How to install my modpack

tl;dr

  1. Install forge 1.20.1-forge-47.2.0
  2. Run the forge installer that you just downloaded (you might need to install java first). Choose install client
  3. Download the modpack
  4. Unzip the modpack into %appdata%\.minecraft\mods for Windows
  5. Run minecraft as normal, when you log in make sure to choose the forge profile

Installing voidlinux on a RaspberryPi

To install voidlinux on a Pi we'll have to do a chroot install. For official documentation on installing from chroot for void see here.

We need to install via chroot because the live images are made specifically for 2GB SD cards.

"These images are prepared for 2GB SD cards. Alternatively, use the ROOTFS tarballs if you want to customize the partitions and filesystems."

The installation can split out into 4 rough steps

  1. Partition the disk (SD card in my case) you want to install void on
  2. Create the filesystems on the disk
  3. Copy in the rootfs
  4. Configure the rootfs to your liking

Prerequisites

Because we're going to be creating an aarch64 system you'll need some tool that will allow you run aarch64 binaries from a x86 system. To accomplish this we'll need the binfmt-support and qemu-user-static packages. To install them you can run

# NOTE: You have to install qemu-user-static _second_
# if you don't you wont get the files you need in /var/lib/binfmts/
# If you do it the wrong way you can try
# doing xbps-reconfigure -f qemu-user-static
sudo xbps-install binfmt-support qemu-user-static

We'll also need to enable the binfmt-support service. To do this, run

sudo ln -s /etc/sv/binfmt-support /var/service/

Now you're one step away from being able to run aarch64 binaries in the chroot on your x86 system, but we'll get to that later.

Partition the disk you want to install void on

This is tricky because it can depend a little based on what you want to do. In my case I didn't allocate any swap space and kept the home directory on the root partition which keeps things pretty simple.

In this case we're going to need two partitions. One 64MiB partition that is marked with the bootable flag and has the vfat type (0b in fdisk). And the other that takes up the rest of the SD card with type linux (83 in fdisk).

To create these partitions with fdisk run sudo fdisk /dev/sda where /dev/sda is the path to your disk. The path to your disk can be found running lsblk before and after plugging in the disk and seeing what shows up. Once fdisk drops you into the repl you can delete the existing partitions with the d command.

Create the boot partition

Make a new partition with the n command, make it a primary partition with p, make it partition 1, and leave the first sector blank, which will keep it as the default. For the last sector put +64M which will give us a 64MiB partition (if you're asked to remove the signature it doesn't matter because we'll be overwriting that anyway). Use the a command to mark partition 1 bootable and lastly use the t command to make partition 1 type 0b, which is vfat.

Create the root partition

Now the root partition, use n to make a new partition, then leave everything else default. This will consume the rest of the disk for this partition. Same as before, if it asks you to remove the signature it doesn't matter because we'll be overwriting now. To set the type label use the t command and set it to type 83 which is the linux type.

That's all we need to do to setup the partitions. Make sure to save your changes with the w command!

The disk should be correctly partitioned now!

Create the filesystems on the disk

This part is easy. Assuming the device is located at /dev/sda, partition 1 is the boot partition, and partition 2 is the root partition, just run these two commands.

mkfs.fat /dev/sda1 # Create boot vfat filesystem
mkfs.ext4 -O '^has_journal' /dev/sda2 # Create ext4 filesystem on the root partition (with journaling)

Copy in the rootfs

For this step we'll need both partitions we set up earlier to be mounted. To mount the partitions run

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt

mount /dev/sda2 $MOUNT_PATH # Mount the root partition to the mount point
mkdir -p $MOUNT_PATH/boot # Create a directory named "boot" in the root partition
mount /dev/sda1 $MOUNT_PATH/boot # Mount the boot partition to that boot directory

Now we just need to extract the rootfs into our mount point.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)
ROOTFS_TARBALL='/home/me/Downloads/void-rpi3-PLATFORMFS-20210930.tar.xz' # Replace with the path to the tarball you download from https://voidlinux.org/download/

