Running k3s inside WSL2 on a Surface Pro X

I’m a proud owner of a Surafe Pro X SQ2 which is an ARM64 device. If you’ve been reading me, you know I like to tinker with kubernetes and therefore I needed a solution for this device.

I remembered reading about k3s a lightweight kubernetes distro built for IoT & Edge computing, and decided to give it a try.

Installing k3s in WSL2

Download the binaries

wget https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/releases/download/v1.19.10%2Bk3s1/k3s-arm64

Rename the file

mv k3s-arm64 k3s

Make the file executable

chmod +x k3s

Move the file to /usr/local/bin

sudo mv k3s /usr/local/bin

Copy to k3s config file to $HOME/.kube

sudo cp /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml $HOME/.kube

Make current user owner of the k3s config file

sudo chown $USER $HOME/.kube/k3s.yaml

Running k3s

Run the k3s kubernetes server

sudo k3s server

Test k3s

From another WSL2 console window:

Add the k3s config file to KUBECONFIG environment variable

export KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config:$HOME/.kube/k3s.yaml

Use k3s context

kubectl config use-context default

Check all running pods

kubectl get po --all-namespaces

you should get an output similar to this one:

NAMESPACE NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
kube-system helm-install-traefik-mhhfz 0/1 Completed 0 20d
kube-system metrics-server-7b4f8b595-7cfsb 1/1 Running 1 20d
kube-system svclb-traefik-pqn56 2/2 Running 2 20d
kube-system coredns-66c464876b-pnpgm 1/1 Running 1 20d
kube-system local-path-provisioner-7ff9579c6-nhnbj 1/1 Running 6 20d
kube-system traefik-5dd496474-94lt5 1/1 Running 1 20d

Note: k3s uses: local-path-provisioner and saves volume data in the /var/lib/rancher/k3s/data folder

Hope it helps!!!