It is painful to deploying a Kubernetes cluster in mainland China. The installation requires access to Google servers, which is not so easy for every one. Fortunately, there are mirrors or alternative ways. I’ll use Docker v1.13 and Kubernetes v1.11 in the article.

1. Install Docker

CentOS SCL should be enabled first.

2. Install Kubernetes

2.1 Add the Aliyun mirror for Kubernetes packages

2.2 Precheck OS environmemt

Run the init command by specify the version, the access to Google server is avoided. The script also advices you to turn off firewalld, swap, selinux and enable kernel parameters:

Open /etc/sysconfig/selinux, change enforcing to permissive.
Create /etc/sysctl.d/k8s.conf with content:

Remember to comment out swap volumes from /etc/fstab.

2.3 Pull Kubernates images

Pull the Kubernetes images from docker/docker-cn mirror maintained by anjia0532. These are minimal images required for a Kubernetes master installation.

These version numbers comes from the kubeadm init command if you cannot access Google servers. These images should be retagged to gcr.io ones before next steps, or the kubeadm command line would not find them:

Now the output of docker images looks like:

Also KUBE_REPO_PREFIX and other environment variables can be used to customize the prefix. I have no time to verify them.

2.4 Start the Kubernetes master

Run the init script again and it will success with further guidelines:

Run the mkdir/cp/chown command to enable kubectl usage. Then add the weave pod network. It may take some time, since images are pulled.

Now the master is finished, verify with the Ready status:

2.4 Start the Kubernetes node(slave)

A Kubernetes node only requires kube-proxy-amd64 and pause images, pull these ones:

Weave images can also been prefetched:

Join the node to our Kubernetes master by running the command line in the kubeadm init output:

3. Verify Kubernetes cluster status

Verify nodes with:

Verify internal pods with:

If the status of a pod is not Running, get the detailed info from:

If something goes wrong, and you cannot restore from it, simply reset the master/node:

4. Install Kubernetes Dashboard

By default, all user pods are allocated on Kubernetes nodes(slaves). Pull the dashboard image in advance on the node machine:

Install with alternative setup, since recommended setup is not so friendly in a development envronment:

Refer here for remote access:

Change type: ClusterIP to type: NodePort and save file. Next we need to check port on which Dashboard was exposed.

Now, you can access with: http://<master-ip>:31023/.
You can grant admin grant full admin privileges to Dashboard’s Service Account in the development environment for convenience:

5. Troubleshoting

In my office environment, errors occur and the coredns are always in CrashLoopBackOff status:

I Googled a lot, read answers from Stackoverflow and Github, reset iptables/docker/kubernetes, but still failed to solve it. There ARE unresolved issues like #60315. So I tried to switch to flannel network instead of weave. First, Kubernetes and weave need to be reset:

This time, initialize kubeadm and network with:

The flannel image can be pulled first:

Everything works. Also referred here.

Updated May 7, 2019: Kubernetes 1.13 finally add a command line switch to use an alternative repository. Simply run kubeadm with:

And verify with docker images.

Updated May 10, 2019: If using Ubuntu/Linuxmint, add repository with:

Updated June 3, 2019: flannel seems to have a close version dependency on kubernetes version. When deploying kubernetes 1.14, a specific git version should be used, according to the official document:

Updated Jan 11, 2022: Just deployed a new cluster with docker 20.10.12 & kubernetes 1.23.1.
1. kubeadm defaults to systemd, instead of cgroupfs as the container runtime cgroup driver. In docker case, edit /etc/docker/daemon.json, and restart docker service:

2. flannel script updated:

3. kubernetes dashboard script updated:

The recommended configuration enables HTTPS, and an auto-generated certificate is used. Now follow the document to create an admin user and get the login token: https://github.com/kubernetes/dashboard/blob/master/docs/user/access-control/creating-sample-user.md. Get the token with: