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Talos Linux

In my Homelab I have a single Talos Linux node which runs various Kubernetes workloads.

What is Talos Linux?

Talos Linux is a Kubernetes optimized Linux distro.

It’s designed to be as minimal as possible while still maintaining practicality. For these reasons, Talos has a number of features unique to it:

  1. API managed
  2. Immutable file system
  3. Minimal packages
  4. Secure by default

Talhelper & Machine Configuration

Talos Linux's node state is defined by a machine configuration. Machine configuration is applied to the node during initial deployment. The talhelper CLI tool generates the machine configuration declaratively from three files:

File Name Description
talconfig.yaml Primary configuration file used to generate the machine configuration.
talenv.sops.yaml Stores environment variables which are templated using envsubst into the machine configuration.
talsecret.sops.yaml Stores secrets used by Talos.

Prerequisites

  1. Install the required CLI tools to manage Talos:

    brew install talhelper siderolabs/tap/sidero-tools kubectl sops age

  2. Configure sops:

    Info

    Referenced Documentation.

    mkdir -pv ~/.config/sops/age
mkdir -pv ~/Library/Application Support/sops/age
age-keygen -o ~/.config/sops/age/keys.txt
ln -s ~/.config/sops/age/keys.txt ~/Library/Application\ Support/sops/age/keys.txt

  3. Configure sops for talhelper by adding the age public key to the kubernetes/.sops.yaml file:

    ---
creation_rules:
  - age: >-
      <age-public-key> # Get this in the keys.txt file from previous step

Talos ISO

ISO image I used when originally deploying my Talos node.

Deploy the Talos ISO on Proxmox

  1. Download the ISO to the Node 1 local storage.

  2. Navigate to proxmox01 > Create VM.

  3. Provide the following details for General and click Next:

    Setting Value
    Name talos01
    ID 100
    Node proxmox01
    Start at boot ❌

  4. Under OS, select the storage where the ISO was downloaded to and choose the metal-amd64.iso. Click Next.

  5. Under System, select the VirtIO SCSI Single controller and Qemu Agent and click Next.

  6. Provide the following details for Disks and click Next:

    Setting Value
    Bus/Device SCSI
    Storage lv-ssd-crucial
    Size 100GiB
    Format Raw disk image (raw)
    Discard ✅
    SSD Emulation ✅
    IO thread ✅
    Backup ✅
    Setting Value
    Bus/Device SCSI
    Storage lv-ssd-crucial
    Size 200GiB
    Format Raw disk image (raw)
    Discard ✅
    SSD Emulation ✅
    IO thread ✅
    Backup ✅

  7. Provide the following details for CPU and click Next:

    Setting Value
    Cores 4
    Type host

  8. Provide the following details for Memory and click Next:

    Setting Value
    Memory (MiB) 4096
    Ballooning Device ✅
    Minimum Memory 4096

  9. Leave Network as default, click Next and confirm deployment.

  10. Start the talos01 VM and open the console to begin the installation.

  11. In the console, press E to edit the grub menu option and add the end of the kernel boot options enter:

    ip=192.168.0.10::192.168.0.1:255.255.255.0::eth0:off

  12. Press CTRL + X to boot.

Talos will now have booted into maintenance mode and is waiting for machine configuration to be applied. It should look like the screenshot below:

Talos Maintenance Mode

Deploying Talos

Generating and applying the Machine Configuration

Info

Referenced Documentation.

These steps only need to be performed during the initial set up of Talos and assume you've already created the talconfig.yaml, talenv.sops.yaml and .sops.yaml files.

cd kubernetes/talos
talhelper gensecret > talsecret.sops.yaml
sops -e -i talsecret.sops.yaml
sops -e -i talenv.sops.yaml
talhelper genconfig
talosctl apply-config --talosconfig=./clusterconfig/talosconfig --nodes=192.168.0.10 --file=./clusterconfig/home-ops-talos01.yaml --insecure

Bootstrap Talos

  1. Bootstrap etcd:

    talosctl bootstrap --talosconfig=./clusterconfig/talosconfig --nodes=192.168.0.10

  2. Retrieve the kubeconfig:

    talosctl kubeconfig --talosconfig=./clusterconfig/talosconfig --nodes=192.168.0.10

Once the machine configuration has finished applying and etcd has finished set up the node should show as below:

Talos Deployed