Introduction

• 1: What is Talos?
• 2: Quickstart
• 3: Getting Started
• 4: Production Clusters
• 5: System Requirements
• 6: What's New in Talos 1.6.0
• 7: Support Matrix
• 8: Troubleshooting

1 - What is Talos?

Talos is a container optimized Linux distro; a reimagining of Linux for distributed systems such as Kubernetes. Designed to be as minimal as possible while still maintaining practicality. For these reasons, Talos has a number of features unique to it:

• it is immutable
• it is atomic
• it is ephemeral
• it is minimal
• it is secure by default
• it is managed via a single declarative configuration file and gRPC API

Talos can be deployed on container, cloud, virtualized, and bare metal platforms.

Why Talos

In having less, Talos offers more. Security. Efficiency. Resiliency. Consistency.

All of these areas are improved simply by having less.

2 - Quickstart

Local Docker Cluster

The easiest way to try Talos is by using the CLI (talosctl) to create a cluster on a machine with docker installed.

Prerequisites

talosctl

Download talosctl (macOS or Linux):

brew install siderolabs/tap/talosctl

kubectl

Download kubectl via one of methods outlined in the documentation.

Create the Cluster

Now run the following:

talosctl cluster create

You can explore using Talos API commands:

talosctl dashboard --nodes 10.5.0.2

Verify that you can reach Kubernetes:

kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME                           STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION          INTERNAL-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE                 KERNEL-VERSION   CONTAINER-RUNTIME
talos-default-controlplane-1   Ready    master   115s   v1.29.3   10.5.0.2      <none>        Talos (v1.6.7)   <host kernel>    containerd://1.5.5
talos-default-worker-1         Ready    <none>   115s   v1.29.3   10.5.0.3      <none>        Talos (v1.6.7)   <host kernel>    containerd://1.5.5

Destroy the Cluster

When you are all done, remove the cluster:

talosctl cluster destroy

3 - Getting Started

This document will walk you through installing a simple Talos Cluster with a single control plane node and one or more worker nodes, explaining some of the concepts.

If this is your first use of Talos Linux, we recommend the Quickstart first, to quickly create a local virtual cluster in containers on your workstation.

For a production cluster, extra steps are needed - see Production Notes.

Regardless of where you run Talos, the steps to create a Kubernetes cluster are:

• boot machines off the Talos Linux image
• define the endpoint for the Kubernetes API and generate your machine configurations
• configure Talos Linux by applying machine configurations to the machines
• configure talosctl
• bootstrap Kubernetes

Prerequisites

talosctl

talosctl is a CLI tool which interfaces with the Talos API. Talos Linux has no SSH access: talosctl is the tool you use to interact with the operating system on the machines.

Install talosctl before continuing:

curl -sL https://talos.dev/install | sh

Note: If you boot systems off the ISO, Talos on the ISO image runs in RAM and acts as an installer. The version of talosctl that is used to create the machine configurations controls the version of Talos Linux that is installed on the machines - NOT the image that the machines are initially booted off. For example, booting a machine off the Talos 1.3.7 ISO, but creating the initial configuration with talosctl binary of version 1.4.1, will result in a machine running Talos Linux version 1.4.1.

It is advisable to use the same version of talosctl as the version of the boot media used.

Network access

This guide assumes that the systems being installed have outgoing access to the internet, allowing them to pull installer and container images, query NTP, etc. If needed, see the documentation on registry proxies, local registries, and airgapped installation.

Acquire the Talos Linux image and boot machines

The most general way to install Talos Linux is to use the ISO image.

The latest ISO image can be found on the Github Releases page:

• X86: https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/releases/download/v1.6.7/metal-amd64.iso
• ARM64: https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/releases/download/v1.6.7/metal-arm64.iso

When booted from the ISO, Talos will run in RAM and will not install to disk until provided a configuration. Thus, it is safe to boot any machine from the ISO.

At this point, you should:

• boot one machine off the ISO to be the control plane node
• boot one or more machines off the same ISO to be the workers

Alternative Booting

For network booting and self-built media, see Production Notes. There are installation methods specific to specific platforms, such as pre-built AMIs for AWS - check the specific Installation Guides.)

Define the Kubernetes Endpoint

In order to configure Kubernetes, Talos needs to know what the endpoint of the Kubernetes API Server will be.

Because we are only creating a single control plane node in this guide, we can use the control plane node directly as the Kubernetes API endpoint.

Identify the IP address or DNS name of the control plane node that was booted above, and convert it to a fully-qualified HTTPS URL endpoint address for the Kubernetes API Server which (by default) runs on port 6443. The endpoint should be formatted like:

• https://192.168.0.2:6443
• https://kube.mycluster.mydomain.com:6443

NOTE: For a production cluster, you should have three control plane nodes, and have the endpoint allocate traffic to all three - see Production Notes.

Accessing the Talos API

Administrative tasks are performed by calling the Talos API (usually with talosctl) on Talos Linux control plane nodes - thus, ensure your control plane node is directly reachable on TCP port 50000 from the workstation where you run the talosctl client. This may require changing firewall rules or cloud provider access-lists.

For production configurations, see Production Notes.

Configure Talos Linux

When Talos boots without a configuration, such as when booting off the Talos ISO, it enters maintenance mode and waits for a configuration to be provided.

A configuration can be passed in on boot via kernel parameters or metadata servers. See Production Notes.

Unlike traditional Linux, Talos Linux is not configured by SSHing to the server and issuing commands. Instead, the entire state of the machine is defined by a machine config file which is passed to the server. This allows machines to be managed in a declarative way, and lends itself to GitOps and modern operations paradigms. The state of a machine is completely defined by, and can be reproduced from, the machine configuration file.

