I Revived My Broken MacBook into My Own Personal Cloud
a day ago
- Revived a broken 2017 MacBook Pro with a broken keyboard into a personal private cloud.
- Installed Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop using an old Raspberry Pi SD card as installer.
- Fixed Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers with a script that runs on every restart.
- Deployed k3s and Flux CD for GitOps-style Kubernetes orchestration.
- Disabled lid sleep to keep server running continuously.
- Solved network issues: ISP used CG-NAT, requested a public IP and kept IP-update script running.
- Used a local DNS provider (Domene.shop) for SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt.
- Deployed OpenCloud (file storage) and Open WebUI (AI chat) on the cluster.
- Managed Kubernetes manifests with takk, an infrastructure-as-code framework in Python.
- Built a FastAPI bridge to connect Obsidian notes to the AI for querying files.
- Added monitoring with Prometheus MCP and alerting via takk (email on crash loops).
- Plan to add local LLM, self-healing agents, and hardened backups.