How to increase log verbosity for kubelet and kube-apiserver in RKE2

When troubleshooting an issue with an RKE2 Imported or Rancher provisioned RKE2 Kubernetes cluster, it may be helpful to increase the verbosity of logging on one or more of the Kubernetes components above the default level. This article details the process of increasing log verbosity for kubelet, kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager and kube-scheduler.

Here’s how you can change the log verbosity for different kubernetes components:

1] For Imported type of cluster:

Edit the RKE2 Configuration File :
For RKE2 clusters, you can adjust the kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler and kubelet flags through the configuration file located at /etc/rancher/rke2/config.yaml.

kube-apiserver-arg: 
  - v=8
kube-controller-manager-arg: 
  - v=8
kube-scheduler-arg
  - v=8
kubelet-arg
  - v=8

Restart RKE2 server Service:
After modifying the configuration file, restart the RKE2 or K3s service to apply the changes.

sudo systemctl restart rke2-server  

2] For Rancher Provisioned clusters:

Go to Rancher UI ☰ > Cluster Management  > Downstream cluster  > Click on edit config > Under Cluster Configuration, click on Advanced and add/adjust the ‘v’ (ie. v=8)flag and save the configuration.
OR
Go to Rancher UI ☰ > Cluster Management  > Downstream cluster  > Click on edit yaml > Under spec.rkeConfig.machineGlobalConfig AND spec.rkeConfig.machineSelectorConfig adjust the verbosity, see below example:

spec:
  rkeConfig:
    machineGlobalConfig:
      kube-apiserver-arg:
        - v=8
      kube-controller-manager-arg:
        - v=8
      kube-scheduler-arg:
        - v=8

    machineSelectorConfig:
      - config:
          kubelet-arg:
            - v=8