To generate the machine configurations for a cluster, run this command on the workstation where you installed talosctl:

talosctl gen config <cluster-name> <cluster-endpoint>

cluster-name is an arbitrary name, used as a label in your local client configuration. It should be unique in the configuration on your local workstation.

cluster-endpoint is the Kubernetes Endpoint you constructed from the control plane node’s IP address or DNS name above. It should be a complete URL, with https:// and port.

For example:

$ talosctl gen config mycluster https://192.168.0.2:6443
generating PKI and tokens
created /Users/taloswork/controlplane.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/worker.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/talosconfig

When you run this command, three files are created in your current directory:

• controlplane.yaml
• worker.yaml
• talosconfig

The .yaml files are Machine Configs: they describe everything from what disk Talos should be installed on, to network settings. The controlplane.yaml file also describes how Talos should form a Kubernetes cluster.

The talosconfig file is your local client configuration file, used to connect to and authenticate access to the cluster.

Controlplane and Worker

The two types of Machine Configs correspond to the two roles of Talos nodes, control plane nodes (which run both the Talos and Kubernetes control planes) and worker nodes (which run the workloads).

The main difference between Controlplane Machine Config files and Worker Machine Config files is that the former contains information about how to form the Kubernetes cluster.

Modifying the Machine configs

The generated Machine Configs have defaults that work for most cases. They use DHCP for interface configuration, and install to /dev/sda.

Sometimes, you will need to modify the generated files to work with your systems. A common case is needing to change the installation disk. If you try to to apply the machine config to a node, and get an error like the below, you need to specify a different installation disk:

$ talosctl apply-config --insecure -n 192.168.0.2 --file controlplane.yaml
error applying new configuration: rpc error: code = InvalidArgument desc = configuration validation failed: 1 error occurred:
    * specified install disk does not exist: "/dev/sda"

You can verify which disks your nodes have by using the talosctl disks --insecure command.

Insecure mode is needed at this point as the PKI infrastructure has not yet been set up.

For example, the talosctl disks command below shows that the system has a vda drive, not an sda:

$ talosctl -n 192.168.0.2 disks --insecure
DEV        MODEL   SERIAL   TYPE   UUID   WWID  MODALIAS                    NAME   SIZE    BUS_PATH
/dev/vda   -       -        HDD    -      -      virtio:d00000002v00001AF4   -      69 GB   /pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/virtio2/

In this case, you would modify the controlplane.yaml and worker.yaml files and edit the line:

install:
  disk: /dev/sda # The disk used for installations.

to reflect vda instead of sda.

For information on customizing your machine configurations (such as to specify the version of Kubernetes), using machine configuration patches, or customizing configurations for individual machines (such as setting static IP addresses), see the Production Notes.

Understand talosctl, endpoints and nodes

It is important to understand the concept of endpoints and nodes. In short: endpoints are where talosctl sends commands to, but the command operates on the specified nodes. The endpoint will forward the command to the nodes, if needed.

Endpoints

Endpoints are the IP addresses of control plane nodes, to which the talosctl client directly talks.

Endpoints automatically proxy requests destined to another node in the cluster. This means that you only need access to the control plane nodes in order to manage the rest of the cluster.

You can pass in --endpoints <Control Plane IP Address> or -e <Control Plane IP Address> to the current talosctl command.

In this tutorial setup, the endpoint will always be the single control plane node.

Nodes

Nodes are the target(s) you wish to perform the operation on.

When specifying nodes, the IPs and/or hostnames are as seen by the endpoint servers, not as from the client. This is because all connections are proxied through the endpoints.

You may provide -n or --nodes to any talosctl command to supply the node or (comma-separated) nodes on which you wish to perform the operation.

For example, to see the containers running on node 192.168.0.200, by routing the containers command through the control plane endpoint 192.168.0.2:

talosctl -e 192.168.0.2 -n 192.168.0.200 containers

To see the etcd logs on both nodes 192.168.0.10 and 192.168.0.11:

talosctl -e 192.168.0.2 -n 192.168.0.10,192.168.0.11 logs etcd

For a more in-depth discussion of Endpoints and Nodes, please see talosctl.

Apply Configuration

To apply the Machine Configs, you need to know the machines’ IP addresses.

Talos prints the IP addresses of the machines on the console during the boot process:

[4.605369] [talos] task loadConfig (1/1): this machine is reachable at:
[4.607358] [talos] task loadConfig (1/1):   192.168.0.2

If you do not have console access, the IP address may also be discoverable from your DHCP server.

Once you have the IP address, you can then apply the correct configuration. Apply the controlplane.yaml file to the control plane node, and the worker.yaml file to all the worker node(s).

  talosctl apply-config --insecure \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 \
    --file controlplane.yaml

The --insecure flag is necessary because the PKI infrastructure has not yet been made available to the node. Note: the connection will be encrypted, but not authenticated.

When using the --insecure flag, it is not necessary to specify an endpoint.

Default talosconfig configuration file

You reference which configuration file to use by the --talosconfig parameter:

talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 -e 192.168.0.2 version

Note that talosctl comes with tooling to help you integrate and merge this configuration into the default talosctl configuration file. See Production Notes for more information.

While getting started, a common mistake is referencing a configuration context for a different cluster, resulting in authentication or connection failures. Thus it is recommended to explicitly pass in the configuration file while becoming familiar with Talos Linux.

Kubernetes Bootstrap

Bootstrapping your Kubernetes cluster with Talos is as simple as calling talosctl bootstrap on your control plane node:

talosctl bootstrap --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2 \
  --talosconfig=./talosconfig

The bootstrap operation should only be called ONCE on a SINGLE control plane node. (If you have multiple control plane nodes, it doesn’t matter which one you issue the bootstrap command against.)

