# Rancher Desktop with Rancher Longhorn

In this post I am going to briefly describe how to install Longhorn in a Rancher Desktop cluster, which is not as straight-forward as one might think.

First things first, you can download Rancher Desktop from the [official website](https://rancherdesktop.io/). For Ubuntu users like me you might need to first install pass and ensure that Rancher Desktop has access to `/dev/kvm`. Then you can just run the following commands to install the Debian package:

```bash
curl -s https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:/Rancher:/stable/deb/Release.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo dd status=none of=/usr/share/keyrings/isv-rancher-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/isv-rancher-stable-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:/Rancher:/stable/deb/ ./' | sudo dd status=none of=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/isv-rancher-stable.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install rancher-desktop
```

Then you should have Rancher Desktop installed. Access it and pick the Kubernetes version of your preference — as of time of writing I am using Longhorn v1.3.1 which only works with Kubernetes v1.24 — but this might not be the case for you. Additionally you will have to pick a Container Runtime (according to your preferences):
- containerd: Default runtime for Kubernetes
- dockerd: Compatibility way of running — mostly for people that still uses Docker Desktop.

In my case, I used the containerd since it’s the current runtime my remote cluster that I am simulating uses.

![Cluster Creation](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qgimqc2y/portfolio/a9c513996669e2bfb1d402a209388b3d5420e9e1-712x1096.png)

After selecting this options, you will see a progress bar on the bottom of the window, basically what’s happening at this point is just Rancher Desktop creating the cluster for you.

![Cluster Progress](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qgimqc2y/portfolio/e80c77a75b5e911ccac16114994a9d827378a490-786x421.png)

After a while your cluster will be ready — most probably with a context called rancher-desktop.

So then you can switch your kubectl context with:

```bash
kubectl config use-context rancher-desktop
```

---

Now, let’s quickly install Longhorn with Helm, by running:


```bash
helm repo add longhorn https://charts.longhorn.io
helm repo update
helm install longhorn/longhorn --name longhorn --namespace longhorn-system
```

It’s important to note that after you install it, you will have to wait until all the resources are finished creating — but the reality is, probably the manager pod will show a problem as such:

```bash
time="2020-06-15T09:05:52Z" level=error msg="Failed environment check, please make sure you have iscsiadm/open-iscsi installed on the host"
time="2020-06-15T09:05:52Z" level=fatal msg="Error starting manager: Environment check failed: Failed to execute: nsenter [--mount=/host/proc/483/ns/mnt --net=/host/proc/483/ns/net iscsiadm --version], output , stderr, nsenter: failed to execute iscsiadm: No such file or directory\n, error exit status 1"
```

To quickly/temporarily fix this — you will need to create a terminal within your Rancher Desktop Node — this can be easily achieved in Kubernetes Lens by selecting the Node and on the top right corner clicking the “Node Shell” icon (`>_`):

![Cluster Node Terminal](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qgimqc2y/portfolio/4ff5de4589f80ffefbf47060d5ce476d248ae0da-786x291.png)

In the Node Shell terminal run the following commands:

```bash
apk add open-iscsi
rc-update add iscsid
rc-service iscsid start
```

Once that’s done, wait a few seconds and the Longhorn Manager pod should be ready and you will notice that the Storage Class `longhorn` will be created as expected. The problem with this approach is that anytime you close Rancher Desktop your changes are gone, but it was good to test if everything worked as expected.

---

Now it’s time to automate the execution of the commands above — Rancher Desktop enable us to do so by creating the following file in `~/Library/Application Support/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/override.yaml` (macOS) or `~/.local/share/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/override.yaml` (Linux):

```yaml
provision:
- mode: system
  script: |
    #!/bin/sh
    apk add open-iscsi
    rc-update add iscsid
    rc-service iscsid start
```

After doing that, close and open your Rancher Desktop and you should have the same effect.



Rancher Desktop with Rancher Longhorn Image