Files
k8s-starter-pack/docs/07-your-first-change.md
Maxwell MorrisandClaude Sonnet 5 110bd97cca Move to a three-node cluster with a Talos VIP; add Longhorn
Every node is now both control plane and worker, giving real tolerance
for losing any single machine (etcd quorum needs 3, not 1). A Talos VIP
gives the cluster one stable address regardless of which node answers.

Also pre-installs Longhorn for replicated storage, backed by a Talos
UserVolume on each node's second disk (>=900GB, non-system) rather than
the default path — mirroring the pattern from the homescale repo.

Docs renumbered to make room for 06-longhorn.md; checklist, glossary,
network map, and CLAUDE.md's guided-bootstrap instructions updated to
match, including asking the user for node IPs, VIP, and disk info before
generating any Talos config.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-22 18:25:38 +01:00

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# 07 — Your first change
Everything so far proved Argo CD can deploy what's in Git. This doc proves
the part that actually matters day to day: changing what's in Git and
watching the cluster follow, with no `kubectl apply` from you at all.
## Steps
1. Open [`apps/demo/configmap.yaml`](../apps/demo/configmap.yaml) and edit
the HTML — change the `<h1>` text to something of your own.
2. Commit and push, exactly like any other Git change:
```sh
git add apps/demo/configmap.yaml
git commit -m "Personalize the demo page"
git push
```
3. By default, Argo CD polls Git every three minutes, so your change will
show up on its own — but you can force it immediately:
```sh
argocd app sync demo
```
4. Watch it happen:
```sh
argocd app get demo
```
You'll see Argo CD detect that the live ConfigMap no longer matches
Git, and correct it.
5. Refresh `http://<your-demo-app-IP>` (the MetalLB address you gave it in
[`docs/05-metallb.md`](05-metallb.md)). Your new text should be there. Note
that nginx itself never restarted — Kubernetes noticed the mounted
ConfigMap changed and updated the file inside the running Pod's
filesystem automatically. (This is specific to volume-mounted
ConfigMaps; not every kind of change is this seamless — a change to the
Deployment's image, for instance, does trigger a Pod restart, by
design.)
Give it up to a minute if the page doesn't look different yet.
`argocd app get demo` shows the *ConfigMap object* updating right away,
but kubelet — the agent on the node that actually keeps a Pod's mounted
files in sync — only re-checks mounted ConfigMaps on its own periodic
cycle, not instantly. A blank refresh isn't a sign anything's wrong;
give it a moment and refresh again.
## What just proved itself
You changed a file, pushed it, and never touched the cluster directly. That
gap between "commit" and "running" being closed automatically, without you
doing the applying, *is* GitOps. Everything from here on — every future app
you add — works exactly this way: edit, commit, push, done.
## Try triggering self-healing
Optional, but worth seeing once. Reintroduce drift by hand:
```sh
kubectl -n demo patch configmap demo-page --type merge \
-p '{"data":{"index.html":"<h1>hand-edited, not from Git</h1>"}}'
```
Watch the ConfigMap *object* itself, not the browser, for this one — it's
the more reliable way to see the timing: Argo CD's self-heal typically
reverts a hand-edit within a second or two, which is faster than kubelet's
own mount-sync cycle usually gets around to reflecting a change in the
served page at all (see the note above). Check the object directly:
```sh
kubectl -n demo get configmap demo-page -o jsonpath='{.data.index\.html}'
```
Run that once right after the `patch` above and you may catch your
hand-edited text; run it again a couple of seconds later and it'll already
be back to what's in Git — with no action from you. That's `selfHeal:
true` from `apps/demo.yaml` in action. See
[`docs/00-what-is-all-this.md`](00-what-is-all-this.md#the-reconciliation-loop)
for the loop that just ran.
> **Ask Claude:** "if selfHeal is on, how would I ever safely debug
> something by changing it live in the cluster first?" — a real question
> people run into once this clicks, and worth understanding before you hit
> it for real.
## Checklist
- [ ] Edited `apps/demo/configmap.yaml`, committed, pushed
- [ ] Saw the change reflected in `argocd app get demo`
- [ ] Saw the new text in the browser
- [ ] (Optional) Watched self-healing revert a hand-made change
Continue to [`docs/08-adding-new-apps.md`](08-adding-new-apps.md) to add
something of your own.