cut, with the log sitting unattached underneath but secured with a load of wedges to stop it rolling/moving. This took longer to set up but worked much better.

Flattening Sled/Jig

Here are pics of a similar-ish setup I use to flatten large slabs. It’s a “jig” made from a couple of clamped planks (from my daughters old bed), with a “sled” made from a couple of 30mm angle iron sections joined together with Gorilla Tape & wooden blocks to keep it the right width and stop it coming off the rails. All of this keeps the router level while I run it from side to side, moving the sled up and down the jig to flatten the wood.

The router bit is a “1/2-Inch Shank 2-Inch Cutting Diameter Double Flute Carbide Tipped Cleaning Bottom Router Bit Cutter“… so there you go. It’s now done quite a lot of work and still cuts quickly and easily.

This setup is very versatile – I used it to create these too:

Random pics

Other stuff….

TODO: make something useful from those planks….

Three times tables

Pics of three tables I’ve made recently – all are from the same beech tree that fell over in the wind about 4 years ago.

Small

– this one is being used as a plant stand. It was narrow enough to fit through the 12″ thicknesser then was finished with a hand planer. The legs are beech branches.

Medium

– this one has some nice spalting lines around the edges. Flattening this was the first test of my home-made “router sled jig slab flattening contraption” (not sure what to call it, but it worked!) which I’ll post details of another time.

The hairpin legs were made by Designer Legs

Large

– this one weighs a ton and has some interesting features and curves.

It was initially cut from a massive log with a chainsaw “freestyle” as my milling setup wasn’t ready at the time. There are still 2 or three slightly wider and more uniform slabs still to come from the remains of this log, hopefully.

The “router-sled-jig-contraption” was used to flatten both sides, then it was sanded (and sanded and sanded again) to a very smooth finish and varnished with a tough matt glaze.

These three-prong hairpin legs were made by Designer Legs too.

Kubernetes – with Minikube and Helm – part 1

Intro:

This is the first of two posts on Kubernetes and Helm Charts, focusing on setting up a local development environment for Kubernetes using Minikube, then exploring Helm for package management and quickly and easily deploying several applications to the cluster – NGINX, Jenkins, WordPress with a MariaDB backend, MySQL and Redis.

The content is taken from the practical/demo session I wrote and published in Github here:

https://github.com/AutomatedIT/presentations/blob/master/minikube_demo.md

for this Meetup session we ran in Edinburgh in June 2019:

“Kubernetes – getting started with Minikube, Helm and Tiller” https://www.meetup.com/Automated-IT-Solutions/events/261623765/

<ramble>

One of the key objectives and challenges here was getting a useful local Kubernetes environment up and running as quickly and easily as possible for as wide an audience as we could- there’s so much to the Kubernetes ecosystem that it’s very easy to get side-tracked, and we could have (happily) spent a long time discussing the myriad of alternative possible solutions.

We plan to go “deeper” on all of this in future sessions and have an in-depth Helm session in the works, but for this session we were focused on creating a practical starting point.

</ramble>

Don

What is covered here:

  • Minikube – what it is (& isn’t) & why you’d use it (or not)
  • Kubernetes and Minikube components and concepts
  • setup for Mac and Linux
  • creating a first Kubernetes cluster in Minikube
  • minikube addons – what they are and how they can help you
  • minikube docker env – using DOCKER_HOST with minikube VM
  • Kubernetes dashboard with Heapster and Metrics Server – made easy by Minikube
  • kubectl – some examples and alternatives
  • example app – “hello (Kubernetes) world” minikube style with NGINX, scaling your world

and the second post covers:

  • Helm and Tiller – what they are, when & why you’d maybe use them
  • Helm and Tiller – prep, install and Helm Charts
  • Deploying Jenkins via Helm Charts
  • and WordPress w/MariaDB too
  • wrap up

Minikube – what it is (& isn’t) & why you’d use it (or not)


What it is, why you’d use it etc.

