Getting Started Using Rancher Desktop

This guide walks you through installation of Cilium on Rancher Desktop, an open-source desktop application for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Configure Rancher Desktop

Configuring Rancher Desktop is done using a YAML configuration file. This step is necessary in order to disable the default CNI and replace it with Cilium.

Next you need to start Rancher Desktop with containerd and create a override.yaml:

  1. env:
  2.   # needed for cilium
  3.   K3S_EXEC: '--flannel-backend=none --disable-network-policy'
  4. provision:
  5.   # needs root to mount
  6.   - mode: system
  7.     script: |
  8.       #!/bin/sh
  9.       set -e
  11.       # needed for cilium
  12.       mount bpffs -t bpf /sys/fs/bpf
  13.       mount --make-shared /sys/fs/bpf
  15.       mkdir -p /run/cilium/cgroupv2
  16.       mount -t cgroup2 none /run/cilium/cgroupv2
  17.       mount --make-shared /run/cilium/cgroupv2/

After the file is created move it into your Rancher Desktop’s lima/_config directory:

LinuxmacOS

  1. cp override.yaml ~/.local/share/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/override.yaml
  1. cp override.yaml ~/Library/Application\ Support/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/override.yaml

Finally, open the Rancher Desktop UI and go to Kubernetes Settings panel and click “Reset Kubernetes”.

After a few minutes Rancher Desktop will start back up prepared for installing Cilium.

Install Cilium

Install the latest version of the Cilium CLI. The Cilium CLI can be used to install Cilium, inspect the state of a Cilium installation, and enable/disable various features (e.g. clustermesh, Hubble).

LinuxmacOSOther

  1. CILIUM_CLI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium-cli/master/stable.txt)
  2. CLI_ARCH=amd64
  3. if [ "$(uname -m)" = "aarch64" ]; then CLI_ARCH=arm64; fi
  4. curl -L --fail --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/download/${CILIUM_CLI_VERSION}/cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
  5. sha256sum --check cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz.sha256sum
  6. sudo tar xzvfC cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz /usr/local/bin
  7. rm cilium-linux-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
  1. CILIUM_CLI_VERSION=$(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cilium/cilium-cli/master/stable.txt)
  2. CLI_ARCH=amd64
  3. if [ "$(uname -m)" = "arm64" ]; then CLI_ARCH=arm64; fi
  4. curl -L --fail --remote-name-all https://github.com/cilium/cilium-cli/releases/download/${CILIUM_CLI_VERSION}/cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}
  5. shasum -a 256 -c cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz.sha256sum
  6. sudo tar xzvfC cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz /usr/local/bin
  7. rm cilium-darwin-${CLI_ARCH}.tar.gz{,.sha256sum}

See the full page of releases.

Install Cilium by running:

  1. cilium install

Validate the Installation

To validate that Cilium has been properly installed, you can run

  1. $ cilium status --wait
  2.    /¯¯\
  3. /¯¯\__/¯¯\    Cilium:         OK
  4. \__/¯¯\__/    Operator:       OK
  5. /¯¯\__/¯¯\    Hubble:         disabled
  6. \__/¯¯\__/    ClusterMesh:    disabled
  7.    \__/
  9. DaemonSet         cilium             Desired: 2, Ready: 2/2, Available: 2/2
  10. Deployment        cilium-operator    Desired: 2, Ready: 2/2, Available: 2/2
  11. Containers:       cilium-operator    Running: 2
  12.                   cilium             Running: 2
  13. Image versions    cilium             quay.io/cilium/cilium:v1.9.5: 2
  14.                   cilium-operator    quay.io/cilium/operator-generic:v1.9.5: 2

Run the following command to validate that your cluster has proper network connectivity:

  1. $ cilium connectivity test
  2. ℹ️  Monitor aggregation detected, will skip some flow validation steps
  3. ✨ [k8s-cluster] Creating namespace for connectivity check...
  4. (...)
  5. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  6. 📋 Test Report
  7. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  8. ✅ 69/69 tests successful (0 warnings)

Congratulations! You have a fully functional Kubernetes cluster with Cilium. 🎉

Next Steps