CNI Plugin

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Linkerd’s data plane works by transparently routing all TCP traffic to and from every meshed pod to its proxy. (See the Architecture doc.) This allows Linkerd to act without the application being aware.

By default, this rewiring is done with an Init Container that uses iptables to install routing rules for the pod, at pod startup time. However, this requires the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability; and in some clusters, this capability is not granted to pods.

To handle this, Linkerd can optionally run these iptables rules in a CNI plugin rather than in an Init Container. This avoids the need for a CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.

Note

Linkerd’s CNI plugin is designed to run in conjunction with your existing CNI plugin, using CNI chaining. It handles only the Linkerd-specific configuration and does not replace the need for a CNI plugin.

Installation

Usage of the Linkerd CNI plugin requires that the linkerd-cni DaemonSet be successfully installed on your cluster first, before installing the Linkerd control plane.

Using the CLI

To install the linkerd-cni DaemonSet, run:

linkerd install-cni | kubectl apply -f -

Once the DaemonSet is up and running, meshed pods should no longer use the linkerd-init Init Container. To accomplish this, use the --linkerd-cni-enabled flag when installing the control plane:

linkerd install --linkerd-cni-enabled | kubectl apply -f -

Using this option will set a cniEnabled flag in the linkerd-config ConfigMap. Proxy injections will read this field and omit the linkerd-init Init Container.

Using Helm

First ensure that your Helm local cache is updated:

helm repo update
helm search repo linkerd2-cni

Install the CNI DaemonSet:

# install the CNI plugin first
helm install linkerd2-cni linkerd2/linkerd2-cni

# ensure the plugin is installed and ready
linkerd check --pre --linkerd-cni-enabled

Note

For Helm versions < v3, --name flag has to specifically be passed. In Helm v3, It has been deprecated, and is the first argument as specified above.

At that point you are ready to install Linkerd with CNI enabled. Follow the Installing Linkerd with Helm instructions.

Additional configuration

The linkerd install-cni command includes additional flags that you can use to customize the installation. See linkerd install-cni --help for more information. Note that many of the flags are similar to the flags that can be used to configure the proxy when running linkerd inject. If you change a default when running linkerd install-cni, you will want to ensure that you make a corresponding change when running linkerd inject.

The most important flags are:

--dest-cni-net-dir: This is the directory on the node where the CNI Configuration resides. It defaults to: /etc/cni/net.d.
--dest-cni-bin-dir: This is the directory on the node where the CNI Plugin binaries reside. It defaults to: /opt/cni/bin.
--cni-log-level: Setting this to debug will allow more verbose logging. In order to view the CNI Plugin logs, you must be able to see the kubelet logs. One way to do this is to log onto the node and use journalctl -t kubelet. The string linkerd-cni: can be used as a search to find the plugin log output.

Upgrading the CNI plugin

Since the CNI plugin is basically stateless, there is no need for a separate upgrade command. If you are using the CLI to upgrade the CNI plugin you can just do:

linkerd install-cni | kubectl apply --prune -l linkerd.io/cni-resource=true -f -