Rancher private registry scripts do not properly tag images for RKE2 Windows node provisioning

[aiyengar2]

Rancher Server Setup

• Rancher version: 2.6.9
• Installation option (Docker install/Helm Chart): Doesn't matter
  • If Helm Chart, Kubernetes Cluster and version (RKE1, RKE2, k3s, EKS, etc):
• Proxy/Cert Details:

Information about the Cluster

• Kubernetes version: Not known, will update
• Cluster Type (Local/Downstream): Downstream
  • If downstream, what type of cluster? (Custom/Imported or specify provider for Hosted/Infrastructure Provider): Custom Windows RKE2 (vsphere)

    Scripts rancher-save-images.ps1 and rancher-load-images.ps1 tag the OS version on windows images. When the RKE2 provisioned tries to pull the wins:0.4.7 image, it is not available on the private registry

    To Reproduce

    • run rancher-save-images.ps1
    • run rancher-load-images.ps1
    • Try to provision a Windows cluster

    Result

    provisioning a node will fail, missing image wins:0.4.7

    Expected Result

    provisioning is successful

    Screenshots

    Additional context

    SURE-5749

[aiyengar2]

More context in https://github.com/rancher/rancher/issues/39609

[aiyengar2]

On more investigation, it appears that the reason for this issue has to do with improperly following the docs listed in https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/getting-started/installation-and-upgrade/other-installation-methods/air-gapped-helm-cli-install/publish-images#3-prepare-the-docker-daemon for setting up the private registry.

Specifically, when setting up a private registry for Windows and Linux, the docs assume that you are running the save and load scripts both on a Linux host and on a Windows host. Namely, this is because while the Windows host is responsible for pushing Windows images only, the Linux host is responsible for pushing both Linux images and Linux + Windows manifests (where the Windows manifests are only created if the Linux load script has a specific command line argument passed into it: --windows-image-list ./rancher-windows-images.txt.

If you follow that step, the private registry should be set up as expected.