Configuration directory different than /etc/rancher/

[rorosen]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I run k3s server on a system with volatile root where only specific paths are persisted across reboots. The inability of changing the configuration directory to something other than /etc/rancher and k3s not following directory symlinks at /etc/rancher make it very hard for me to persist the content of /etc/rancher. Unfortunately, mounts also don't work for me in combination with systemd-confext.

Describe the solution you'd like

My problem would be solved if I could point k3s to another configuration directory. Is this already possible and I'm missing something here? I didn't find a way to set it to another path, please let me know if this is already possible.

Describe alternatives you've considered

It would be also ok if k3s would follow symlinks, currently it errors with file exists when a symlink exists at /etc/rancher.

Additional context

Is there anything speaking against making this configurable? If not, I could try to contribute a PR for it.

[brandond]

The /etc/rancher file locations are not currently configurable. The error when it's a symlink is unexpected, we can look at that.

Have you tried symlinking /etc/rancher/node and /etc/rancher/k3s individually? Do you get the same behavior?

[rorosen]

Have you tried symlinking /etc/rancher/node and /etc/rancher/k3s individually?

I just tried this but it results in the same error

level=error msg="Failed to generate kubeconfig: mkdir /etc/rancher/k3s: file exists"

For reference, this is the error I get when only symlinking /etc/rancher/

level=error msg="Failed to generate kubeconfig: mkdir /etc/rancher: file exists"

I tried with v1.30.6+k3s1 and v1.31.2+k3s1 but the error is the same. It seems to fail when calling WriteToFile() in WriteClientKubeConfig().

[rorosen]

The problem was the target of the symlink at /etc/rancher didn't exist. os.MkDirAll() doesn't create a directory at the target location if it doesn't exist and I guess that is expected. It works if I create the directory to which /etc/rancher points.

Sorry for the noise, I had the wrong idea of how a symlink is treated in this case.

[brandond]

It works if I create the directory to which /etc/rancher points.

Well yeah, that seems important. I wouldn't expect it to work with a broken symlink.