Container runtimes

To run containers in Pods, Kubernetes uses a container runtime. Here are the installation instructions for various runtimes.

• Docker
• CRI-O
• Containerd
• Other CRI runtimes: frakti

Caution:

A flaw was found in the way runc handled system file descriptors when running containers. A malicious container could use this flaw to overwrite contents of the runc binary and consequently run arbitrary commands on the container host system.

Please refer to this link for more information about this issue cve-2019-5736 : runc vulnerability

Applicability

Note: This document is written for users installing CRI onto Linux. For other operating systems, look for documentation specific to your platform.

You should execute all the commands in this guide as root. For example, prefix commands with sudo, or become root and run the commands as that user.

Cgroup drivers

When systemd is chosen as the init system for a Linux distribution, the init process generates and consumes a root control group (cgroup) and acts as a cgroup manager. Systemd has a tight integration with cgroups and will allocate cgroups per process. It’s possible to configure your container runtime and the kubelet to use cgroupfs. Using cgroupfs alongside systemd means that there will then be two different cgroup managers.

Control groups are used to constrain resources that are allocated to processes. A single cgroup manager will simplify the view of what resources are being allocated and will by default have a more consistent view of the available and in-use resources. When we have two managers we end up with two views of those resources. We have seen cases in the field where nodes that are configured to use cgroupfs for the kubelet and Docker, and systemd for the rest of the processes running on the node becomes unstable under resource pressure.

Changing the settings such that your container runtime and kubelet use systemd as the cgroup driver stabilized the system. Please note the native.cgroupdriver=systemd option in the Docker setup below.

Caution: Changing the cgroup driver of a Node that has joined a cluster is highly unrecommended. If the kubelet has created Pods using the semantics of one cgroup driver, changing the container runtime to another cgroup driver can cause errors when trying to re-create the PodSandbox for such existing Pods. Restarting the kubelet may not solve such errors. The recommendation is to drain the Node from its workloads, remove it from the cluster and re-join it.

Docker

On each of your machines, install Docker. Version 19.03.4 is recommended, but 1.13.1, 17.03, 17.06, 17.09, 18.06 and 18.09 are known to work as well. Keep track of the latest verified Docker version in the Kubernetes release notes.

Use the following commands to install Docker on your system:

# Install Docker CE
## Set up the repository:
### Install packages to allow apt to use a repository over HTTPS
apt-get update && apt-get install \
  apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

### Add Docker’s official GPG key
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | apt-key add -

### Add Docker apt repository.
add-apt-repository \
  "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(lsb_release -cs) \
  stable"

## Install Docker CE.
apt-get update && apt-get install \
  containerd.io=1.2.10-3 \
  docker-ce=5:19.03.4~3-0~ubuntu-$(lsb_release -cs) \
  docker-ce-cli=5:19.03.4~3-0~ubuntu-$(lsb_release -cs)

# Setup daemon.
cat > /etc/docker/daemon.json <<EOF
{
  "exec-opts": ["native.cgroupdriver=systemd"],
  "log-driver": "json-file",
  "log-opts": {
    "max-size": "100m"
  },
  "storage-driver": "overlay2"
}
EOF

mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d

# Restart docker.
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart docker

# Install Docker CE
## Set up the repository
### Install required packages.
yum install yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

### Add Docker repository.
yum-config-manager --add-repo \
  https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

## Install Docker CE.
yum update && yum install \
  containerd.io-1.2.10 \
  docker-ce-19.03.4 \
  docker-ce-cli-19.03.4

## Create /etc/docker directory.
mkdir /etc/docker

# Setup daemon.
cat > /etc/docker/daemon.json <<EOF
{
  "exec-opts": ["native.cgroupdriver=systemd"],
  "log-driver": "json-file",
  "log-opts": {
    "max-size": "100m"
  },
  "storage-driver": "overlay2",
  "storage-opts": [
    "overlay2.override_kernel_check=true"
  ]
}
EOF

mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d

# Restart Docker
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart docker

Refer to the official Docker installation guides for more information.

CRI-O

This section contains the necessary steps to install CRI-O as CRI runtime.

Use the following commands to install CRI-O on your system:

Prerequisites

modprobe overlay
modprobe br_netfilter

# Setup required sysctl params, these persist across reboots.
cat > /etc/sysctl.d/99-kubernetes-cri.conf <<EOF
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables  = 1
net.ipv4.ip_forward                 = 1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 1
EOF

sysctl --system

# Install prerequisites
apt-get update
apt-get install software-properties-common

add-apt-repository ppa:projectatomic/ppa
apt-get update

# Install CRI-O
apt-get install cri-o-1.15

# Install prerequisites
yum-config-manager --add-repo=https://cbs.centos.org/repos/paas7-crio-115-release/x86_64/os/

# Install CRI-O
yum install --nogpgcheck cri-o

Start CRI-O

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start crio

Refer to the CRI-O installation guide for more information.

Containerd

This section contains the necessary steps to use containerd as CRI runtime.

Use the following commands to install Containerd on your system:

Prerequisites

cat > /etc/modules-load.d/containerd.conf <<EOF
overlay
br_netfilter
EOF

modprobe overlay
modprobe br_netfilter

# Setup required sysctl params, these persist across reboots.
cat > /etc/sysctl.d/99-kubernetes-cri.conf <<EOF
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables  = 1
net.ipv4.ip_forward                 = 1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables = 1
EOF

sysctl --system

Install containerd

# Install containerd
## Set up the repository
### Install packages to allow apt to use a repository over HTTPS
apt-get update && apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

### Add Docker’s official GPG key
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | apt-key add -

### Add Docker apt repository.
add-apt-repository \
    "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
    $(lsb_release -cs) \
    stable"

## Install containerd
apt-get update && apt-get install -y containerd.io

# Configure containerd
mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default > /etc/containerd/config.toml

# Restart containerd
systemctl restart containerd

# Install containerd
## Set up the repository
### Install required packages
yum install yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

### Add docker repository
yum-config-manager \
    --add-repo \
    https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

## Install containerd
yum update && yum install containerd.io

# Configure containerd
mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default > /etc/containerd/config.toml

# Restart containerd
systemctl restart containerd

systemd

To use the systemd cgroup driver, set plugins.cri.systemd_cgroup = true in /etc/containerd/config.toml. When using kubeadm, manually configure the cgroup driver for kubelet

Other CRI runtimes: frakti

Refer to the Frakti QuickStart guide for more information.