Customizing
In this guide we show how to customize your cluster installation, i.e. if you want to install additional applications, or change the configuration of extisting apps installed by Stackspin this is the right place. Customizing other parts of your cluster is possible but not yet covered by this guide. This guide is written for users with advanced knowledge of the tools behind Stackspin, most importantly: Kubernetes, Helm, Ansible and Flux 2.
Warning
Customizing your Stackspin cluster could break your cluster in a way that it’s not easy to recover. Please be aware of the potential risk when proceeding.
Prerequisites
A functional Stackspin cluster installed following the Stackspin installation instructions
Customize Stackspin applications
Apps deployed by Stackspin are configured using helm values from templates in
flux2/apps/<application>/release.yaml
. It is possible to override values
from the helmrelease by adding a custom ConfigMap
or Secret
to the
cluster. The secret or configmap name is specified in the valuesFrom
section
of the release.yaml
file. Read more in the Flux documentation
Example: Customize Nextcloud to work with staging certificates
Our CI pipeline works with staging certificates from Let’s Encrypt, for that
reason we need to allow insecure connections for the integration with
ONLYOFFICE. You can find the file at install/overrides/stackspin-nextcloud-override.yaml
.
To apply it, run the following commands:
If you want to run this on your provisioning machine, tell kubectl to use your cluster:
$ export KUBECONFIG=$PWD/clusters/stackspin.example.org/kube_config_cluster.yml
Check the current state of the helmrelease you want to modify:
$ flux get helmrelease -A
If all is OK, make sure to apply your override configmap or secret in the same namespace as your helmrelease with the ‘-n’ argument
$ kubectl apply \
-n stackspin-apps \
-f ./install/overrides/stackspin-nextcloud-override.yaml
Custom flux repository
Stackspin uses Flux 2 to install and auto-update applications. If Customize Stackspin applications is not enough and you need more advanced customization, i.e. to install extra applications or other things into the Kubernetes cluster, our advice would be to set up your own custom Flux git repository.
Please refer to the Stackspin Flux example and the Flux 2 documentation for more information.
Adding custom apps to the cluster
When you do this, you are fully responsible for keeping those applications secure and updated. If any of those applications is insecure, that can also invalidate the security of your Stackspin applications, because they are part of the same cluster and VPS.
Please follow our Gitlab issue template for adding new apps. Not all steps are needed if you only want to add a new app to your cluster though (see the template for details). If you intend to contribute to Stackspin with a new app merge request please make sure to check all boxes.