# x - Tells tar to extract
# f - Tells tar to operate on the file path given after the f switch
# J - Tells tar to extract using xz, which is how the rootfs happens to be compressed
# p - Tells tar to preserve permissions from the extracted directory
# -C - Tells tar where to extract the contents to
tar xfJp $ROOTFS_TARBALL -C $MOUNT_PATH

That's it for this step! You might notice that we didn't explicitly copy anything into the $MOUNT_PATH/boot directory. The rootfs provided by void contains a /boot directory which will get placed into the $MOUNT_PATH/boot directory when we extract the tarball.

Configure the rootfs to your liking

This step is technically optional. If we just wanted to get a system up and running, we could plug the SD card in right now and it would boot up. We wouldn't have any packages (including base-system, which gives us dhcpcd, wpa_supplicant and other important packages), but it would boot. Additionally, the RaspberryPi's (at least mine) doesn't have a hardware clock so without an ntp package we won't be able to validate certs (because the time will be off) which prevents us from installing packages.

Some of the things we want to configure are most easily through a chroot. The problem is that the binaries in the rootfs we copied over are aarch64 binaries.

Running aarch64 binaries in the chroot

Because your x86 system cannot run aarch64 binaries we need to emulate the aarch64 architecture inside the chroot. To accomplish this we copy an x86 binary that can do that emulation for us into the chroot, and then pass all aarch64 binaries through it when we go to run them.

If you've installed the qemu-user-static package you should have a set of qemu-*-static binaries in /bin/. For a RaspberryPi 3, we want qemu-aarch64-static. Copy that into the chroot.

cp /bin/qemu-aarch64-static <your-chroot-path>

Now you're ready to run the aarch64 binaries in your chroot.

Recommended configuration

To create a usable system there's a few things we need to setup that are somewhere between recommended and mandatory; the base-system package, ssh access, ntp, dhcpcd and a non-root user.

Because running commands in the chroot is slightly slower due to the aarch64 emulation we'll try to setup as much of the rootfs as possible without actually chrooting.

First we should update all the packages that were provided in the rootfs.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

# Run a sync and update with the main machine's xbps pointing at our rootfs
env XBPS_ARCH=aarch64 xbps-install -Su -r $MOUNT_PATH

The base-system package

Just install the base-system package from your machine with the -r flag pointing at the $MOUNT_PATH.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

# Install base-system
env XBPS_ARCH=aarch64 xbps-install -r $MOUNT_PATH base-system

ssh access

We just need to activate the sshd service in the rootfs.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

ln -s /etc/sv/sshd $MOUNT_PATH/etc/runit/runsvdir/default/

There's two thing here that look odd; 1. we're symlinking to our main machines /etc/sv/sshd directory and 2. we're placing the symlink in /etc/runit/runsvdir/default/ instead of /var/service like is typical for activating void services.

  1. When we're chroot'ed in, or when the system is running on the Pi /etc/sv/sshd will point to the Pi's sshd service.
  2. /var/service doesn't exists until the system is running and it when the system is up /var/service will be a series of symlinks pointing to /etc/runit/runsvdir/default/ so we can just link the sshd service directly to the /etc/runit/runsvdir/default/.

For security reasons I recommend disabling password authentication.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

sed -ie 's/#PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/g' $MOUNT_PATH/etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -ie 's/#KbdInteractiveAuthentication yes/KbdInteractiveAuthentication no/g' $MOUNT_PATH/etc/ssh/sshd_config

npd

We need an ntp package because the RaspberryPi doesn't have a hardware clock so when we boot it up the time will be January 1, 1970 which causes cert failures resulting in certificate validation failures that prevent us from installing packages and more.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

env XBPS_ARCH=aarch64 xbps-install -r $MOUNT_PATH openntpd
ln -s /etc/sv/openntpd $MOUNT_PATH/etc/runit/runsvdir/default/