Local development of k8s – runs a single node Kubernetes cluster in a Virtual Machine on your laptop/PC.

All about making things easy for local development, it is not a production solution, or even close to it.

There are many other ways to run k8s, they all have their pros and cons and use cases. The slides from the Meetup covered this in more detail and include links for further info – they are available here:

Kubernetes and Minikube components and concepts

The (above) slides also cover this section:
Kubernetes components and concepts
what it solves
how Minikube works


Setup for Mac and Linux

There are three things you need to set up for this, they are:
VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Minikube: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-minikube/
kubectl: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/

Using Ubuntu for example:

curl -Lo minikube https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/v1.1.0/minikube-linux-amd64 && chmod +x minikube && sudo cp minikube /usr/local/bin/ && rm minikube

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v1.14.0/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl

`chmod +x ./kubectl

`sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl`

Cleanup/prep – if required, remove any previous cluster & settings

`minikube delete; rm -rf ~/.minikube`

Creating a first Kubernetes cluster in Minikube

Here we create a first Kubernetes cluster with Minikube, then take a look around in & outside of the VM.

With the above initial setup done, it’s as simple as running this in a shell:

minikube start

Note you could optionally give this Cluster a name, if you are likely to have more than one for different branches of development for example. This is also where you could specify the VM provider if you want to use something other than VirtualBox – there are more details here:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/learning-environment/minikube/#starting-a-cluster

This should produce output like the following, and it may well take a few minutes as the VM is downloaded and started, then a stack of Docker images are started up inside that….

At this point you should be able to see the minikube VM running in the VirtualBox GUI:

Now it’s running, we can connect from our local shell directly to the one inside the running VM by simply issuing:

minikube ssh

This will put you inside the VM where the Kubernetes Cluster is being run, and we can see and interact with the running components, for example:

docker images

should show all of the downloaded images:

and you could do this to see the running containers:

docker ps

Quitting out of the VM puts us back on the local host, where we can use kubectl to query the status of the Minikube cluster – the initial setup has told kubectl about the Minikube-managed Kubernetes Cluster, meaning there’s no other setup required here:

kubectl cluster-info

kubectl get nodes

kubectl describe nodes

minikube addons – what they are and how they can help you

Show some of the ways minkube makes things easier for local dev

First, take a moment to look around these two local folders:

ls -al ~/.minikube; ls -al ~/.kube

These are where Minikube keeps its settings and the VM Image, and where kubectl settings are persisted – and updated by Minikube.

With Minikube you’ve often got the option to either use kubectl directly, or to use some Minikube built-in features to make your life easier.

Addons are one of these features, allowing you to very easily add – or remove – functionality from the cluster like this:

minikube addons list

minikube addons enable heapster

minikube addons enable metrics-server

With those three lines we’ve taken a look at the available addons and their current status, and selected to enable both heapster and the metrics server. This was done to give us cpu and mem stats in the Kubernetes Dashboard, which we will set up in a moment. The output should look something like this:

minikube config view

shows the current state of the config – i.e. what changes have been made, so we can keep a track of them easily.

kubectl --namespace kube-system get pods

now we can enable the dashboard:

minikube addons enable dashboard

and check again to see the current state

minikube addons list

we’ll connect to the Dashboard and take a look around in a moment, but first…

minikube docker env – using the DOCKER_HOST in you minikube VM – how & why


Minikube docker-env – setup local docker client to use minikube docker host

We’re going to look at connecting our local docker client to the docker host inside the Minikube VM. This is made easy by:

minikube docker-env

if you run that command on its own it wiull show you what settings it will export and you can set them by doing:

eval ${minikube docker-env}

From then on, in that shell, your local docker commands will use the docker host inside Minikube.

This is very useful for debugging and local development – when you change and deploy anything to your Kubernetes Cluster, you can easily tail the logs or check for errors or issues. You can also do all of this via the dashboard or kubectl too if you prefer, but it’s another handy and powerful feature from Minikube.

