this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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From Docker with Ansible to k3s: I don't get it... (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 23 hours ago by sunoc@sh.itjust.works to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hey! I have been using Ansible to deploy Dockers for a few services on my Raspberry Pi for a while now and it's working great, but I want to learn MOAR and I need help...

Recently, I've been considering migrating to bare metal K3S for a few reasons:

  • To learn and actually practice K8S.
  • To have redundancy and to try HA.
  • My RPi are all already running on MicroOS, so it kind of make sense to me to try other SUSE stuff (?)
  • Maybe eventually being able to manage my two separated servers locations with a neat k3s + Tailscale setup!

Here is my problem: I don't understand how things are supposed to be done. All the examples I find feel wrong. More specifically:

  • Am I really supposed to have a collection of small yaml files for everything, that I use with kubectl apply -f ?? It feels wrong and way too "by hand"! Is there a more scripted way to do it? Should I stay with everything in Ansible ??
  • I see little to no example on how to deploy the service containers I want (pihole, navidrome, etc.) to a cluster, unlike docker-compose examples that can be found everywhere. Am I looking for the wrong thing?
  • Even official doc seems broken. Am I really supposed to run many helm commands (some of them how just fails) and try and get ssl certs just to have Rancher and its dashboard ?!

I feel that having a K3S + Traefik + Longhorn + Rancher on MicroOS should be straightforward, but it's really not.

It's very much a noob question, but I really want to understand what I am doing wrong. I'm really looking for advice and especially configuration examples that I could try to copy, use and modify!

Thanks in advance,

Cheers!

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[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I think that distributing general software via curl | sh is pretty bad for all the reasons that curl sh is bad and frustrating.

But I do make an exception for "platforms" and package managers. The question I ask myself is: "Does this software enable me to install more software from a variety of programming languages?"

If the answer to that question is yes, which is is for k3s, then I think it's an acceptable exception. curl | sh is okay for bootstrapping things like Nix on non Nix systems, because then you get a package manager to install various versions of tools that would normally try to get you to install themselves with curl | bash but then you can use Nix instead.

K3s is pretty similar, because Kubernetes is a whole platform, with it's own package manager (helm), and applications you can install. It's especially difficult to get the latest versions of Kubernetes on stable release distros, as they don't package it at all, so getting it from the developers is kinda the only way to get it installed.

Relevant discussion on another thread: https://programming.dev/post/33626778/18025432

One of my frustrations that I express in the linked discussion is that it's "developers" who are making bash scripts to install. But k3s is not just developers, it's made by Suse who has their own distro, OpenSuse, using OpenSuse tooling. It's "packagers" making k3s and it's install script, and that's another reason why I find it more acceptable.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Microk8s manages to install with a snap. I know that snap is "of the devil" around these parts but it's still better than a custom bash script.

Custom bash scripts will always be worse than any alternative.

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I've tried snap, juju, and Canonical's suite. They were uniquely frustrating and I'm not interested in interacting with them again.

The future of installing system components like k3s on generic distros is probably systemd sysexts, which are extension images that can be overlayed onto a base system. It's designed for immutable distros, but it can be used on any standard enough distro.

There is a k3s sysext, but it's still in the "bakery". Plus sysext isn't in stable release distros anyways.

Until it's out and stable, I'll stick to the one time bash script to install Suse k3s.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

You're welcome to make whatever bad decisions you like. I can manage snaps with standard tooling. I can install, update, remove them with simple ansible scripts in a standard way.

Bash installers are bad. End of.

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Canonical's snap use a proprietary backend, and comes at a risk of vendor lock in to their ecosystem.

The bash installer is fully open source.

You can make the bad decision of locking yourself into a closed ecosystem, but many sensible people recognize that snap is "of the devil" for a good reason.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You've made this about snap. Flatpak, rpm, deb, etc. all work too.

[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Except k3s does not provide a deb, a flatpak, or a rpm.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 minutes ago

Ah - you have discovered my complaint.

That is precisely why I went with microk8s instead. I don't install software from people who can't be bothered to package their software using standard deployment tools which has been the correct way to distribute Linux software for decades.