Same as before we just install the package with our local xbps package manager pointing to the chroot and then setup the package to run at the end of symlink chain.

dhcpcd

The base-system package should have covered the install of dhcpcd, so all we have to do is activate the service. Like before, we'll symlink directly to the end of the symlink chain.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

ln -s /etc/sv/dhcpcd $MOUNT_PATH/etc/runit/runsvdir/default/

A non-root user

This probably depends on your use-case, but having everything running as root is usually bad news, so setting up a non-root user which we can ssh in as is probably a smart idea.

This is the first part of the configuration that is truly best done inside the chroot, so make sure you have the filesystem mounted and have copied the qemu-aarch64-static binary into chroot.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

# After executing this command all subsequent commands will act like
# you're running on Pi instead of your main machine
chroot $MOUNT_PATH 

USERNAME='me' # Replace with your desired username

groupadd -g 1000 $USERNAME # Create our user's group

# Add our user and add it to the wheel group and our personal group
# Depending on your needs you could additionally add yourself to
# other default groups like: floppy, dialout, audio, video, cdrom, optical
useradd -g $USERNAME -G wheel $USERNAME 

# Set our password interactively
passwd $USERNAME

sed -ie 's/# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL/%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL/g' $MOUNT_PATH/etc/sudoers # Allow users in the wheel group sudo access

At this point the root account's password is still "voidlinux". We wouldn't want our system running with the default root password, so to remove it run

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

chroot $MOUNT_PATH # Run this if you're not in the chroot

passwd --delete root

If you set up ssh access and disabled password authentication you'll want to add your ssh key to the rootfs.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)
USERNAME='me' # Replace with your desired username

mkdir $MOUNT_PATH/home/$USERNAME/.ssh
cat /home/$USERNAME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub > $MOUNT_PATH/home/$USERNAME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Clean up

According to the void docs we should remove the base-voidstrap package and reconfigure all packages in the chroot to ensure everything is setup correctly.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

chroot $MOUNT_PATH

xbps-remove -y base-voidstrap
xbps-reconfigure -fa

Now that we're done in the chroot we can delete the qemu-aarch64-static binary that we put in there.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

rm $MOUNT_PATH/bin/qemu-aarch64-static

That's it!

Make sure to unmount the disk before removing it from your machine because we wrote a lot of data and that data might not be synced until we unmount it.

MOUNT_PATH='/mnt/sdcard' # Replace with any path to an empty directory. By convention it would be in /mnt (same mount path as above)

umount $MOUNT_PATH/boot
umount $MOUNT_PATH

Lastly, with some care, a lot of these steps can be combined. To see what that might look like check out this repo

Now you should be able to put the SD card into the Pi, boot it up and have ssh access!

Tilemaps with data

How and why you might want tilemaps that have data associated with the tiles in Godot.

Problem: You have tiles that need to track some state

In my case I wanted to have tiles that were could be destoryed after multiple hits.

There's three ways I considered doing this:

  1. Don't use a TileMap, just use Nodes with Sprite2Ds attached and have some logic that makes sure they are placed on a grid, as if they were rendered with a TileMap
  2. Extend the TileMap class and maintain a Dictionary of Vector2 -> <Custom class>
  3. (The option I went with) Extend the TileMap class and maintain a Dictionary of Vector2 -> <Node with a script attached>

Options 2 and 3 are very similar one might be better than the other depending on the use case.

ore_map.gd

extends TileMap

export(PackedScene) var iron_ore

# This holds references to the nodes so we
# can access them with TileMap coordinates
var cell_data : Dictionary = {}

# Called when the node enters the scene tree for the first time.
func _ready():
    # Create 10 ores in random locations on the tilemap
    for x in range(10):
        var node = spawn_ore()
        var cell = world_to_map(node.position)
        set_cellv(cell, node.id)
        cell_data[cell] = node

func spawn_ore():
    # This iron_ore Node has no sprites attached to it
    # it's just a Node that holds a script which contains
    # helper functions
    var node = iron_ore.instance()
    var width = 16
    var height = 16
    var x = randi() % 30
    var y = randi() % 30

    add_child(node)
    node.position = Vector2(x * 16 + width / 2, y * 16 + height / 2)
    return node

