is there any way i can pick a different version to install?

suggest to go through https://rancher-users.slack.com/archives/C01PHNP149L/p1656591872898789

so i can’t provision 1.19 using rancher dashboard?

yes, thats the reply I got :(

what i did was installing v1.19.16+rke2r1 then imported it to rancher but there are some weird ass shit when installing it that way

you can install rancher with in the same cluster using helm

no, but it’s not what i’m after

hm ok

RKE2 used to be tech preview to install directly from Rancher UI. If you look at the Rancher 2.6.5 release notes you'll note that RKE2 v1.22+ is no longer tech preview. So it's unsurprising that they don't offer older versions to deploy from the UI. Since I was using v1.21 I asked in a previous thread about if it was going to be added and the answer I got was nope since v1.21 was going to be EOL within a couple of weeks so wasn't deemed worth the effort. See https://kubernetes.io/releases/ for active releases & EOL, and https://kubernetes.io/releases/patch-releases/#non-active-branch-history shows that 1.19 went EOL on 28 Oct 2021 with 1.19.16...so that's where you won't get it from the UI. The other thing that may mess with you is that my understanding of kubectl is that it's only tested/validated for a version or two plus or minus of itself, so I'd check supported Kubernetes versions for 2.6.5 at https://www.suse.com/suse-rancher/support-matrix/all-supported-versions/rancher-v2-6-5/ to verify if it's believed to work at all (2.6.6 was a single bug fix and doesn't have its own support matrix). However, if you can add an RKE2 v1.19, it'll be as a pre-existing cluster.

yes this is what i did at the end, i had to play around with the kube-apiserver to accomplish what i was after but now it’s working