is it possible to have cert-manager issue / manage certs for the nginx controller i dont see any documentation about using that.

what im having a hard time understanding is with RKE2 the ingress is already deployed where should i go to make changes so nginx can use the cert-manager tool for the proxy?

For cert manager you change the ingress resource, not the controller

if i change the ingress resource that gets deployed with rke2 do i just add an annotation for it, im just not seeing any info on where to edit the ingress resource with RKE2 @agreeable-oil-87482

An ingress is a standard kubernetes object, rke2 comes with an ingress controller. You just need to modify your ingress objects accordingly

tired using https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/v2.6/pages-for-subheaders/install-upgrade-on-a-kubernetes-cluster but it still gave itself a self signed cert what went wrong ?