How to install Kubernetes on Rocky Linux 9

Hello, friends. In this post, you will learn how to install Kubernetes on Rocky Linux 9.

Kubernetes is a portable and extensible open-source platform for managing workloads and services. Kubernetes makes it easy to automate and declarative configuration.

So let’s get to it.

Installing Kubernetes in Rocky Linux 9

The process is pretty straightforward, but we have to make a few configurations beforehand.

Installing Docker and some necessary components

For this post, it is assumed that we have a freshly installed Rocky Linux server, with a configured hostname and everything in order.

So, the first thing to do is to update it

sudo dnf update

Then, we have to install Docker on the system. To achieve this, add the repository to an external repository because it is not present in the official repositories.

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

Sample output:

Adding repo from: https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

And now you can install Docker. Of course, we will take the opportunity to install other necessary programs such as nano, curl and containerd.

sudo dnf install nano curl docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Next, start Docker and have it load with the system

sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker

Sample output:

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/docker.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/system/docker.service.

Make the current user able to run Docker without root permissions. To achieve this, add the current user to the Docker group.

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

Apply the changes by logging out and logging in again.

Docker is up and running, but there is something else. Kubernetes does not work well when there is Swap on the system. So, you have to disable it.

sudo swapoff -a
sudo sed -i '/ swap / s/^/#/' /etc/fstab

The first command does it temporarily for this post and the second one permanently.

Install Kubernetes

Now it’s time for Kubernetes and its components. First, install minukube directly from its RPM package. First download it:

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-latest.x86_64.rpm

Now install it:

sudo rpm -Uvh minikube-latest.x86_64.rpm

Start Minikube with the Docker driver.

minikube start --driver=docker

Install the kubectl command by executing

minikube kubectl -- get po -A
NAMESPACE     NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system   coredns-787d4945fb-d2fg9           0/1     Running   0          28s
kube-system   etcd-minikube                      1/1     Running   0          40s
kube-system   kube-apiserver-minikube            1/1     Running   0          40s
kube-system   kube-controller-manager-minikube   1/1     Running   0          40s
kube-system   kube-proxy-fl8dk                   1/1     Running   0          28s
kube-system   kube-scheduler-minikube            1/1     Running   0          40s
kube-system   storage-provisioner                1/1     Running   0          39s

Now, prepare an alias for kuberctl.

alias kubectl="minikube kubectl --"

And make it permanent, by adding that to the end of the .bashrc file

nano ~/.bashrc

Then, you can start a test deployment.

kubectl create deployment hello-minikube --image=kicbase/echo-server:1.0

Sample output:

deployment.apps/hello-minikube created

And expose it:

kubectl expose deployment hello-minikube --type=NodePort --port=8000

Sample output:

service/hello-minikube exposed

And to test if everything is OK:

kubectl get services hello-minikube

Then you will see that it is working.

Conclusion

In this post, you learned how to install Kubernetes on Rocky Linux 9. The process is simple and opens the door to more complex situations.