kubernetes

5 Articles

FLOSS Weekly Episode 769: OpenCost — We Spent How Much?

February 7, 2024 by 2 Comments

This week Jonathan Bennett and Katherine Druckman talk with Matt Ray about OpenCost. What exactly is Cloud Native? Why do we need a project just for tracking expenses? Doesn’t the cloud make everything cheaper? Is there a use case for the hobbyist?

The cloud is just a fancy way to talk about someone else’s servers — and what may surprise you is that they charge you money for the privilege of using those computers. But how much? And when you have multiple projects, which ones cost how much? That’s where OpenCost comes in. Not only does it help you track down costs in your cloud usage, it can also catch problems like compromised infrastructure sooner. Mining bitcoin in your Kubernetes Cluster makes a really noticeable spike in processor usage after all.
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This Week In Security: UClibc And DNS Poisoning, Encryption Is Hard, And The Goat

May 6, 2022 by 8 Comments

DNS spoofing/poisoning is the attack discovered by [Dan Kaminski] back in 2008 that simply refuses to go away. This week a vulnerability was announced in the uClibc and uClibc-ng standard libraries, making a DNS poisoning attack practical once again.

So for a quick refresher, DNS lookups generally happen over unencrypted UDP connections, and UDP is a stateless connection, making it easier to spoof. DNS originally just used a 16-bit transaction ID (TXID) to validate DNS responses, but [Kaminski] realized that wasn’t sufficient when combined with a technique that generated massive amounts of DNS traffic. That attack could poison the DNS records cached by public DNS servers, greatly amplifying the effect. The solution was to randomize the UDP source port used when sending UDP requests, making it much harder to “win the lottery” with a spoofed packet, because both the TXID and source port would have to match for the spoof to work.

uClibc and uClibc-ng are miniature implementations of the C standard library, intended for embedded systems. One of the things this standard library provides is a DNS lookup function, and this function has some odd behavior. When generating DNS requests, the TXID is incremental — it’s predictable and not randomized. Additionally, the TXID will periodically reset back to it’s initial value, so not even the entire 16-bit key space is exercised. Not great. Continue reading “This Week In Security: UClibc And DNS Poisoning, Encryption Is Hard, And The Goat” →

Learning The Ropes With A Raspberry Pi Mandelbrot Cluster

January 18, 2022 by 10 Comments

You’ve probably heard it said that clustering a bunch of Raspberry Pis up to make a “supercomputer” doesn’t make much sense, as even a middle-of-the-road desktop could blow it away in terms of performance. While that may be true, the reason most people make Pi clusters isn’t for raw power, it’s so they can build experience with parallel computing without breaking the bank.

So while there was probably a “better” way to produce the Mandelbrot video seen below, creator [Michael Kohn] still learned a lot about putting together a robust parallel processing environment using industry standard tools like Kubernetes and Docker. Luckily for us, he was kind enough to document the whole process for anyone else who might be interested in following in his footsteps. Whatever your parallel task is, and whatever platform it happens to be running on, some of the notes here are likely to help you get it going.

It’s not the biggest Raspberry Pi cluster we’ve ever seen, but the four Pi 4s and the RGB LED festooned enclosure they live in make for an affordable and space-saving cluster to hone your skills on. Whether you’re practicing for the future of software development and deployment, or just looking for something new to play around with, building one of these small-scale clusters is a great way to get in on the action.

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Cloud-Based Atari Gaming

July 29, 2021 by 4 Comments

While the Google Stadia may be the latest and greatest in the realm of cloud gaming, there are plenty of other ways to experience this new style of gameplay, especially if you’re willing to go a little retro. This project, for example, takes the Atari 2600 into the cloud for a nearly-complete gaming experience that is fully hosted in a server, including the video rendering.

[Michael Kohn] created this project mostly as a way to get more familiar with Kubernetes, a piece of open-source software which helps automate and deploy container-based applications. The setup runs on two Raspberry Pi 4s which can be accessed by pointing a browser at the correct IP address on his network, or by connecting to them via VNC. From there, the emulator runs a specific game called Space Revenge, chosen for its memory requirements and its lack of encumbrance of copyrights. There are some limitations in that the emulator he’s using doesn’t implement all of the Atari controls, and that the sound isn’t available through the remote desktop setup, but it’s impressive nonetheless

[Michael] also glosses over this part, but the Atari emulator was written by him “as quickly as possible” so he could focus on the Kubernetes setup. This is impressive in its own right, and of course he goes beyond this to show exactly how to set up the cloud-based system on his GitHub page as well. He also thinks there’s potential for a system like this to run an NES setup as well. If you’re looking for something a little more modern, though, it is possible to set up a cloud-based gaming system with a Nintendo Switch as well.

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Building A Cheap Kubernetes Cluster From Old Laptops

February 8, 2021 by 28 Comments

Cluster computing is a popular choice for heavy duty computing applications. At the base level, there are hobby clusters often built with Raspberry Pis, while the industrial level involves data centers crammed with servers running at full tilt. [greg] wanted something cheap, but with x86 support – so set about building a rig his own way.

The ingenious part of [greg]’s build comes in the source computers. He identified that replacement laptop motherboards were a great source of computing power on the cheap, with a board packing an i7 CPU with 16GB of RAM available from eBay for around £100, and with i5 models being even cheaper. With four laptop motherboards on hand, he set about stacking them in a case, powering them, and hooking them up with the bare minimum required to get them working. With everything wrapped up in an old server case with some 3D printed parts to hold it all together, he was able to get a 4-node Kubernetes cluster up and running for an absolute bargain price.

We haven’t seen spare laptop motherboards used in such a way before, but we could definitely see this becoming more of a thing going forward. The possibilities of a crate full of deprecated motherboards are enticing for those building clusters on the cheap. Of course, more nodes is more better, so check out this 120 Pi cluster to satiate your thirst for raw FLOPs.