Installing talos on a Turing Piv2 board with cm4 modules.

Flash Nodes

I used Talos v1.3.7

Flash image to all nodes

1. download metal-rpi_generic-arm64.img.xz from https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/releases

2. after putting cm4 in usb mode (use rpi cm4 emmc usb programming stick or use tpiv2, see: https://help.turingpi.com/hc/en-us/articles/8687165986205-Install-OS)

3. flash talos, this works for sd card and emmc storage. Check the correct device name.

   time xz -d < metal-rpi_generic-arm64.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress conv=fsync
   893665280 bytes (894 MB, 852 MiB) copied, 3 s, 298 MB/s1306525696 bytes (1,3 GB, 1,2 GiB) copied, 3,82763 s, 341 MB/s
   
   0+152937 records in
   0+152937 records out
   1306525696 bytes (1,3 GB, 1,2 GiB) copied, 99,591 s, 13,1 MB/s
   
   real	1m39,600s
   user	0m3,607s
   sys	0m0,226s
   

4. make sure tpiv4 node is no longer in device mode, it should be host mode for normal operation.

5. optionally log in to bmc and connect to serial console of the node with minicom.

Minicom example for node2

microcom -s 115200 /dev/ttyS1

Hardwired bmc serial port connections to nodes

Node	bmc device
Node 1	/dev/ttyS2
Node 2	/dev/ttyS1
Node 3	/dev/ttyS4
Node 4	/dev/ttyS5

Boot nodes

1. boot all the nodes by powering down and up using the bmc
2. optionally view disks talosctl -n <CM4 ipadres> disks --insecure

Create Cluster

Generate cluster files

1. Generate secrets:

   talosctl gen secrets -o secrets.yaml

2. Generate control and worker config:

   talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml "clustername" https://VIP:6443

   (remember chosen virtual ip VIP)

3. Edit controlplane.yaml:

   1. set controlPlane.scheduler.disabled: false, I want control plane nodes to schedule work.

   2. add the VIP ipadress to network stanza:

      I have:

      network:
      hostname: node1
      interfaces:
         - interface: eth0
            dhcp: true
            vip:
            ip: <VIP>
      

   3. set install.disk: to /dev/mmcblk0

   4. optionally set install.wipe: true

For each node (I have 3, an uneven number of control nodes is recommended in k8s):

1. change hostname: network.hostname: nodeX (set X to cm4 number)

2. apply config to cm4:

   talosctl apply-config --insecure -n <CM4 ipadres> --file controlplane.yaml

Bootstrap cluster by one of the control nodes.

   talosctl  -n <CM4 ipadres> -e <CM4 ipadres> --talosconfig ./talosconfig bootstrap

Grab ☕

Generate kubeconfig.

talosctl kubeconfig -f -n <VIP>

Watch cluster, be happy 👏

1. watch -n 1.5 kubectl --kubeconfig=./kubeconfig --request-timeout=1s get pods,deployment,services,nodes -A -o wide