Note – I was successfully able to use most of this post to deploy k8s on my Debian 12 too.

Check your containerd version: dpkg -l | grep -i containerd.
You need a minimum version :1.5.

You can use containerd.io on docker repository, if you want.

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | apt-key add -
add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
apt update
apt install -y containerd.io

I get this error on my k8s-master:
[init] Using Kubernetes version: v1.27.3
[preflight] Running pre-flight checks
error execution phase preflight: [preflight] Some fatal errors occurred:
[ERROR CRI]: container runtime is not running: output: time=”2023-06-28T01:39:44+02:00″ level=fatal msg=”validate service connection: CRI v1 runtime API is not implemented for endpoint \”unix:///var/run/containerd/containerd.sock\”: rpc error: code = Unimplemented desc = unknown service runtime.v1.RuntimeService”
, error: exit status 1
[preflight] If you know what you are doing, you can make a check non-fatal with `–ignore-preflight-errors=…`
To see the stack trace of this error execute with –v=5 or higher

The containerd service is active… (Debian 11)

Thanks !

After creating the cluster the api server works for me. When adding nodes port 6443 isn’t anymore bound to the master and i receive the error: The connection to the server k8s-master:6443 was refused – did you specify the right host or port?

From the worker nodes i receive following error: E0225 22:04:20.015581 566 memcache.go:238] couldn’t get current server API group list: Get “http://localhost:8080/api?timeout=32s”: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connect: connection refused

Kind regards,
Tim

Hi Matt,

Please use the following latest calico yaml file,

kubectl apply -f ‘https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectcalico/calico/v3.25.0/manifests/calico.yaml’

Right now, the URL
“https://projectcalico.docs.tigera.io/manifests/calico.yaml”
does not exist anymore (did work a week ago). It seems that installing calico is more complicated, now.

Flannel is an alternative, that does still work with ease. One should:
– add “–pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16” to kubeadm init and then
– kubectl apply -f “https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreos/flannel/master/Documentation/kube-flannel.yml”

In terms of getting the CRI, docker is an alternative to messing with the debian unstable repository:
– add “deb https://download.docker.com/linux/debian bullseye stable” to sources.list and add key as described on docker website
– apt install containerd.io
This should provide more frequent updates. Debian repos might be to static relative to kubernetes. It does also allow for installing docker-ce in parallel if someone wants to build on the master node, for example.

P.S. Would you consider writing a tutorial on running a private registry? With kubernetes 1.26.1 and modern CRI, the certificate issues become much more challenging. I think that the instructions on “insecure registries” and “skip verification” no not work anymore.