At this point, Talos will form an etcd cluster, and start the Kubernetes control plane components.

After a few moments, you will be able to download your Kubernetes client configuration and get started:

  talosctl kubeconfig --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2

Running this command will add (merge) you new cluster into your local Kubernetes configuration.

If you would prefer the configuration to not be merged into your default Kubernetes configuration file, pass in a filename:

  talosctl kubeconfig alternative-kubeconfig --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2

You should now be able to connect to Kubernetes and see your nodes:

  kubectl get nodes

And use talosctl to explore your cluster:

talosctl --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2 health \
   --talosconfig=./talosconfig
talosctl --nodes 192.168.0.2 --endpoints 192.168.0.2 dashboard \
   --talosconfig=./talosconfig

For a list of all the commands and operations that talosctl provides, see the CLI reference.

4 - Production Clusters

This document explains recommendations for running Talos Linux in production.

Acquire the installation image

Alternative Booting

For network booting and self-built media, you can use the published kernel and initramfs images:

• X86: vmlinuz-amd64 initramfs-amd64.xz
• ARM64: vmlinuz-arm64 initramfs-arm64.xz

Note that to use alternate booting, there are a number of required kernel parameters. Please see the kernel docs for more information.

Control plane nodes

For a production, highly available Kubernetes cluster, it is recommended to use three control plane nodes. Using five nodes can provide greater fault tolerance, but imposes more replication overhead and can result in worse performance.

Boot all three control plane nodes at this point. They will boot Talos Linux, and come up in maintenance mode, awaiting a configuration.

Decide the Kubernetes Endpoint

The Kubernetes API Server endpoint, in order to be highly available, should be configured in a way that uses all available control plane nodes. There are three common ways to do this: using a load-balancer, using Talos Linux’s built in VIP functionality, or using multiple DNS records.

Dedicated Load-balancer

If you are using a cloud provider or have your own load-balancer (such as HAProxy, Nginx reverse proxy, or an F5 load-balancer), a dedicated load balancer is a natural choice. Create an appropriate frontend for the endpoint, listening on TCP port 6443, and point the backends at the addresses of each of the Talos control plane nodes. Your Kubernetes endpoint will be the IP address or DNS name of the load balancer front end, with the port appended (e.g. https://myK8s.mydomain.io:6443).

Note: an HTTP load balancer can’t be used, as Kubernetes API server does TLS termination and mutual TLS authentication.

Layer 2 VIP Shared IP

Talos has integrated support for serving Kubernetes from a shared/virtual IP address. This requires Layer 2 connectivity between control plane nodes.

Choose an unused IP address on the same subnet as the control plane nodes for the VIP. For instance, if your control plane node IPs are:

• 192.168.0.10
• 192.168.0.11
• 192.168.0.12

you could choose the IP 192.168.0.15 as your VIP IP address. (Make sure that 192.168.0.15 is not used by any other machine and is excluded from DHCP ranges.)

Once chosen, form the full HTTPS URL from this IP:

https://192.168.0.15:6443

If you create a DNS record for this IP, note you will need to use the IP address itself, not the DNS name, to configure the shared IP (machine.network.interfaces[].vip.ip) in the Talos configuration.

After the machine configurations are generated, you will want to edit the controlplane.yaml file to activate the VIP:

machine:
    network:
     interfaces:
      - interface: enp2s0
        dhcp: true
        vip:
          ip: 192.168.0.15

For more information about using a shared IP, see the related Guide

DNS records

Add multiple A or AAAA records (one for each control plane node) to a DNS name.

For instance, you could add:

kube.cluster1.mydomain.com  IN  A  192.168.0.10
kube.cluster1.mydomain.com  IN  A  192.168.0.11
kube.cluster1.mydomain.com  IN  A  192.168.0.12

where the IP addresses are those of the control plane nodes.

Then, your endpoint would be:

https://kube.cluster1.mydomain.com:6443

Multihoming

If your machines are multihomed, i.e., they have more than one IPv4 and/or IPv6 addresss other than loopback, then additional configuration is required. A point to note is that the machines may become multihomed via privileged workloads.

Multihoming and etcd

The etcd cluster needs to establish a mesh of connections among the members. It is done using the so-called advertised address - each node learns the others’ addresses as they are advertised. It is crucial that these IP addresses are stable, i.e., that each node always advertises the same IP address. Moreover, it is beneficial to control them to establish the correct routes between the members and, e.g., avoid congested paths. In Talos, these addresses are controlled using the cluster.etcd.advertisedSubnets configuration key.

Multihoming and kubelets

Stable IP addressing for kubelets (i.e., nodeIP) is not strictly necessary but highly recommended as it ensures that, e.g., kube-proxy and CNI routing take the desired routes. Analogously to etcd, for kubelets this is controlled via machine.kubelet.nodeIP.validSubnets.

Example

Let’s assume that we have a cluster with two networks:

• public network
• private network 192.168.0.0/16

We want to use the private network for etcd and kubelet communication:

machine:
  kubelet:
    nodeIP:
      validSubnets:
        - 192.168.0.0/16
#...
cluster:
  etcd:
    advertisedSubnets: # listenSubnets defaults to advertisedSubnets if not set explicitly
      - 192.168.0.0/16

This way we ensure that the etcd cluster will use the private network for communication and the kubelets will use the private network for communication with the control plane.

Load balancing the Talos API

The talosctl tool provides built-in client-side load-balancing across control plane nodes, so usually you do not need to configure a load balancer for the Talos API.

However, if the control plane nodes are not directly reachable from the workstation where you run talosctl, then configure a load balancer to forward TCP port 50000 to the control plane nodes.

Note: Because the Talos Linux API uses gRPC and mutual TLS, it cannot be proxied by a HTTP/S proxy, but only by a TCP load balancer.

If you create a load balancer to forward the Talos API calls, the load balancer IP or hostname will be used as the endpoint for talosctl.

Add the load balancer IP or hostname to the .machine.certSANs field of the machine configuration file.

Do not use Talos Linux’s built in VIP function for accessing the Talos API. In the event of an error in etcd, the VIP will not function, and you will not be able to access the Talos API to recover.

Configure Talos

In many installation methods, a configuration can be passed in on boot.

For example, Talos can be booted with the talos.config kernel argument set to an HTTP(s) URL from which it should receive its configuration. Where a PXE server is available, this is much more efficient than manually configuring each node. If you do use this method, note that Talos requires a number of other kernel commandline parameters. See required kernel parameters.

Similarly, if creating EC2 kubernetes clusters, the configuration file can be passed in as --user-data to the aws ec2 run-instances command. See generally the Installation Guide for the platform being deployed.

Separating out secrets

When generating the configuration files for a Talos Linux cluster, it is recommended to start with generating a secrets bundle which should be saved in a secure location. This bundle can be used to generate machine or client configurations at any time:

talosctl gen secrets -o secrets.yaml

The secrets.yaml can also be extracted from the existing controlplane machine configuration with talosctl gen secrets --from-controlplane-config controlplane.yaml -o secrets.yaml command.

Now, we can generate the machine configuration for each node:

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml <cluster-name> <cluster-endpoint>

Here, cluster-name is an arbitrary name for the cluster, used in your local client configuration as a label. It should be unique in the configuration on your local workstation.

The cluster-endpoint is the Kubernetes Endpoint you selected from above. This is the Kubernetes API URL, and it should be a complete URL, with https:// and port. (The default port is 6443, but you may have configured your load balancer to forward a different port.) For example:

$ talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443
generating PKI and tokens
created controlplane.yaml
created worker.yaml
created talosconfig

Customizing Machine Configuration

The generated machine configuration provides sane defaults for most cases, but can be modified to fit specific needs.

Some machine configuration options are available as flags for the talosctl gen config command, for example setting a specific Kubernetes version:

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml --kubernetes-version 1.25.4 my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443

Other modifications are done with machine configuration patches. Machine configuration patches can be applied with talosctl gen config command:

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml --config-patch-control-plane @cni.patch my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443

Note: @cni.patch means that the patch is read from a file named cni.patch.

Machine Configs as Templates

Individual machines may need different settings: for instance, each may have a different static IP address.

When different files are needed for machines of the same type, there are two supported flows:

1. Use the talosctl gen config command to generate a template, and then patch the template for each machine with talosctl machineconfig patch.
2. Generate each machine configuration file separately with talosctl gen config while applying patches.

For example, given a machine configuration patch which sets the static machine hostname:

# worker1.patch
machine:
  network:
    hostname: worker1

Either of the following commands will generate a worker machine configuration file with the hostname set to worker1:

$ talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443
created /Users/taloswork/controlplane.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/worker.yaml
created /Users/taloswork/talosconfig
$ talosctl machineconfig patch worker.yaml --patch @worker1.patch --output worker1.yaml

talosctl gen config --with-secrets secrets.yaml --config-patch-worker @worker1.patch --output-types worker -o worker1.yaml my-cluster https://192.168.64.15:6443

Apply Configuration while validating the node identity

If you have console access you can extract the server certificate fingerprint and use it for an additional layer of validation:

  talosctl apply-config --insecure \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 \
    --cert-fingerprint xA9a1t2dMxB0NJ0qH1pDzilWbA3+DK/DjVbFaJBYheE= \
    --file cp0.yaml

Using the fingerprint allows you to be sure you are sending the configuration to the correct machine, but is completely optional. After the configuration is applied to a node, it will reboot. Repeat this process for each of the nodes in your cluster.

Further details about talosctl, endpoints and nodes

Endpoints

When passed multiple endpoints, talosctl will automatically load balance requests to, and fail over between, all endpoints.

You can pass in --endpoints <IP Address1>,<IP Address2> as a comma separated list of IP/DNS addresses to the current talosctl command. You can also set the endpoints in your talosconfig, by calling talosctl config endpoint <IP Address1> <IP Address2>. Note: these are space separated, not comma separated.

As an example, if the IP addresses of our control plane nodes are:

• 192.168.0.2
• 192.168.0.3
• 192.168.0.4

We would set those in the talosconfig with:

  talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig \
    config endpoint 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.3 192.168.0.4

Nodes

The node is the target you wish to perform the API call on.

It is possible to set a default set of nodes in the talosconfig file, but our recommendation is to explicitly pass in the node or nodes to be operated on with each talosctl command. For a more in-depth discussion of Endpoints and Nodes, please see talosctl.

Default configuration file

You can reference which configuration file to use directly with the --talosconfig parameter:

  talosctl --talosconfig=./talosconfig \
    --nodes 192.168.0.2 version

However, talosctl comes with tooling to help you integrate and merge this configuration into the default talosctl configuration file. This is done with the merge option.

  talosctl config merge ./talosconfig

This will merge your new talosconfig into the default configuration file ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/talos/config.yaml), creating it if necessary. Like Kubernetes, the talosconfig configuration files has multiple “contexts” which correspond to multiple clusters. The <cluster-name> you chose above will be used as the context name.

Kubernetes Bootstrap

Bootstrapping your Kubernetes cluster by simply calling the bootstrap command against any of your control plane nodes (or the loadbalancer, if used for the Talos API endpoint).:

  talosctl bootstrap --nodes 192.168.0.2

The bootstrap operation should only be called ONCE and only on a SINGLE control plane node!

At this point, Talos will form an etcd cluster, generate all of the core Kubernetes assets, and start the Kubernetes control plane components.

After a few moments, you will be able to download your Kubernetes client configuration and get started:

  talosctl kubeconfig

Running this command will add (merge) you new cluster into your local Kubernetes configuration.

If you would prefer the configuration to not be merged into your default Kubernetes configuration file, pass in a filename:

  talosctl kubeconfig alternative-kubeconfig

You should now be able to connect to Kubernetes and see your nodes:

  kubectl get nodes

And use talosctl to explore your cluster:

  talosctl -n <NODEIP> dashboard

For a list of all the commands and operations that talosctl provides, see the CLI reference.

5 - System Requirements

Minimum Requirements

Recommended

These requirements are similar to that of Kubernetes.

Storage

Talos Linux itself only requires less than 100 MB of disk space, but the EPHEMERAL partition is used to store pulled images, container work directories, and so on. Thus a minimum is 10 GiB of disk space is required. 100 GiB is desired. Note, however, that because Talos Linux assumes complete control of the disk it is installed on, so that it can control the partition table for image based upgrades, you cannot partition the rest of the disk for use by workloads.

Thus it is recommended to install Talos Linux on a small, dedicated disk - using a Terabyte sized SSD for the Talos install disk would be wasteful. Sidero Labs recommends having separate disks (apart from the Talos install disk) to be used for storage.

6 - What's New in Talos 1.6.0

See also upgrade notes for important changes.

Breaking Changes

Linux Firmware

Starting with Talos 1.6, Linux firmware is not included in the default initramfs.

Users that need Linux firmware can pull them as an extension during install time using the Image Factory service. If the initial boot requires firmware, a custom ISO can be built with the firmware included using the Image Factory service or using the imager. This also ensures that the linux-firmware is not tied to a specific Talos version.

The list of firmware packages which were removed from the default initramfs and are now available as extensions:

• bnx2 and bnx2x firmware (Broadcom NetXtreme II)
• Intel ICE firmware (Intel(R) Ethernet Controller 800 Series)

Network Device Selectors

Previously, network device selectors only matched the first link, now the configuration is applied to all matching links.

talosctl images command

The command images deprecated in Talos 1.5 was removed, please use talosctl images default instead.

.persist Machine Configuration Option

The option .persist deprecated in Talos 1.5 was removed, the machine configuration is always persisted.

New Features

Kubernetes n-5 Version Support

Talos Linux starting with version 1.6 supports the latest Kubernetes n-5 versions, for release 1.6.0 this means support for Kubernetes versions 1.24-1.29. This allows users to make it easier to upgrade to new Talos Linux versions without having to upgrade Kubernetes at the same time.

See Kubernetes release support for the list of supported versions by Kubernetes project.

OAuth2 Machine Config Flow

Talos Linux when running on the metal platform can be configured to authenticate the machine configuration download using OAuth2 device flow.

Ingress Firewall

Talos Linux now supports configuring the ingress firewall rules.

Improvements

Component Updates

• Linux: 6.1.67
• Kubernetes: 1.29.0
• containerd: 1.7.10
• runc: 1.1.10
• etcd: 3.5.11
• CoreDNS: 1.11.1
• Flannel: 0.23.0

Talos is built with Go 1.21.5.

Extension Services

Talos now starts Extension Services early in the boot process, this allows guest agents packaged as extension services to be started in maintenance mode.

Flannel Configuration

Talos Linux now supports customizing default Flannel manifest with extra arguments for flanneld:

cluster:
  network:
    cni:
      flannel:
        extraArgs:
          - --iface-can-reach=192.168.1.1

Kernel Arguments

Talos and Imager now supports dropping kernel arguments specified in .machine.install.extraKernelArgs or as --extra-kernel-arg to imager. Any kernel argument that starts with a - is dropped. Kernel arguments to be dropped can be specified either as -<key> which would remove all arguments that start with <key> or as -<key>=<value> which would remove the exact argument.

For example, console=ttyS0 can be dropped by specifying -console=ttyS0 as an extra argument.

kube-scheduler Configuration

Talos now supports specifying the kube-scheduler configuration in the Talos configuration file. It can be set under cluster.scheduler.config and kube-scheduler will be automatically configured to with the correct flags.

Kubernetes Node Taint Configuration

Similar to machine.nodeLabels Talos Linux now provides machine.nodeTaints machine configuration field to configure Kubernetes Node taints.

Kubelet Credential Provider Configuration

Talos now supports specifying the kubelet credential provider configuration in the Talos configuration file. It can be set under machine.kubelet.credentialProviderConfig and kubelet will be automatically configured to with the correct flags. The credential binaries are expected to be present under /usr/local/lib/kubelet/credentialproviders. Talos System Extensions can be used to install the credential binaries.

KubePrism

KubePrism is enabled by default on port 7445.

Sysctl

Talos now handles sysctl/sysfs key names in line with sysctl.conf(5):

• if the first separator is ‘/’, no conversion is done
• if the first separator is ‘.’, dots and slashes are remapped

Example (both sysctls are equivalent):

machine:
  sysctls:
    net/ipv6/conf/eth0.100/disable_ipv6: "1"
    net.ipv6.conf.eth0/100.disable_ipv6: "1"

User Disks

Talos Linux now supports specifying user disks in .machine.disks machine configuration links via udev symlinks, e.g. /dev/disk/by-id/XXXX.

Packet Capture

Talos Linux provides more performant implementation server-side for the packet capture API (talosctl pcap CLI).

Memory Usage and Performance

Talos Linux core components now use less memory and start faster.

7 - Support Matrix

Platform Tiers

• Tier 1: Automated tests, high-priority fixes.
• Tier 2: Tested from time to time, medium-priority bugfixes.
• Tier 3: Not tested by core Talos team, community tested.

Tier 1

• Metal
• AWS
• GCP

Tier 2

• Azure
• Digital Ocean
• OpenStack
• VMWare

Tier 3

• Exoscale
• Hetzner
• nocloud
• Oracle Cloud
• Scaleway
• Vultr
• Upcloud

8 - Troubleshooting

In this guide we assume that Talos is configured with default features enabled, such as Discovery Service and KubePrism. If these features are disabled, some of the troubleshooting steps may not apply or may need to be adjusted.

This guide is structured so that it can be followed step-by-step, skip sections which are not relevant to your issue.

Network Configuration

As Talos Linux is an API-based operating system, it is important to have networking configured so that the API can be accessed. Some information can be gathered from the Interactive Dashboard which is available on the machine console.

When running in the cloud the networking should be configured automatically. Whereas when running on bare-metal it may need more specific configuration, see networking metal configuration guide.

Talos API

The Talos API runs on port 50000. Control plane nodes should always serve the Talos API, while worker nodes require access to the control plane nodes to issue TLS certificates for the workers.

Firewall Issues

Make sure that the firewall is not blocking port 50000, and communication on ports 50000/50001 inside the cluster.

Client Configuration Issues

Make sure to use correct talosconfig client configuration file matching your cluster. See getting started for more information.

The most common issue is that talosctl gen config writes talosconfig to the file in the current directory, while talosctl by default picks up the configuration from the default location (~/.talos/config). The path to the configuration file can be specified with --talosconfig flag to talosctl.

Conflict on Kubernetes and Host Subnets

If talosctl returns an error saying that certificate IPs are empty, it might be due to a conflict between Kubernetes and host subnets. The Talos API runs on the host network, but it automatically excludes Kubernetes pod & network subnets from the useable set of addresses.

Talos default machine configuration specifies the following Kubernetes pod and subnet IPv4 CIDRs: 10.244.0.0/16 and 10.96.0.0/12. If the host network is configured with one of these subnets, change the machine configuration to use a different subnet.

Wrong Endpoints

The talosctl CLI connects to the Talos API via the specified endpoints, which should be a list of control plane machine addresses. The client will automatically retry on other endpoints if there are unavailable endpoints.

Worker nodes should not be used as the endpoint, as they are not able to forward request to other nodes.

The VIP should never be used as Talos API endpoint.

TCP Loadbalancer

When using a TCP loadbalancer, make sure the loadbalancer endpoint is included in the .machine.certSANs list in the machine configuration.

System Requirements

If minimum system requirements are not met, this might manifest itself in various ways, such as random failures when starting services, or failures to pull images from the container registry.

Running Health Checks

Talos Linux provides a set of basic health checks with talosctl health command which can be used to check the health of the cluster.

In the default mode, talosctl health uses information from the discovery to get the information about cluster members. This can be overridden with command line flags --control-plane-nodes and --worker-nodes.

Gathering Logs

While the logs and state of the system can be queried via the Talos API, it is often useful to gather the logs from all nodes in the cluster, and analyze them offline. The talosctl support command can be used to gather logs and other information from the nodes specified with --nodes flag (multiple nodes are supported).

Discovery and Cluster Membership

Talos Linux uses Discovery Service to discover other nodes in the cluster.

The list of members on each machine should be consistent: talosctl -n <IP> get members.

Some Members are Missing

Ensure connectivity to the discovery service (default is discovery.talos.dev:443), and that the discovery registry is not disabled.

Duplicate Members

Don’t use same base secrets to generate machine configuration for multiple clusters, as some secrets are used to identify members of the same cluster. So if the same machine configuration (or secrets) are used to repeatedly create and destroy clusters, the discovery service will see the same nodes as members of different clusters.

Removed Members are Still Present

Talos Linux removes itself from the discovery service when it is reset. If the machine was not reset, it might show up as a member of the cluster for the maximum TTL of the discovery service (30 minutes), and after that it will be automatically removed.

etcd Issues

etcd is the distributed key-value store used by Kubernetes to store its state. Talos Linux provides automation to manage etcd members running on control plane nodes. If etcd is not healthy, the Kubernetes API server will not be able to function correctly.

It is always recommended to run an odd number of etcd members, as with 3 or more members it provides fault tolerance for less than quorum member failures.

Common troubleshooting steps:

• check etcd service state with talosctl -n IP service etcd for each control plane node
• check etcd membership on each control plane node with talosctl -n IP etcd member list
• check etcd logs with talosctl -n IP logs etcd
• check etcd alarms with talosctl -n IP etcd alarm list

All etcd Services are Stuck in Pre State

Make sure that a single member was bootstrapped.

Check that the machine is able to pull the etcd container image, check talosctl dmesg for messages starting with retrying: prefix.

Some etcd Services are Stuck in Pre State

Make sure traffic is not blocked on port 2380 between controlplane nodes.

Check that etcd quorum is not lost.

Check that all control plane nodes are reported in talosctl get members output.

etcd Reports and Alarm

See etcd maintenance guide.

etcd Quorum is Lost

See disaster recovery guide.

Other Issues

etcd will only run on control plane nodes. If a node is designated as a worker node, you should not expect etcd to be running on it.

When a node boots for the first time, the etcd data directory (/var/lib/etcd) is empty, and it will only be populated when etcd is launched.

