Manually Installing on RHEL

AHD VM can be installed manually on a RedHat Enterprise Linux based virtual machine instead of a Fedora CoreOS one.

The following instructions are related to RHEL 9.4. Please refer to Red Hat for notes, requirements and support.

RHEL was chosen as a valid Linux distribution since it's also based on Fedora (just like Fedora CoreOS), but offers enterprise support.

Update RHEL configurations

As documented in k3s documentation, either turn off firewalld or add some new rules.

To turn off firewalld:

systemctl disable firewalld --now

If you wish to keep firewalld enabled, update its rules with the following commands:

firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=6443/tcp #apiserver
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --add-source=10.42.0.0/16 #pods
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=trusted --add-source=10.43.0.0/16 #services
firewall-cmd --reload

After either disabling firewalld or updating its rules, disable nm-cloud-setup:

sudo systemctl disable nm-cloud-setup.service nm-cloud-setup.timer

Finally, reboot the virtual machine:

sudo reboot

Install required packages

Install the following packages, required by AHD VM. Some of the packages may already be present on your virtual machine.

# install utilities
sudo yum install iptables nano git bash-completion -y

# install k3s
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" INSTALL_K3S_CHANNEL=stable sh -

Setup AHD VM

Through the following script you will setup folders, install and configure software for AHD. See the inline comments for more details on each command.

Save the following script as initial-setup.sh

#!/usr/bin/env sh

set -x
set -e

# create volume home directory
mkdir -p $HOME/k3s-volumes

# setup bash completion and kubeconfig
echo "source <(kubectl completion bash)" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "alias k=kubectl" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "complete -o default -F __start_kubectl k" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml" >> $HOME/.bashrc

# install Helm
curl -L https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.16.4-linux-amd64.tar.gz -o /tmp/helm.tar.gz
tar -zxvf /tmp/helm.tar.gz -C /tmp/
sudo mv /tmp/linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin/helm

# setup a temporary directory to work in
TMP_DIR="$(mktemp -d)"
cd "${TMP_DIR}"

# install Kubectl Krew
OS="$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')"
ARCH="$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/\(arm\)\(64\)\?.*/\1\2/' -e 's/aarch64$/arm64/')"
KREW="krew-${OS}_${ARCH}"
curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/${KREW}.tar.gz"
tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz"

./"${KREW}" install krew
echo "export PATH=\"\${KREW_ROOT:-\$HOME/.krew}/bin:\$PATH\"" >> $HOME/.bashrc

# install troubleshoot plugins
$HOME/.krew/bin/kubectl-krew install preflight
$HOME/.krew/bin/kubectl-krew install support-bundle

# install helm diff plugin
helm plugin install https://github.com/databus23/helm-diff

# add AHD repos
helm repo add smartkit https://repo.smeup.cloud/nexus/repository/smartkit
helm repo up

# cleanup temp dir
rm -rf "${TMP_DIR}"

Run the script with bash initial-setup.sh

The script does not require sudo access.

---

Through the following script you will configure k3s storage and networking.

Create the file setup-config.sh with the following content:

In line 7 of the script, make sure to change 'YOUR_USERNAME' with the username of the main linux user of the virtual machine.

#!/bin/bash

set -e
set -x

# Change "YOUR_USERNAME" with the main user's name
USER=YOUR_USERNAME

# Configure volume provider
cat > /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/manifests/smeup-k3s-storage.yaml << EOF
---
kind: ConfigMap
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: local-path-config
  namespace: kube-system
data:
  config.json: |-
    {
      "nodePathMap":[
      {
        "node":"DEFAULT_PATH_FOR_NON_LISTED_NODES",
        "paths":["/home/$USER/k3s-volumes"]
      }
      ]
    }
  setup: |-
    #!/bin/sh
    set -eu
    mkdir -m 0777 -p "\${VOL_DIR}"
    chmod 700 "\${VOL_DIR}/.."
  teardown: |-
    #!/bin/sh
    set -eu
    rm -rf "\${VOL_DIR}"
  helperPod.yaml: |-
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: Pod
    metadata:
      name: helper-pod
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: helper-pod
        image: "rancher/mirrored-library-busybox:1.36.1"
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
EOF

# set file permissions
chmod 644 /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/manifests/traefik-cfg.yaml
chmod 644 /var/lib/rancher/k3s/server/manifests/smeup-k3s-storage.yaml

Run the script with sudo bash setup-config.sh

The script requires sudo access to interact with files under `/var/lib/rancher/k3s/...`
It will not install any new software or change any other configuration.

Test setup

You have completed the manual installation of AHD VM on RHEL.

You can now delete the setup-config.sh and initial-setup.sh script files.

To check if everything is working correctly:

• run the command source $HOME/.bashrc (or logout and login again) to reload the required environment variables.
• run kubectl preflight https://smartkit-vm.smeup.cloud/preflight.yaml to perform health checks. Make sure that everything is "OK"

The installation of AHD VM is complete.

Next steps

The AHD installation continues with the setup of AHD Commons.