Skip to main content
Version: 1.6.1

Rancher Desktop configuration​

This how-to was written using the following versions:

Rancher Desktop Prerequisites​

  • Running on Windows requires Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which is automatically installed by Rancher Desktop.
  • Epinio currently only supports x86 and will not work with Rancher Desktop for Mac on the M1 chip.

Install Rancher Desktop​

Install the latest version of Rancher Desktop for your operating system.

Setup Kubernetes​

When running Rancher Desktop for the first time, wait until the initialization is completed.

Make sure that Kubernetes is enabled and a supported version is selected under Kubernetes Settings (Epinio has been tested on v1.22.7, v1.21.10 and v1.20.15).

Make sure that Traefik is enabled or you have otherwise installed a Ingress controller.

Install epinio​

Make sure Rancher Desktop is running.

Rancher Desktop can report Kubernetes as running while some pods are actually not yet ready. Manual verification is possible by executing the command kubectl get pods -A in a terminal and checking that all pods report either Running or Completed as their status.

Rancher Desktop configures it's own load-balancer to expose Traefik on 127.0.0.1. We can use this with a wildcard DNS to get a system domain of 127.0.0.1.sslip.io

The Epinio installation is pretty much identical on Linux, MacOS and Windows:

  1. Start a shell, use cmd or powershell on Windows (latest one is preferred) and your preferred one on Linux/MacOS.

  2. Install the Epinio CLI.

  3. Follow the Epinio installation process. Copied here:


kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.7.1/cert-manager.yaml  

# Wait for cert-manager to stabilize

helm repo add epinio https://epinio.github.io/helm-charts
helm install epinio -n epinio --create-namespace epinio/epinio --set global.domain=127.0.0.1.sslip.io

epinio login -u admin https://epinio.127.0.0.1.sslip.io

caution

For RancherDesktop on Linux, in order to be able to open ports from 443 (and above), in order to access the URL set in global.domain (i.e. 127.0.0.1.sslip.io), you need to set the start port of the unprivileged list to a lower number:


# [Optional] Check the current unprivileged port start
sysctl -n net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start

# Temporary modification of the unprivileged port start
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=443

# Permanent modification of the unprivileged port start
sudo sh -c 'echo "net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=443" >> /etc/sysctl.d/50-unprivileged-ports.conf'

# [Optional] Check the current unprivileged port start
sysctl -n net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start

You can find more information in this issue.