If the etcd service is crashing and restarting, check its logs with talosctl -n <IP> logs etcd. The most common reasons for crashes are:

• wrong arguments passed via extraArgs in the configuration;
• booting Talos on non-empty disk with an existing Talos installation, /var/lib/etcd contains data from the old cluster.

kubelet and Kubernetes Node Issues

The kubelet service should be running on all Talos nodes, and it is responsible for running Kubernetes pods, static pods (including control plane components), and registering the node with the Kubernetes API server.

If the kubelet doesn’t run on a control plane node, it will block the control plane components from starting.

The node will not be registered in Kubernetes until the Kubernetes API server is up and initial Kubernetes manifests are applied.

kubelet is not running

Check that kubelet image is available (talosctl image ls --namespace system).

Check kubelet logs with talosctl -n IP logs kubelet for startup errors:

• make sure Kubernetes version is supported with this Talos release
• make sure kubelet extra arguments and extra configuration supplied with Talos machine configuration is valid

Talos Complains about Node Not Found

kubelet hasn’t yet registered the node with the Kubernetes API server, this is expected during initial cluster bootstrap, the error will go away. If the message persists, check Kubernetes API health.

The Kubernetes controller manager (kube-controller-manager) is responsible for monitoring the certificate signing requests (CSRs) and issuing certificates for each of them. The kubelet is responsible for generating and submitting the CSRs for its associated node.

The state of any CSRs can be checked with kubectl get csr:

$ kubectl get csr
NAME        AGE   SIGNERNAME                                    REQUESTOR                 CONDITION
csr-jcn9j   14m   kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client-kubelet   system:bootstrap:q9pyzr   Approved,Issued
csr-p6b9q   14m   kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client-kubelet   system:bootstrap:q9pyzr   Approved,Issued
csr-sw6rm   14m   kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client-kubelet   system:bootstrap:q9pyzr   Approved,Issued
csr-vlghg   14m   kubernetes.io/kube-apiserver-client-kubelet   system:bootstrap:q9pyzr   Approved,Issued

kubectl get nodes Reports Wrong Internal IP

Configure the correct internal IP address with .machine.kubelet.nodeIP

kubectl get nodes Reports Wrong External IP

Talos Linux doesn’t manage the external IP, it is managed with the Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager.

kubectl get nodes Reports Wrong Node Name

By default, the Kubernetes node name is derived from the hostname. Update the hostname using the machine configuration, cloud configuration, or via DHCP server.

Node Is Not Ready

A Node in Kubernetes is marked as Ready only once its CNI is up. It takes a minute or two for the CNI images to be pulled and for the CNI to start. If the node is stuck in this state for too long, check CNI pods and logs with kubectl. Usually, CNI-related resources are created in kube-system namespace.

For example, for the default Talos Flannel CNI:

$ kubectl -n kube-system get pods
NAME                                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
...
kube-flannel-25drx                               1/1     Running   0          23m
kube-flannel-8lmb6                               1/1     Running   0          23m
kube-flannel-gl7nx                               1/1     Running   0          23m
kube-flannel-jknt9                               1/1     Running   0          23m
...

Duplicate/Stale Nodes

Talos Linux doesn’t remove Kubernetes nodes automatically, so if a node is removed from the cluster, it will still be present in Kubernetes. Remove the node from Kubernetes with kubectl delete node <node-name>.

Talos Complains about Certificate Errors on kubelet API

This error might appear during initial cluster bootstrap, and it will go away once the Kubernetes API server is up and the node is registered.

By default configuration, kubelet issues a self-signed server certificate, but when rotate-server-certificates feature is enabled, kubelet issues its certificate using kube-apiserver. Make sure the kubelet CSR is approved by the Kubernetes API server.

In either case, this error is not critical, as it only affects reporting of the pod status to Talos Linux.

Kubernetes Control Plane

The Kubernetes control plane consists of the following components:

• kube-apiserver - the Kubernetes API server
• kube-controller-manager - the Kubernetes controller manager
• kube-scheduler - the Kubernetes scheduler

Optionally, kube-proxy runs as a DaemonSet to provide pod-to-service communication.

coredns provides name resolution for the cluster.

CNI is not part of the control plane, but it is required for Kubernetes pods using pod networking.

Troubleshooting should always start with kube-apiserver, and then proceed to other components.

Talos Linux configures kube-apiserver to talk to the etcd running on the same node, so etcd must be healthy before kube-apiserver can start. The kube-controller-manager and kube-scheduler are configured to talk to the kube-apiserver on the same node, so they will not start until kube-apiserver is healthy.

Control Plane Static Pods

Talos should generate the static pod definitions for the Kubernetes control plane as resources:

$ talosctl -n <IP> get staticpods
NODE         NAMESPACE   TYPE        ID                        VERSION
172.20.0.2   k8s         StaticPod   kube-apiserver            1
172.20.0.2   k8s         StaticPod   kube-controller-manager   1
172.20.0.2   k8s         StaticPod   kube-scheduler            1

Talos should report that the static pod definitions are rendered for the kubelet:

$ talosctl -n <IP> dmesg | grep 'rendered new'
172.20.0.2: user: warning: [2023-04-26T19:17:52.550527204Z]: [talos] rendered new static pod {"component": "controller-runtime", "controller": "k8s.StaticPodServerController", "id": "kube-apiserver"}
172.20.0.2: user: warning: [2023-04-26T19:17:52.552186204Z]: [talos] rendered new static pod {"component": "controller-runtime", "controller": "k8s.StaticPodServerController", "id": "kube-controller-manager"}
172.20.0.2: user: warning: [2023-04-26T19:17:52.554607204Z]: [talos] rendered new static pod {"component": "controller-runtime", "controller": "k8s.StaticPodServerController", "id": "kube-scheduler"}

If the static pod definitions are not rendered, check etcd and kubelet service health (see above) and the controller runtime logs (talosctl logs controller-runtime).