# This function deals with the player hitting a tile
# when a player presses the button to swing their pickaxe
# they call this function with the tilemap coords that their aiming at
func hit_cell(x, y):
    var key = Vector2(x, y)
    # Check if that cell is tracked by us
    if cell_data.has(key):
        # Note: cell_data[key] is a Node
        cell_data[key].health -= 1

        # If the ore is out of health we destory it
        # and clean it up from our cell_data map
        if cell_data[key].health == 0:
            # Set the tiles sprite to empty
            set_cell(x, y, -1)
            # Destory the Node
            var drops = cell_data[key].destroy()

            # Get drops from the ore
            for drop in drops:
                add_child(drop)

            # Clean up the cell_data map
            cell_data.erase(key)
            return true
    return false

This is the script attached to the Nodes we reference in the TileMap

iron_ore.gd

extends Node2D

# The chunk that's dropped after mining this ore
export(PackedScene) var iron_chunk

const id: int  = 0
var health: int = 2

func destroy():
    var node = iron_chunk.instance()
    node.position = position
    queue_free()
    return [node]

What does this actually do?

When the player mines the ore you can see that the nodes in the remote scene view (on the very left) are replaced with an iron chunk. This is the iron chunk generated from destory() in iron_ore.gd. After the player picks up the iron chunk it's gone for good.

Why is this better than cutting out the TileMap and using Node2D directly?

  1. It allows us to have the rendering logic handled by a TileMap which means that our ore can't be placed some where it shouldn't be.
  2. TileMaps tend to be slightly more optimized for rendering. I don't know about Godot specifically, but this probably has some minor performance benifits. Although, this is probably irrelvent for my case.
  3. We still get all the benefits of having Nodes, because the tiles are backed by actual Node instances.

Why is this better than using a custom class rather than a Node

Here's what a class that might look like:

class IronOre:
    const id: int  = 0
    var health: int = 2
    var iron_chunk: PackedScene

    func destroy():
        var node = iron_chunk.instance()
        node.position = position
        queue_free()
        return [node]

    func _init(chunk):
        iron_chunk = chunk
        # We could remove the need to pass in chunk
        # if we loaded the chunk scene with a hardcoded string
        # load("res://iron_ore.tscn")

Notice that it's basically the same as iron_ore.gd. We'd use IronOre.new(iron_chunk) instead of iron_ore.instantiate() to create it, but that's not necessarily a problem. Where this does run into issues is with getting the iron_chunk reference. When using the class we need to load the PackedScene somehow, and this could be done by hardcoding it in. i.e. load("res://iron_ore.tscn"), this would remove the need for the _init(chunk) constructor. Or we could export a varible in our TileMap which is then passed through when we instantiate the IronOre class like this.

extends TileMap

# Notice this is iron_chunk (the thing that iron_ore drops), _not_ iron_ore (the thing that a player mines)
export(PackedScene) var iron_chunk

...

func spawn_ore():
    # Pass the iron_chunk PackedScene through
    var node = IronOre.new(iron_chunk)
    var width = 16
    var height = 16
    var x = randi() % 30
    var y = randi() % 30

    ...

This works, but if we need to pass in more PackedScenes to IronOre we'll have to export those through the TileMap. And if we introduce more types of ore, we'll have to export even more variables through the TileMap. The worst part of this is that these scenes don't have anything to do with the TileMap.

On the other hand, by having Nodes be the backend we can use the editor to drag-and-drop the correct chunk for each ore scene. We still have to export a variable in the TileMap for each ore type, but that's it!

