Hello my latest post on running Rancher on Debian; specifically, Debian version 12 bookworm. This is a much simpler process. Techno Tim Rancher youtube was the inspiration for this post.

Step 1 – Config VM

Since I am running ProxMox this simple answer is to use my latest cloud image here is an example of setting that up.

Then simple name it accordingly. Remember to:

1. Set correct target
2. Name it accordingly to a useful name. For example: rancher
3. Select Full Clone option
4. Press the clone button.

Give ProxMox a minute or two to copy the cloned image over to correct host and once it is done finalize its setup. Setup vm specifics:

1. Memory I chose 8 GB recommends 4GB or more
2. Number of Cores. I chose 4 recommends at least 2.
3. Setup network according to needs.

Step 2 – Install Docker

I have this post for installing docker. Also it is recommended to a needed config to sysctl and I chose to add a new file to sysctl.d directory as follows

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.d/99-k8s-cni.conf

Then add these lines to the file

net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables=1
net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-ip6tables=1

Finally, run the sysctl reload. As recommended by the README in sysctl.d dir.

sudo service procps force-reload

Step 3 – Setup Rancher

Below, is the docker command that I used which is almost 100 percent like Techno Tim’s

docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped \
  -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
  --privileged \
  -v /opt/rancher:/var/lib/rancher \
  --name=rancher_server \
  rancher/rancher:v2.8.2

Once this spins up it will be available on hosts ip via docker so you can navigate to it. Also, I am using pfSense so I updated both DHCP and DNS on pfSense to set the ip and url for internal domain.

so in my case I have it running at https://rancher.ad.alshowto.com

If I open a browser to that location I get the intial web page that indicates to get the generated password from by attaching to the instance and searching for the “Boopstrap Password” in this case since I named it rancher_server I can just use that to find it and get the associated password like this:

docker logs rancher_server 2>&1 | grep "Bootstrap Password:"

That pulled back the associated password so that I can start the login process

Now I can create my admin password and start using Rancher.