Initial Configuration

Several steps must be carried out to prepare the server for K8s deployment.

Configure NetworkManager

At the time of this writing there is a known issue with RKE2 requiring a custom configuration for NetworkManager. The following procedure will overcome this limitation.

# cat >>/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/rke2-canal.conf<<EOF
[keyfile]
unmanaged-devices=interface-name:cali*;interface-name:flannel*
EOF

# systemctl reload NetworkManager

Disable the Firewall

Because of another known issue/limitation, it is also necessary to disable the firewall at this time.

Firewalld conflicts with RKE2’s default Canal (Calico + Flannel) networking stack. To avoid unexpected behavior, firewalld should be disabled on systems running RKE2.

# systemctl disable --now firewalld

Tuning for inotify

You may need to increase the max_user_instances for inotify. This is easy to do.

# echo "fs.inotify.max_user_instances=8192" >>/etc/sysctl.d/99-inotify.conf

# sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/99-inotify.conf

Once this initial configuration has been completed you are ready to install RKE2 on your server!