Why is this worse than the other options?

There are some trade-offs we make by using this method.

  1. We have to maintain the node tree and keep that in sync. With the class method we'd have to ensure we free our memory, and this has the same issue. Everytime we create a node we need to queue_free it if we remove it.
  2. We have two ways to refer to the "position" of the ore. The Node has a position and we have a position which acts as a key for the dictionary. The Node position should never be used, so it doesn't have to be kept in sync, but you need to make sure you never use it.

Another strategy?

While writing this I thought it might be possible to get the best of both worlds by using Resources instead of Nodes to hold the state. I think this might give us all the ability to

  1. Call functions, hold data, and be seperate from the TileMap file (both methods have this already)
  2. Edit variables from the editor (like the Node method can do)
  3. Cut out the need to manage Nodes in the node tree, which could reduce clutter (like the class solution can do).

I'm not totally sure if 3 is possible, but this seems worth investigating!

Setting up an nfs server for persistent storage in k8s

These are some helpful tips I found when trying to set up an nfs for persistent volumes on my k8s cluster. Setting up the actual persistent volumes and claims will come later.

Prerequisites

Some of the specifics of these tips (package names, directories, etc.) are going to be specific to voidlinux which is the flavor of linux I'm running my nfs on. There is almost certainly an equivalent in your system, but the name may be different.

tl;dr

Setup

Actually setting up the nfs is pretty easy. Just install the nfs-utils package and enable the nfs-server, statd, and rpcbind services. That's it.

Configuration

Now that you have an nfs server you need to configure which directories are available for a client to mount. This is done through the /etc/exports file. I found this site to be quite useful in explaining what some of the options in /etc/exports are and what they mean. Specifically, debugging step 3 (setting the options to (ro,no_root_squash,sync)) was what finally got it working for me when I was receiving mount.nfs: access denied by server while mounting 192.168.0.253:/home/jeff/test. My /etc/exports file is just one line:

/watermelon-pool 192.168.0.0/24(rw)

After you make changes to /etc/exports make sure to run exportfs -r. exportfs -r rereads the /etc/exports and exports the directories specified in /etc/exports. Essentially, you need to run it every time you edit /etc/exports.

For some reason I had issues when not specifying the no_root_squash option for some directories. I still don't have a good answer for what's up with that, but you can read my (still unanswered) question on unix stack exchange if you want. This didn't effect my ability to use this nfs server as a place for persistent storage for kubernetes though. It seemed to be a void specific bug that only effects certain directories (specifically my home directory), but I'm still not sure.

Read the docs

Unsurprisingly the voidlinux docs on setting up an nfs server on voidlinux were pretty helpful, who knew? There are a few pretty non-obvious steps when setting up an nfs on void. Notably you have to enable the rpcbind, and statd services on the nfs server in addition to the nfs-server service.

Errors I received and how I fixed them

Received: clnt_create: RPC: Program not registered

Fix: Start statd service on server

Received: clnt_create: RPC: Unable to receive

Fix: Start rpcbind service on server

Received: mount.nfs: mount(2): Connection refused

Fix: Start rpcbind service on server

Received: down: nfs-server: 1s, normally up, want up

Fix: Start rpcbind and statd services on server

Received: mount.nfs: mount(2): Permission denied

Random tips

sv doesn't make this super clear in my opinion. For example this means everything is good

> sudo sv restart nfs-server
ok: run: nfs-server: (pid 9446) 1s

while this means everything is broken

> sudo sv restart nfs-server
down: nfs-server: 1s, normally up, want up

Not quite as different I would like :/

If you find that your nfs-server service isn't running it might be because you haven't enabled the statd and rpcbind services.