The following image shows the result of running this command:

eval $(minikube docker-env) && docker ps | grep -i metrics

so we can now use our local docker client to run docker commands like…

docker ps

docker ps | grep -i metrics

docker logs -f <some container id>

etc.

Kubernetes dashboard with Heapster and Metrics Server – made easy by Minikube

Minikube k8s dashboard – here we will start up the k8s dashboard and take look around.

We’ve delayed starting the dashboard up until after we enabled the metrics-server & heapster components we deployed earlier. By doing it in this order, the dashboard will automatically detect and use these components, giving us cpu & mem stats and a nicer looking dash, with no additional config required.

Starting the dashboard simply involved running

minikube dashboard

and waiting for a minute…

That should fire up your browser automatically, then you can take a look around at things like Default namespace > Nodes

and in the namespace kube-system > Deployments

and kube-system > Pods

You can see the logs and statuses of everything running in your k8s cluster – from the core components we covered at the start, to the dashboard, metrics and heapster we enabled recently, and the application we’re going to deploy and scale up soon.

kubectl – some examples and alternatives

# kubectl command line – look at kubectl and keep an eye on things
kubectl get deployment -n kube-system

kubectl get pods -o wide -n kube-system

kubectl get services

kubectl

example app – “hello (Kubernetes) world” minikube style with NGINX, scaling your world

Now we’ll deploy the most basic application we can – a “Hello World” style NGINX docker image.

It’s as simple as this, where nginx is the name of the docker image you want to deploy, hello-nginx is the label you want to give it, and port 80 is where you want it to listen:

kubectl run hello-nginx --image=nginx --port=80

that shouldn’t take long, and you can watch the progress like this:

kubectl get pods -o wide

We can then expose the deployment using NodePort:

kubectl expose deployment hello-nginx --type=NodePort

then we can ask Minikube to provide the URL for Ingress:

minikube service --url=true hello-nginx

and hitting that URL in your browser should show the obvious:

“Welcome to nginx!

If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and working. Further configuration is required.”

you can keep an eye on the Service with

kubectl get svc

while we scale to x3 replicas:

kubectl scale --replicas=3 deployment/hello-nginx

and take a look at what happens with

kubectl get deployment

kubectl get pods -o wide

or check in the Dashboard to see something like this:

and monitor what’s going on in our “hello world” NGINX app with kubectl then scale it down to 0 or 1 or whatever you like…

kubectl get deployment

kubectl get pods -o wide

kubectl scale --replicas=0 deployment/hello-nginx

Next post – Helm & Tiller onwards…

Meetup – Kubernetes with Minikube and Helm Charts

We are presenting a Kubernetes-related Meetup on Wednesday 5th June in Edinburgh.

This time we explore setting up a local development environment for Kubernetes using Minikube and Helm Charts. We will deploy NGINX to the Cluster and scaled it up and down, then use Helm Charts to deploy Jenkins, WordPress and MariaDB.

if you’d like to join in please book a space via our Meetup (below) – it’s free, and the Peoples Postcode Lottery are kindly hosting the event and providing the beer and pizza too! Wednesday 5th June 2019 from 6:30 PM in the Peoples Postcode Lottery offices at 28 Charlotte Square in Edinburgh.

Kubernetes – getting started with Minikube, Helm and Tiller

Wednesday, Jun 5, 2019, 6:30 PM

Wemyss House
28 Charlotte Square Edinburgh, GB

38 Members Went

In collaboration with Hays and the People’s Postcode Lottery, Automated IT Solutions are running a Meetup on Kubernetes with Minikube, Helm and Tiller. The session starts off with an overview of the main Kubernetes concepts and components, then runs through building your own local Kubernetes Cluster with Minikube. After deploying and scaling our fi…

Check out this Meetup →


I have been planning this session for ages, and hope that it will become the basis for several future talks and ideas, including deploying Blockchain to a Kubernetes cluster, then adding a Ruby and Sinatra based application that will use it.

Pin It on Pinterest

%d bloggers like this: