Author: admin

  • Mining Ethereum with AMD 6600 XT on Ubuntu Linux

    Warning: Ethereum(ETH) will migrate to PoS(Proof of Stake) algorithm in near future, maybe in a year. So jumping into ETH mining now might or might not be profitable. Also, I do I encourage crypto mining with renewable energy sources. Prerequisite: A PC running on Ubuntu 20.04 with stable Internet connection AMD RX 6600 XT is…

  • Combine GitHub Actions with FluxCD

    I started my hobby project SausLink( a tinyURL like URL shortener ) a while ago, as it was really boring during covid lockdowns. The web app itself isn’t anything cutting-edge but I intended to implement full git-ops for this project. For the CI pipeline, I chose GitHub Actions because it’s easy and also free for…

  • 1-Step Away From Fossil Fuel: Sanden Heat Pump

    After weeks of waiting, thanks to lock downs in Victoria, I finally have a 315L Sanden Heat Pump installed, replacing my who-knows-how old gas instantaneous water heater. The job has been done professionally by SolarFlow, kudos to the team! I can label myself an environmentalist who keeps trying to minimize my own carbon footprint but…

  • Use Variables with Kustomize, Part 2

    I was looking at the Kustomize variable trick I did a year ago and I think I’ve learned some new tricks worth noting down. Variables are very handy most of the times, here’s a pattern to define a variable to be used in Kustomize templates and set its value via annotations. There you have it:…

  • Automate SSL/TLS Certificates for Kubernetes and Istio with Cert Manager

    It’s been a lot easier nowadays to turn on full site SSL/TLS encryption with an ACME issuer such as the popular non-profit Let’s Encrypt which I’ve started using it a few months ago. However the free certificates from Let’s Encrypt are only valid for 90 days and I have been notified to renew them already.…

  • Grant a Service Account an IAM Role in AWS/GCP

    How to grant a pod running in a Kubernetes cluster necessary permissions to access cloud resources such as S3 buckets? The most straight forward approach is to save some API key in the pod and use it to authenticate against cloud APIs. If the cluster is running inside the cloud, an IAM role can then…

  • I Farmed Some Chia(XCH)

    Chia is a relatively new crypto currency which can be ‘mined’ with hard disks. It’s advertised as a green crypto because hard disks consumes way less energy comparing to mining rigs with high end graphic cards. I installed Chia on my Ubuntu Linux desktop computer because it has some vacant SATA ports that I can…

  • TLS Full Site Encryption with Istio and Let’s Encrypt

    These are steps to easily install TLS certs to a Kubernetes cluster with Istio service mesh as ingress controller, provided by Let’s Encrypt‘s awesome certbot. Installation of the certbot (on Ubuntu Linux 20.04LTS) The certbot can be install via snap on Ubuntu Linux By default certbot needs to write to system directories which I thought…