Get the list of available Kubernetes versions for RKE

This document (000021088) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

RKE 1.5/1.6+
Rancher v2.8.x+

Situation

One wants to install an RKE cluster without the default version of RKE or the Kubernetes version is not listed on the Rancher UI

Resolution

1. For RKE CLI:
Through the RKE CLI, one might get the available versions of Kubernetes for that release:

$ rke config --list-version --all
v1.30.2-rancher1-1
v1.28.11-rancher1-1
v1.29.6-rancher1-1
v1.27.15-rancher1-1

$ rke version
rke version
INFO[0000] Running RKE version: v1.6.0

Without the flag --all it will display the default version of the Kubernetes to be installed if the version is not specified on the cluster.yml. Documentation on how to do it can be found here .

1.1 To get the system images available, e.g. core-dns or calico, use:

# for the current k8s version
$ rke config --system-images
INFO[0000] Generating images list for version [v1.30.2-rancher1-1]:
rancher/mirrored-coreos-etcd:v3.5.12
rancher/rke-tools:v0.1.100
rancher/mirrored-k8s-dns-kube-dns:1.23.0
rancher/mirrored-k8s-dns-dnsmasq-nanny:1.23.0
rancher/mirrored-k8s-dns-sidecar:1.23.0
rancher/mirrored-cluster-proportional-autoscaler:v1.8.9
rancher/mirrored-coredns-coredns:1.11.1
rancher/mirrored-k8s-dns-node-cache:1.23.0
rancher/hyperkube:v1.30.2-rancher1
rancher/mirrored-flannel-flannel:v0.25.1
rancher/flannel-cni:v1.4.1-rancher1
rancher/mirrored-calico-node:v3.28.0
rancher/calico-cni:v3.28.0-rancher1
rancher/mirrored-calico-kube-controllers:v3.28.0
rancher/mirrored-calico-ctl:v3.28.0
rancher/mirrored-calico-pod2daemon-flexvol:v3.28.0
rancher/mirrored-pause:3.7
rancher/nginx-ingress-controller:nginx-1.10.1-rancher1
rancher/mirrored-nginx-ingress-controller-defaultbackend:1.5-rancher1
rancher/mirrored-ingress-nginx-kube-webhook-certgen:v1.4.1
rancher/mirrored-metrics-server:v0.7.1
noiro/cnideploy:6.0.4.2.81c2369
noiro/aci-containers-host:6.0.4.2.81c2369
noiro/opflex:6.0.4.2.81c2369
noiro/openvswitch:6.0.4.2.81c2369
noiro/aci-containers-controller:6.0.4.2.81c2369

# for a specific k8s version
$ rke config --system-images --version v1.24.13-rancher2-1

# for all available k8s on the rke distribution
$ rke config --system-images --all

Note: the information is also available on the RKE release page: https://github.com/rancher/rke/releases/

2. For RKE Kubernetes versions available on Rancher, check the RKE k8s System Images resource:

kubectl get rkek8ssystemimages.management.cattle.io -n cattle-global-data

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