This is the detailed, copy-pasteable companion to docs/02-talos-bootstrap.md. Read that file first for the explanations — this one is here so you have every exact command in one place once you understand what they do.

Throughout, replace <NODE1_IP>, <NODE2_IP>, <NODE3_IP> with your three machines' real IP addresses, and <VIP_IP> with the shared address you picked (with Claude's help) for the cluster's VIP — see docs/02-talos-bootstrap.md. Give each machine a DHCP reservation (a fixed IP tied to its MAC address) in your router or hypervisor before you start, so none of these addresses change under the cluster. Talos bakes them into certificates during setup, and changing one later means starting over for that node.

Steps 1–2 below run once, total. Steps 3 runs once per node (three times). Steps 4–6 run once, total, against whichever node you like (or, once it exists, the VIP).

All commands assume you're running them from the root of this repo.

1. Generate machine configuration

talosctl gen config gitops-starter https://<VIP_IP>:6443 \
  --output-dir _out \
  --config-patch-control-plane @talos/patch-controlplane.yaml \
  --config-patch-control-plane @talos/patch-longhorn.yaml

Note the cluster endpoint here is the VIP, not any one node's address — every node needs to agree in advance on where the cluster "lives," and that address has to be the one that keeps working no matter which node is currently answering.

This writes three files into _out/ (already covered by this repo's .gitignore — they contain private keys and must never be committed):

controlplane.yaml — the machine configuration for a control-plane node, with both patches baked in. Applied identically to all three nodes — there's no separate worker config in this setup, since every node is both.
worker.yaml — a plain worker config, generated automatically but unused here since every node in this repo's setup is both control plane and worker. Kept around for docs/09-growing-up.md, where a fourth-and-beyond node uses exactly this file.
talosconfig — your client credentials for talking to the Talos API on this cluster (equivalent in spirit to a kubeconfig, but for Talos itself rather than Kubernetes).

gitops-starter is the cluster name — an arbitrary label baked into the generated certificates and config, used to tell clusters apart if you ever manage more than one. Port 6443 is the standard Kubernetes API server port.

2. Point talosctl at this cluster

export TALOSCONFIG=_out/talosconfig
talosctl config endpoint <NODE1_IP> <NODE2_IP> <NODE3_IP>

endpoint is which machine(s) talosctl is willing to talk to — giving it all three means it can still reach the cluster if any one of them is down. You'll pass --nodes per-command below for which machine a given command actually applies to — Talos always keeps those two concepts separate.

3. Apply the configuration — once per node

Boot each machine from your custom Talos ISO (see docs/01-prerequisites.md). Each boots into "maintenance mode" — alive enough to accept a configuration, with nothing installed yet. For each node in turn:

talosctl get disks --insecure --nodes <NODE_IP>

Confirm you see two disks: the one Talos will install itself to, and the ≥900GB one talos/patch-longhorn.yaml's UserVolumeConfig will claim for Longhorn. Then:

talosctl apply-config --insecure \
  --nodes <NODE_IP> \
  --file _out/controlplane.yaml

--insecure is required for this one command only: the node has no certificates yet, so talosctl can't authenticate to it normally. This is the one moment during setup where you're trusting the network — do this on a network you control. The node will reboot, install Talos to its system disk, format and mount its second disk for Longhorn, and come back up running the configuration you gave it — now with certificates, so every command after this uses the secure path.

Repeat this for <NODE1_IP>, <NODE2_IP>, and <NODE3_IP> before moving on.

4. Bootstrap etcd — once, total

Talos is installed on all three nodes and Kubernetes components are starting, but the cluster has no data store yet. This one-time command initializes it:

talosctl bootstrap --nodes <NODE1_IP>

Run this exactly once, against exactly one of your three nodes — even though all three will end up running etcd as peers, only one needs telling to start the cluster; the other two discover and join the existing one. Running it again against an existing cluster can corrupt it.

5. Get your kubeconfig

talosctl kubeconfig --nodes <VIP_IP> .

Downloads a kubeconfig into the current directory (also gitignored — it grants full cluster access), pointed at the VIP rather than any one node. Merge it with ~/.kube/config or point KUBECONFIG at it directly:

export KUBECONFIG=$PWD/kubeconfig

6. Verify

kubectl get nodes

Expect to see three nodes, Ready, within a couple of minutes (it takes a moment for the default CNI — Talos ships Flannel out of the box — to come up and clear each node's networking checks).

NAME              STATUS   ROLES           AGE   VERSION
talos-...         Ready    control-plane   90s   v1.3x.x
talos-...         Ready    control-plane   85s   v1.3x.x
talos-...         Ready    control-plane   80s   v1.3x.x

If any node is stuck on NotReady, give it another minute before troubleshooting — first boot does a lot of one-time work.

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