For instance, if you put /home/user * in /etc/exports you can mount /home/user/specific/path assuming /home/user/specific/path exists on ths nfs server like this:

sudo mount -t nfs4 192.168.0.253:/home/user/specific/path /mnt/mount_point

Adding a new node to the cluster

This is a guide on adding a new raspberry pi node to your k3s managed kubernetes cluster.

tl;dr

  1. Write Raspberry Pi OS to an sd card. Found here
  2. Boot er up
  3. ssh in and configure
  4. Install k3s

Slightly more detailed version

  1. Write Raspberry Pi OS to an sd card
    1. Download Raspberry Pi OS Found here
    2. Unzip it: unzip 2020-08-20-raspios-buster-armhf-lite.zip
    3. Copy image to SD card: sudo dd if=/path/to/raspberryPiOS.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync (where /dev/sdX is the SD card device)
    4. Mount SD card: sudo mount /dev/sdX /mnt/sdcard (/mnt/sdcard can be any empty directory)
    5. Add "ssh" file to filesystem which causes the ssh server to start on boot: sudo touch /mnt/sdcard/ssh
    6. Unmount it: sudo umount /mnt/sdcard
  2. Boot 'er up
    1. Put the SD card in the pi
    2. Plug in the pi
    3. Give it a minute or two
  3. ssh in and configure
    1. ssh in: ssh pi@raspberrypi password is "raspberry"
    2. Update and install vim and curl: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt install -y vim curl Although vim isn't strictly necessary and curl is on the image by default, I like vim and we'll use curl later so better to make sure it's already there.
    3. Make yourself a user: sudo useradd -m -G adm,dialout,cdrom,sudo,audio,video,plugdev,games,users,input,netdev,gpio,i2c,spi jeff
      1. adm,dialout,cdrom,sudo,audio,video,plugdev,games,users,input,netdev,gpio,i2c,spi are groups that you are adding your user to. The only super important one is probably sudo. This is the list that the default pi user starts in so might as well.
    4. Create a .ssh directory so you can get in to your user: sudo -u jeff mkdir .ssh
      1. We use sudo -u jeff here so that it runs as the jeff user and makes jeff the owner by default
    5. Slap your public ssh keys into the authorized_keys file: sudo -u jeff curl https://github.com/ToxicGLaDOS.keys -o /home/jeff/.ssh/authorized_keys Here we curl the key down from a github account straight into the authorized_keys file. If your keys aren't on github you might scp them onto the pi.
    6. Change the hostname of your machine by editing the /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname files. This can be done manually or with some handy sed commands.
      1. sudo sed -i s/raspberrypi/myHostname/g /etc/hosts
      2. sudo sed -i s/raspberrypi/myHostname/g /etc/hostname
    7. Disable password authentication into the pi (optional, but pretty nice)
      1. Manually: Open /etc/ssh/sshd_config and edit the line that says #PasswordAuthentication yes so it says PasswordAuthentication no. If this line doesn't exist add the PasswordAuthentication no line.
      2. Automatic (relies on commented version being there): sudo sed -i s/#PasswordAuthentication\ yes/PasswordAuthentication\ no/g /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    8. Allow passwordless sudo: echo 'jeff ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' | sudo tee -a /etc/sudoers This is a little dangerous, because if your account on the machine gets comprimised then an attacker could run any program as root :(. Also if you fail to give yourself passwordless sudo access and restart the pi you can end up being unable to sudo at all which means you can't access /etc/sudoers to give yourself sudo access... So you might end up having to re-imaging the SD card cause you're boned. Not that that has happened to me of course... :(
    9. Delete the default pi user: sudo userdel -r pi
  4. Install k3s
    1. curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_URL=https://masterNodeHostname:6443 K3S_TOKEN=yourToken sh - This pulls down a script provided by k3s and runs it so maybe check to make sure k3s is still up and reputable. Make sure to replace masterNodeHostname and yourToken with your values. masterNodeHostname is the hostname of the master node in your cluster (probably the first one you set up), in my case it's raspberry0. yourToken is an access token used to authenticate to your master node. It can be found on your master node in the /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/node-token file. Read more at k3s.io.

That's basically it!