technology

K8s on macOS with K3s, K3d and Rancher

12 minute read Published

How to install and run Rancher for Kubernetes on macOS using K3s and K3d.

In this post we’re going to take a quick look at how to run Rancher in a Kubernetes cluster locally on macOS for development and testing purposes. There are several different ways to run Kubernetes for local development. In this guide I’m going to focus on just one way: K3D.

K3D is a lightweight wrapper to run Rancher Labs’ K3s in Docker. K3s is a certified Kubernetes distribution for edge and IoT applications with a small resource footprint and ARMv7 support. Like KiND, K3D uses a container runtime as opposed to a virtual machine — saving precious resources. Unlike KiND, K3D supports the ARM architecture and requires about 16x less RAM.

When you’re finished you’ll have a functional K3s Kubernetes cluster running on your Mac with Rancher UI for cluster management. This guide assumes you’ve never run Kubernetes before and, therefore, also serves as a practical starting point, though I won’t be going into detail about the nuts and bolts of Kubernetes.

Copy Files from Linux to macOS Desktop

3 minute read Published

Easily move files machine-to-machine using Deepin 20 and Midnight Commander.

If you need to copy files from a Linux computer to macOS desktop, this short tutorial will explain how using Arch Linux with Deepin 20 and Midnight Commander. Rather than using a Wi-Fi gateway such as a a router, we’ll connect Arch directly to macOS using the Personal Hotspot in Deepin 20 giving us an M2M connection.

Reaction Commerce — Getting Started

10 minute read Updated

The Unofficial Guide to getting started with Reaction Commerce v3.

Reaction Commerce is a full-stack, self-hosted commerce platform you can run for as little as $10 on your own VPS. Think of Reaction Commerce as what WooCommerce might’ve become had it not been dependent on PHP/WordPress and instead was rewritten using modern coding languages and development techniques.

Using self-hosted commerce is like having your own personal Shopify, WIX or BigCommerce right at your fingertips. Only there’s no monthly costs to worry about just to use it. And there’s no vendor lock-in which would otherwise make it too difficult or risky to switch between platforms when the need arises.

With commerce goliaths like Amazon doubling quarterly profits in 2020 while, at the same time snubbing their own FBA customers, it’s high time you took a hard look at your e-commerce and take control of your own commerce destiny. In this post I will show you how to set-up your own self-hosted Reaction Commerce stack on a VPS with as little as 2GB of RAM or about $10/month.

Redirect non-www to www Traefik v2

4 minute read Published

How to create more timeless URLs using Traefik 2 with Docker labels.

I like cool URIs that don't change so whenever I’m making a new website I make sure I put my web content on the www subdomain where it belongs. This of course leaves the domain apex, or root of the domain, empty and user agents don’t always do what comes so natural to us humans — adding a www in front of a domain name.

Computers get even more clumsy when you add HTTPS into the equation and are working with new technologies. So if you’re looking for cool URIs too here’s how to redirect domain.example to www.domain.example with Traefik v2 over both HTTP and HTTPS using Docker labels in a docker-compose.override.yml YAML file:

ACH Payments on Reaction Commerce

7 minute read Updated

How to accept ACH payments using Reaction Commerce.

After learning Mitragynine was the cure for my five year cough I realized most of my stay in Bali put me one island from the source of the herbal remedy I now drink as tea daily. Given my medical journey and newfound love of Kratom it seems fitting to set-up an online shop to better take advantage of this miracle plant. After some trial and error the platform I’ve landed on for commerce is called Reaction Commerce. And in this post I’ll show you how to use it to set-up a simple ACH payment system using Reaction on your own website.

Hiding Apps in the Deepin DDE Launcher

3 minute read Published

How to hide or modify main menu apps in Deepin Desktop Environment.
While getting my Invisible Arch set-up I cycled through a few desktops before settling happily on a now very slick and stable Deepin V20, still in beta. Given I’m shifting back and forth between Deepin and GNOME every so often I ended up having multiple apps with the same or similar names appearing in the menu system. To remedy that it’s possible to hide apps shown in the launcher. To hide or modify apps appearing in the Deepin launcher menu install a package called alacarte from the package repository.

Getting Started with Yew for Rust

4 minute read Published

Rust framework for creating multi-threaded front-end web apps with WebAssembly.

Today we’re going to create a starter website using Yew for Rust. This should take you about 20-30 minutes depending on the speed of your Internet connection and computer. At the outset you will have a website so bleeding edge you didn’t even feel the cut. Kind of like how Node developers didn’t see Deno coming…

To get started install or upgrade Rust. If you don’t have Rust installed, you can install it from the stable channel using the following command:

(Rolling Down) Katamari Drive

2 minute read Enclosure Published

Using FFMpeg to combine CC-licensed works.

Inspired by a chiptune topic on ZeroNet I downloaded one of the songs shared using youtube-dl but wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the video encoding. The song on the other hand was great. And thankfully the author’s website was still up so I could download the original MP3 and creating a new video.

I spent a few hours learning FFMpeg from the comfort of the chair behind my Invisible Arch. The manpages for FFMpeg include tons of diagrams and examples so cobbling something together wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. Once I was satisfied with the result I transitioned over to my 2019 Mac to share the video…

Moving GPG Keys Privately

4 minute read Updated

How to privately move your GPG keys from one machine to another.

If you’re a software developer working ethically you’re almost certainly using GnuPG to sign your work. And if you’ve been at it for any length of time you’ve almost certainly been forced to switch machines. Unless your aim is to create a new identity for each machine you use you need a simple, repeatable strategy moving GPG keys privately. Let me show you how.

Invisible Arch Linux

13 minute read Enclosure Published

Encrypted system using detached LUKS header with air gapped install.
Caveat lector: This information is intended for entertainment purposes only. When individuals speak of doing “big fist pumps” after their Arch installs successfully boot it can be hard to contain one’s curiosity about the path that led them there. But it’s hard to understand until you try it yourself. This was my journey to first install. It was an encrypted one. In this tutorial I will show you how I repurposed an old MacBook Pro to double-down on privacy using deniable encryption and how you can too.