Skip to main content

Renew Harvester Cloud Credentials

· 2 min read
Gaurav Mehta
Moritz Röhrich

Expiration of kubeconfig Tokens in Rancher 2.8.x​

In Rancher 2.8.x, the default value of the kubeconfig-default-token-ttl-minutes setting is 30 days.

A side effect of using this default value is the expiration of authentication tokens embedded in kubeconfigs that Rancher uses to provision guest Kubernetes clusters on Harvester. When such tokens expire, Rancher loses the ability to perform management operations for the corresponding Rancher-managed guest Kubernetes clusters. Issue #44912 tracks the issue described in this article.

note

The issue affects only guest Kubernetes clusters running on Harvester that use cloud credentials created after installing or upgrading to Rancher v2.8.x.

Workaround​

You can patch the expired Harvester cloud credentials to use a new authentication token.

  1. Identify the expired cloud credentials and which Harvester cluster is affected by them.

    identify-credentials

  2. Download a new kubeconfig file for the affected Harvester cluster.

    context-menu

  3. Patch the cloud credentials. The cloud credential is stored as a secret in cattle-global-data namespace, and can be replaced with the new kubeconfig file. Ensure that the environment variable KUBECONFIG_FILE contains the path to the new kubeconfig file.

    #!/bin/sh
    CLOUD_CREDENTIAL_ID=$1  # .metadata.name of the cloud credential
    KUBECONFIG_FILE=$2      # path to the downloaded kubeconfig file

    kubeconfig="$(base64 -w 0 "${KUBECONFIG_FILE}")"

    patch_file=$(mktemp)

    cat > ${patch_file} <<EOF
    data:
      harvestercredentialConfig-kubeconfigContent: $kubeconfig
    EOF

    kubectl patch secret ${CLOUD_CREDENTIAL_ID} -n cattle-global-data --patch-file ${patch_file} --type merge
    rm ${patch_file}
    important

    macOS users must use gbase64 to ensure that the -w flag is supported.

Expiration of kubeconfig Tokens in Rancher 2.9.3​

In Rancher 2.9.3 and later versions, the Rancher UI displays a warning when a Harvester cloud credential or a related cluster contains an expired token. You can renew the token on the Cloud Credentials screen by selecting ⋮ > Renew, or the Clusters screen by selecting ⋮ > Renew Cloud Credential

cc-renew

note

When you upgrade Rancher, the Rancher UI does not display a warning for Harvester cloud credentials that expired before the upgrade was started. However, you can still renew the token on the Cloud Credentials or Clusters screen.