Hello all, I'm not sure if this is the correct channel to inquire. I was able to set up my RKE2 cluster recently on some of our vms. When I download the Kube config file from our rancher server, I only get a kubeconfig token. I'm not sure what part I missed that didn't generate the appropriate client-certificate-data, client-certificate-key and the certificate-authority-data. Would anyone be able to help me sort it out?

when you download a kubeconfig from rancher, all communication to the downstream cluster goes through rancher

pardon my lack of knowledge but we have RKE1 clusters that are working. Whenever I go to the Rancher UI and download the kube config for those, I get a kube config like this:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
clusters:
- name: "<<< some name >>>"
  cluster:
    server: "<<< rancher host here >>>"
- name: "<<< some name >>>"
  cluster:
    server: "https://<<< node IP >>>:6443"
    certificate-authority-data: "<<< valid cert here >>>"
- name: "<<< name >>>"
  cluster:
    server: "https://<<< node IP >>>:6443"
    certificate-authority-data: "<<< valid cert >>>"
- name: "<<< another host here >>>"
  cluster:
    server: "https://<<< node IP >>>:6443"
    certificate-authority-data: "<<< valid cert >>>"
users:
- name: "<<< cluster name >>>"
  user:
    token: "<<< valid tolken >>>

contexts:
- name: "<<< cluster context >>>"
  context:
    user: "<<< cluster context >>>"
    cluster: "<<< cluster context >>>"

current-context: "<<< cluster context >>>"

right there are multiple cluster entries. the first one that goes through rancher, the others that go directly to the server nodes. because you have enabled ACE for that cluster. If you want to do the same for RKE2, you need to enable ACE on that cluster.

The new RKE2 cluster generates a kube config like this:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
clusters:
- name: "<<< some name >>>"
  cluster:
    server: "<<< rancher host here >>>"
users:
- name: "<<< some name >>>"
  user:
    token: "<<< valid token >>>"
contexts:
- name: "<<< some name >>>"
  context:
    user: "<<< some name >>>"
    cluster: "<<< some name >>>"

current-context: "<<< some name >>>"

enable ace

oh, I failed to toggle that when setting it up. If I don't provide a cert, it should generate one for me correct?

it’ll just use the cluster ca by default. which should be fine.

awesome, thank you so much for your help