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elegant-memory-40145

07/13/2022, 9:32 PM
Is there any way to install Rancher Desktop without an internet connection? If not is there a feature request to allow users to do this? Thanks!
k

kind-iron-72902

07/13/2022, 11:48 PM
Hi, we are working on this right now, targeting the next release. Please let me know if you can't wait and I'll post the instructions.
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 12:47 AM
Thank you! I would appreciate the instructions, I'm running on Windows 10.
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 12:54 AM
I'll let @kind-iron-72902 post the instructions, but for now we are targeting offline-operation, not offline installation. The latter would be do-it-yourself by copying the installation and cached image to the offline machine yourself.
k

kind-iron-72902

07/14/2022, 1:27 AM
Unfortunately Version 1.5.0 1.4.1 will still fail to start up in an offline environment when it tries to hit the channel server looking to see if there are new versions of kubernetes. I just realized that now. Sorry about that -- I'll get everyone to work harder to make sure we get this next release out 🙂
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:28 AM
ohh snap, do you have an ETA on the next release? Also can I revert to an earlier version to get offline working?
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:28 AM
You mean 1.4.1, right? 1.5.0 is the upcoming release, which should have these fixes.
k

kind-iron-72902

07/14/2022, 1:28 AM
Sorry, right...
I don't know if offline ever worked.
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:29 AM
ETA will be the end of the month, or early August, but it is just an ETA, not a promise/commitment :)
k

kind-iron-72902

07/14/2022, 1:30 AM
And is it installation that's failing, or running after installed? I've been focused on initializing it when connected, shutting down, and then continuing to run after disconnecting. Installing will be a different story
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:31 AM
actually both for us, we will need to be able to install and initialize in an offline environment.
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:31 AM
Offline installation is out of scope for 1.5.0, except that copying an working setup including caches to an offline machine is supposed to work, and shall be documented
k

kind-iron-72902

07/14/2022, 1:31 AM
I haven't looked at the issues for offline installation yet
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:32 AM
For starters, the RD installer does not include the airgap images, or specific kubectl versions, so you have to get them from "somewhere".
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:33 AM
ok, that would provide an acceptable workaround for us if we could copy in the cached files from an online installation.
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:33 AM
@elegant-memory-40145 Are you interested in running kubernetes or just containerd/dockerd? The latter may be easier
k

kind-iron-72902

07/14/2022, 1:33 AM
From my investigation so far, it's enough to copy the files from
$HOME/AppData/Local/rancher-desktop/cache
and
$HOME/.kuberlr
from a connected machine.
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:34 AM
we are interested in running kubernetes, we have a microservice application
k

kind-iron-72902

07/14/2022, 1:34 AM
But like I said, right now Rancher Desktop 1.4.1 will fail to start up if it can't connect to the github kubernetes channel server
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:35 AM
Guna claimed that it worked for him, but I don't see how. Anyways, I think waiting for 1.5.0 is the way to go
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:36 AM
ok, I appreciate the information, we really like Rancher Desktop for the local K8s installation, we're trying to get away from our previous Docker Desktop version of our software
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:37 AM
There should be a writeup in the docs on how to do this with 1.5.0. Maybe it will come a little after the release date, depending on how busy docs are, but it should be documented and supported.
Ask back here if it doesn't work for you, or raise a Github issue (preferable, because messages here quickly get lost)
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:38 AM
ok, I can give it a shot on the 1.4.1 and report back
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:39 AM
The first thing to try is once you have a working setup, to completely disconnect from the network and see if you can still start it up and use it. We now have conflicting reports if this is possible with 1.4.1 or not.
If this works, then it should be possible to transfer the setup to another offline machine.
If we are talking about Windows here, then I assume the offline machines are already setup with the latest WSL2 and kernel configured
e

elegant-memory-40145

07/14/2022, 1:41 AM
yep
ok, so I do get errors trying to start rancher desktop, once I kill my network connection but I think this is because the .kube config file is pointing to an ip address for the cluster. This probably needs to change to localhost?
f

fast-garage-66093

07/14/2022, 1:49 AM
That is possible. We actually ship kuberlr/Makefile at master · flavio/kuberlr, which will check the kube version of the server and then download the corresponding client version.
So if the current context cluster is not reachable, you may get weird error messages from kubectl