The source repository for the rancher/hyperkube image used by RKE clusters. The image contains everything needed to run each Kubernetes component in a container. Images are automatically pushed to Docker Hub on tag. See Versioning and Releasing for more information about the tags. There is a branch for each minor Kubernetes version.

Due to an issue with cri-dockerd causing high cpu usage when collecting metrics from the Docker daemon, we started to package the kubelet binary from our own source (rancher/kubernetes) starting with the following versions:

• v1.24.10-rancher3 and higher
• v1.25.6-rancher3 and higher
• v1.26.4-rancher1 and higher

More information about the high cpu usage issue can be found in this issue.

• Check out the correct branch for the minor version
• Check if the latest rancher/hyperkube-base image is used in the Dockerfile
• Change K8S_VERSION in Makefile to the correct version
• Run make build to build an image with the new version

Tags contain the Kubernetes version and a suffix (default -rancher1), for example v1.26.7-rancher1. The suffix indicates the version iteration of the image. If there is a change in the rancher/hyperkube image for the same Kubernetes patch version, the number in the suffix will be incremented.

If you are releasing a new Kubenetes patch version, the suffix should be -rancher1. If you are making a change in an existing Kubernetes version, you should increment the number in the suffix (if current suffix is -rancher1, the new suffix will be -rancher2).

To release a new rancher/hyperkube image:

• Make sure you have checked out the correct branch and that the branch is up-to-date
• Create the correct tag
• Push the tag

Check Drone Publish for the build progress.

• rancher/hyperkube-base: The base image used by rancher/hyperkube
• Upstream Kubernetes server binaries, published on each GitHub release in kubernetes/kubernetes
• rancher/kubernetes: The source for building our own kubelet binary (see kubelet binary source change for more info)