Caching packages and images for Kubernetes

[afbjorklund]

If you are creating and destroying a lot of clusters, it can be tedious to have to download every time...

Recently we merged some features, that allows you to cache the packages and images that are needed:

• Add parameter for Kubernetes apt-proxy (k8s) #5251
• Add parameter for Kubernetes apt-proxy (k3s) #5257
• Add parameter for Kubernetes registry (k8s) #5200
• Add parameter for Kubernetes registry (k3s) #5377

So now if you have local proxies running, you can configure Lima to use that instead of the internet:

apt-proxy --cachedir /var/tmp/packages --port 3142 &

ociregistry --image-path /var/tmp/images serve --port 5050 &

limactl start ... \

--param proxy="http://host.lima.internal:3142" --param mirror="http://host.lima.internal:5050"

Now the packages and images will be cached under /var/tmp, for the next k8s/k3s cluster creation time.

73M /var/tmp/packages/
176M /var/tmp/images/

---

Eventually Lima might feature a built-in http proxy plugin, but for now you BYO Proxy.

• Caching packages and images on the lima host #397

Note that we are using dedicated apt and oci proxies here, for some special features.

The main one is being able to use /HTTPS/// instead of https://, for caching https.

apt-proxy

"APT Proxy is a lightweight, high-performance caching proxy for package managers. "

https://github.com/afbjorklund/apt-proxy -->

https://github.com/soulteary/apt-proxy -->

• Allow using apt proxy as the address soulteary/apt-proxy#61
• Support HTTPS/// in proxy requests soulteary/apt-proxy#62

https://github.com/lox/apt-proxy

ociregistry

"Ociregistry (oci-proxy?) is a pull-only, pull-through, caching OCI Distribution server."

https://github.com/aceeric/ociregistry

https://aceeric.github.io/ociregistry/

[afbjorklund]

Some configuration is needed, if you use the legacy apt-cacher-ng with k3s:

If using apt-cacher-ng, it needs to be configured to allow k3s:

PfilePatternEx: ^/k3s-io/k3s/releases/download/(v.*)/(sha256sum.*|k3s.*)$

Otherwise you will get an error, when trying to cache the k3s:

403 Forbidden file type or location

But it is not needed for apt-proxy, and not needed for k8s (which uses .deb)