Access Rancher Desktop cluster from within a container

[ijaouani]

Dear all,

I am migrating from Docker Desktop to Rancher Desktop without major issues. However, I’ve noticed a key difference in how the kubeconfig is generated:

• On Docker Desktop, the cluster is defined as https://kubernetes.docker.internal:6443/
• On Rancher Desktop, it is defined as https://127.0.0.1:6443
  This affects how containers (such as a VS Code devcontainer) can access the cluster. While Docker Desktop allows using the same kubeconfig as the host without modifications, Rancher Desktop does not, since 127.0.0.1 in a container context refers to the container itself rather than the host.

As a workaround, I manually edit the kubeconfig by:

1. Replacing 127.0.0.1 with host.docker.internal
2. Setting insecure-skip-tls-verify to false
3. Removing certificate-authority-data

While this solution works, it has drawbacks:

• It is not secure.
• The modifications must be repeated each time the container is rebuilt.

To reproduce this issue, you can use the official Kubernetes-Helm devcontainer. It works out of the box with Docker Desktop but not with Rancher Desktop.

[onegreyonewhite]

Any updates?

[jandubois]

Sorry, there are no updates; I've converted this to an issue (#8850), so we can track what should be done about it.