795869152d
This supersedes https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/pull/12622. I replaced Zensical with mkdocs-materialx. Materialx is a fork of mkdocs-material created after mkdocs-material was put into maintenance mode. We'll use this platform until Zensical is more feature complete. Added a few of the existing docs into the site to make a more user-friendly flow. Signed-off-by: LandonTClipp <11232769+LandonTClipp@users.noreply.github.com>
4.1 KiB
Prerequisites
Kubernetes
If using Kubernetes, at least version v1.22 is recommended. This is the first release that the CRI v1 API and the RuntimeClass left alpha.
containerd
Kata requires a CRI-compatible container runtime. containerd is commonly used for Kata. We recommend installing containerd using your platform's package distribution mechanism. We recommend at least the latest version of containerd v2.1.x.1
Debian/Ubuntu
To install on Debian-based systems:
$ apt update
$ apt install containerd
$ systemctl status containerd
● containerd.service - containerd container runtime
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/containerd.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d
└─http-proxy.conf
Active: active (running) since Wed 2026-02-25 22:58:13 UTC; 5 days ago
Docs: https://containerd.io
Main PID: 3767885 (containerd)
Tasks: 540
Memory: 70.7G (peak: 70.8G)
CPU: 4h 9min 26.153s
CGroup: /runtime.slice/containerd.service
├─ 12694 /usr/local/bin/container
Fedora/RedHat
To install on Fedora-based systems:
$ yum install containerd
??? help
Documentation assistance is requested for more specific instructions on Fedora systems.
Pre-Built Releases
Many Linux distributions will not package the latest versions of containerd. If you find that your distribution provides very old versions of containerd, it's recommended to upgrade with the pre-built releases.
Executable
Download the latest release of containerd:
$ wget https://github.com/containerd/containerd/releases/download/v${VERSION}/containerd-${VERSION}-linux-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz
# Extract to the current directory
$ tar -xf ./containerd*.tar.gz
# Extract to root if you want it installed to its final location.
$ tar -C / -xf ./*.tar.gz
Containerd Config
Containerd requires a config file at /etc/containerd/config.toml. This needs to be populated with a simple default config:
$ /usr/local/bin/containerd config default > /etc/containerd/config.toml
Systemd Unit File
Install the systemd unit file:
$ wget -O /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service https://raw.githubusercontent.com/containerd/containerd/main/containerd.service
!!! info
- You must modify the `ExecStart` line to the location of the installed containerd executable.
- containerd's `PATH` variable must allow it to find `containerd-shim-kata-v2`. You can do this by either creating a symlink from `/usr/local/bin/containerd-shim-kata-v2` to `/opt/kata/bin/containerd-shim-kata-v2` or by modifying containerd's `PATH` variable to search in `/opt/kata/bin/`. See the Environment= command in systemd.exec(5) for further details.
Reload systemd and start containerd:
$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl enable --now containerd
$ systemctl start containerd
$ systemctl status containerd
More details can be found on the containerd installation docs.
Enable CRI
If you're using Kubernetes, you must enable the containerd Container Runtime Interface (CRI) plugin:
$ ctr plugins ls | grep cri
io.containerd.cri.v1 images - ok
io.containerd.cri.v1 runtime linux/amd64 ok
io.containerd.grpc.v1 cri - ok
If these are not enabled, you'll need to remove it from the disabled_plugins section of the containerd config.
runc
The default runc runtime needs to be installed for non-kata containers. More details can be found at the containerd docs.
-
Kata makes use of containerd's drop-in config merging in
/etc/containerd/config.d/which is only available starting from containerd v2. containerd v1 may work, but some Kata features will not work as expected. ↩︎