Control Plane Pod Status

Initially the kube-apiserver component will not be running, and it takes some time before it becomes fully up during bootstrap (image should be pulled from the Internet, etc.)

The status of the control plane components on each of the control plane nodes can be checked with talosctl containers -k:

$ talosctl -n <IP> containers --kubernetes
NODE         NAMESPACE   ID                                                                                            IMAGE                                               PID    STATUS
172.20.0.2   k8s.io      kube-system/kube-apiserver-talos-default-controlplane-1                                       registry.k8s.io/pause:3.2                                2539   SANDBOX_READY
172.20.0.2   k8s.io      └─ kube-system/kube-apiserver-talos-default-controlplane-1:kube-apiserver:51c3aad7a271        registry.k8s.io/kube-apiserver:v1.29.3 2572   CONTAINER_RUNNING

The logs of the control plane components can be checked with talosctl logs --kubernetes (or with -k as a shorthand):

talosctl -n <IP> logs -k kube-system/kube-apiserver-talos-default-controlplane-1:kube-apiserver:51c3aad7a271

If the control plane component reports error on startup, check that:

• make sure Kubernetes version is supported with this Talos release
• make sure extra arguments and extra configuration supplied with Talos machine configuration is valid

Kubernetes Bootstrap Manifests

As part of the bootstrap process, Talos injects bootstrap manifests into Kubernetes API server. There are two kinds of these manifests: system manifests built-in into Talos and extra manifests downloaded (custom CNI, extra manifests in the machine config):

$ talosctl -n <IP> get manifests
NODE         NAMESPACE      TYPE       ID                               VERSION
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   00-kubelet-bootstrapping-token   1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   01-csr-approver-role-binding     1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   01-csr-node-bootstrap            1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   01-csr-renewal-role-binding      1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   02-kube-system-sa-role-binding   1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   03-default-pod-security-policy   1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   05-https://docs.projectcalico.org/manifests/calico.yaml   1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   10-kube-proxy                    1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   11-core-dns                      1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   11-core-dns-svc                  1
172.20.0.2   controlplane   Manifest   11-kube-config-in-cluster        1

Details of each manifest can be queried by adding -o yaml:

$ talosctl -n <IP> get manifests 01-csr-approver-role-binding --namespace=controlplane -o yaml
node: 172.20.0.2
metadata:
    namespace: controlplane
    type: Manifests.kubernetes.talos.dev
    id: 01-csr-approver-role-binding
    version: 1
    phase: running
spec:
    - apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
      kind: ClusterRoleBinding
      metadata:
        name: system-bootstrap-approve-node-client-csr
      roleRef:
        apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
        kind: ClusterRole
        name: system:certificates.k8s.io:certificatesigningrequests:nodeclient
      subjects:
        - apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
          kind: Group
          name: system:bootstrappers

Other Control Plane Components

Once the Kubernetes API server is up, other control plane components issues can be troubleshooted with kubectl:

kubectl get nodes -o wide
kubectl get pods -o wide --all-namespaces
kubectl describe pod -n NAMESPACE POD
kubectl logs -n NAMESPACE POD

Kubernetes API

The Kubernetes API client configuration (kubeconfig) can be retrieved using Talos API with talosctl -n <IP> kubeconfig command. Talos Linux mostly doesn’t depend on the Kubernetes API endpoint for the cluster, but Kubernetes API endpoint should be configured correctly for external access to the cluster.

Kubernetes Control Plane Endpoint

The Kubernetes control plane endpoint is the single canonical URL by which the Kubernetes API is accessed. Especially with high-availability (HA) control planes, this endpoint may point to a load balancer or a DNS name which may have multiple A and AAAA records.

Like Talos’ own API, the Kubernetes API uses mutual TLS, client certs, and a common Certificate Authority (CA). Unlike general-purpose websites, there is no need for an upstream CA, so tools such as cert-manager, Let’s Encrypt, or products such as validated TLS certificates are not required. Encryption, however, is, and hence the URL scheme will always be https://.

By default, the Kubernetes API server in Talos runs on port 6443. As such, the control plane endpoint URLs for Talos will almost always be of the form https://endpoint:6443. (The port, since it is not the https default of 443 is required.) The endpoint above may be a DNS name or IP address, but it should be directed to the set of all controlplane nodes, as opposed to a single one.

As mentioned above, this can be achieved by a number of strategies, including:

• an external load balancer
• DNS records
• Talos-builtin shared IP (VIP)
• BGP peering of a shared IP (such as with kube-vip)

Using a DNS name here is a good idea, since it allows any other option, while offering a layer of abstraction. It allows the underlying IP addresses to change without impacting the canonical URL.

Unlike most services in Kubernetes, the API server runs with host networking, meaning that it shares the network namespace with the host. This means you can use the IP address(es) of the host to refer to the Kubernetes API server.

For availability of the API, it is important that any load balancer be aware of the health of the backend API servers, to minimize disruptions during common node operations like reboots and upgrades.

Miscellaneous

Checking Controller Runtime Logs

Talos runs a set of controllers which operate on resources to build and support machine operations.

Some debugging information can be queried from the controller logs with talosctl logs controller-runtime:

talosctl -n <IP> logs controller-runtime

Controllers continuously run a reconcile loop, so at any time, they may be starting, failing, or restarting. This is expected behavior.

If there are no new messages in the controller-runtime log, it means that the controllers have successfully finished reconciling, and that the current system state is the desired system state.