Build & Deploy Your Own Code in Your Homelab!

So you’re a software engineer or a developer who wants to self-host your own code in your own homelab? Well this is the tutorial for you! In this step-by-step guide we’ll walk through setting up a repo, building and testing our own code (with unit tests) in a self-hosted Gitlab CI runner in our CI pipeline, then we’ll build a Docker image and push it up to a container registry, then we’ll use kubectl in our CD pipeline to deploy our Docker container to our self-hosted kubernetes cluster! This all happens in a couple of minutes and then we’ll truly have continuous integration and continuous delivery in our homelab!

📺 Watch Video

Helpful videos

1 - Set Up Kubernetes with Rancher

2 - Set up a reverse proxy and SSL with Traefik

3 - Expose Rancher and Kubernetes API Securely

GitLab react app

See the app here:

https://github.com/techno-tim/techno-react

Docker file:

https://github.com/techno-tim/techno-react/blob/master/Dockerfile

Kubernetes deployment yaml

https://github.com/techno-tim/techno-react/blob/master/kubernetes/deployment.yaml

nginx config for your react application

https://github.com/techno-tim/techno-react/blob/master/nginx.conf

pbcopy for WSL on Windows

https://www.techtronic.us/pbcopy-pbpaste-for-wsl/ https://www.techtronic.us/pbcopy-pbpaste-for-wsl/

Example config.toml for your GitLab runner.

concurrent = 1
check_interval = 0

[session_server]
  session_timeout = 1800

[[runners]]
  name = "rancher-gitlab-runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.com"
  token = "your-gitlab-runner-token"
  executor = "docker"
  [runners.custom_build_dir]
  [runners.cache]
    [runners.cache.s3]
    [runners.cache.gcs]
  [runners.docker]
    tls_verify = false
    image = "docker:stable"
    privileged = false
    disable_entrypoint_overwrite = false
    oom_kill_disable = false
    disable_cache = false
    volumes = [\"/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock\", \"/cache\"]
    shm_size = 0

example ~/.kube/config for your GitLab secret

apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
clusters:
- name: "cluster1"
  cluster:
    server: "https://your.rancher.url/k8s/clusters/c-cluster-id"
users:
- name: "cluster1"
  user:
    token: "your kubernetes token"

contexts:
- name: "cluster1"
  context:
    user: "cluster1"
    cluster: "cluster1"

current-context: "cluster1"

Links

⚙️ See all the hardware I recommend at https://l.technotim.live/gear

🚀 Don’t forget to check out the 🚀Launchpad repo with all of the quick start source files