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Cluster Access

The admin kubeconfig file stored at /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml can be used to provide access to the Kubernetes cluster. This file grants access as the system:admin user and system:masters group, which are hardcoded by Kubernetes to have unrestricted access to all resources within the cluster.

The kubectl command that comes with K3s has been configured to load configuration from this path by default. If you have installed upstream Kubernetes command line tools such as kubectl or helm you will need to configure them with the correct kubeconfig path. This can be done by either exporting the KUBECONFIG environment variable or by invoking the --kubeconfig command line flag. Refer to the examples below for details.

  • Export the KUBECONFIG environment variable: 
    export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml
    kubectl get pods --all-namespaces
    helm ls --all-namespaces
  • Specify the location of the kubeconfig file in the command: 
    kubectl --kubeconfig /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml get pods --all-namespaces
    helm --kubeconfig /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml ls --all-namespaces

Accessing the Cluster from Outside with kubectl​

Copy /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml on your machine located outside the cluster as ~/.kube/config. Then replace the value of the server field with the IP or name of your K3s server. kubectl can now manage your K3s cluster.

info

K3s will automatically update the certificates within the admin kubeconfig every time it starts. If you make a copy of this file, you will need to manually update those copies to ensure that the inline certificates do not expire.