Installing Kubernetes on Arch Linux Baremetal

Mar 7, 2021

This is my personal guide / notes on installing Kubernetes Cluster on Arch Linux.

Installation

Install the package group kubernetes-control-plane. This will install all of the needed packages for the master node.
```
$ sudo pacman -Syu kubernetes-control-plane
```
Install worker-node package group for the worker nodes.
```
$ sudo pacman -Syu worker-node
```
Turn off swap. Depending on your setup you may need to permanently disable swap in /etc/fstab. Do this also for all of the nodes.
```
$ sudo swapoff -a
```
Install a container package. For this guide, I have used containerd. Do this for all of the nodes.
```
$ sudo pacman -Syu containerd
```

Run containerd pre-requisites as documented here. Do this for all of the nodes.

$ sudo modprobe overlay
$ sudo modprobe br_netfilter
$ sudo sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
$ sudo sysctl net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables=1

Initialize kubeadm on the master node. This is based on flannel network guide. Do this only for the master node.
```
$ kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr='10.244.0.0/16'
```

Copy the log produced from this command (i.e. kubeadm join …) you will need it later.

During the time of writing, the previous command had instructions to create a configuration by entering the following commands. Do this only for the master node.
```
$ mkdir -p $HOME/.kube 
$ sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config 
$ sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config
```
Update the kubeadm configuration to use the correct cni binary directory. For some reason Arch Linux has a different cni bin dir structure.
```
$ vim /var/lib/kubelet/kubeadm-flags.env
```
Restart the kubelet service. Do this for all of the nodes.
```
$ sudo systemctl restart kubelet.
```
Reboot the machine. Do this for all of the nodes.
```
$ sudo reboot
```

Create the pod network. This guide uses the flannel pod network. Do this only for the master node.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreos/flannel/master/Documentation/kube-flannel.yml

Join the worker nodes. The join command is found from the logs produced in the kubeadm init command from the master node.
```
$ kubeadm join --token xxx --discover-token-ca-cert-hash xxx
```

MetalLB Installation

This is a software based load balancer. Documentation can be found here

Create the namespace

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/v0.9.5/manifests/namespace.yaml

Install Metal LB

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metallb/metallb/v0.9.5/manifests/metallb.yaml

Create member list

$ kubectl create secret generic -n metallb-system memberlist --from-literal=secretkey="$(openssl rand -base64 128)"

NGINX Ingress controller

Install NGINX ingress controller. The cloud version is applied here instead of baremetal because Metal LB is used.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/master/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

For some reason creating ingresses gets hung up because of a webhook. It’s an open bug in the controller. Details are found here. Below is the suggested workaround: ```bash $ kubectl delete -A ValidatingWebhookConfiguration ingress-nginx-admission

```

Links:

https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/installation/installation-with-manifests/