Chapter 13. Configuring interface-level network sysctls
In Linux, sysctl allows an administrator to modify kernel parameters at runtime. You can modify interface-level network sysctls using the tuning Container Network Interface (CNI) meta plugin. The tuning CNI meta plugin operates in a chain with a main CNI plugin as illustrated.
The main CNI plugin assigns the interface and passes this to the tuning CNI meta plugin at runtime. You can change some sysctls and several interface attributes (promiscuous mode, all-multicast mode, MTU, and MAC address) in the network namespace by using the tuning CNI meta plugin. In the tuning CNI meta plugin configuration, the interface name is represented by the IFNAME
token, and is replaced with the actual name of the interface at runtime.
In OpenShift Container Platform, the tuning CNI meta plugin only supports changing interface-level network sysctls.
13.1. Configuring the tuning CNI
The following procedure configures the tuning CNI to change the interface-level network net.ipv4.conf.IFNAME.accept_redirects
sysctl. This example enables accepting and sending ICMP-redirected packets.
Procedure
Create a network attachment definition, such as
tuning-example.yaml
, with the following content:apiVersion: "k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1" kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition metadata: name: <name> 1 namespace: default 2 spec: config: '{ "cniVersion": "0.4.0", 3 "name": "<name>", 4 "plugins": [{ "type": "<main_CNI_plugin>" 5 }, { "type": "tuning", 6 "sysctl": { "net.ipv4.conf.IFNAME.accept_redirects": "1" 7 } } ] }
- 1
- Specifies the name for the additional network attachment to create. The name must be unique within the specified namespace.
- 2
- Specifies the namespace that the object is associated with.
- 3
- Specifies the CNI specification version.
- 4
- Specifies the name for the configuration. It is recommended to match the configuration name to the name value of the network attachment definition.
- 5
- Specifies the name of the main CNI plugin to configure.
- 6
- Specifies the name of the CNI meta plugin.
- 7
- Specifies the sysctl to set.
An example yaml file is shown here:
apiVersion: "k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1" kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition metadata: name: tuningnad namespace: default spec: config: '{ "cniVersion": "0.4.0", "name": "tuningnad", "plugins": [{ "type": "bridge" }, { "type": "tuning", "sysctl": { "net.ipv4.conf.IFNAME.accept_redirects": "1" } } ] }'
Apply the yaml by running the following command:
$ oc apply -f tuning-example.yaml
Example output
networkattachmentdefinition.k8.cni.cncf.io/tuningnad created
Create a pod such as
examplepod.yaml
with the network attachment definition similar to the following:apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: tunepod namespace: default annotations: k8s.v1.cni.cncf.io/networks: tuningnad 1 spec: containers: - name: podexample image: centos command: ["/bin/bash", "-c", "sleep INF"] securityContext: runAsUser: 2000 2 runAsGroup: 3000 3 allowPrivilegeEscalation: false 4 capabilities: 5 drop: ["ALL"] securityContext: runAsNonRoot: true 6 seccompProfile: 7 type: RuntimeDefault
- 1
- Specify the name of the configured
NetworkAttachmentDefinition
. - 2
runAsUser
controls which user ID the container is run with.- 3
runAsGroup
controls which primary group ID the containers is run with.- 4
allowPrivilegeEscalation
determines if a pod can request to allow privilege escalation. If unspecified, it defaults to true. This boolean directly controls whether theno_new_privs
flag gets set on the container process.- 5
capabilities
permit privileged actions without giving full root access. This policy ensures all capabilities are dropped from the pod.- 6
runAsNonRoot: true
requires that the container will run with a user with any UID other than 0.- 7
RuntimeDefault
enables the default seccomp profile for a pod or container workload.
Apply the yaml by running the following command:
$ oc apply -f examplepod.yaml
Verify that the pod is created by running the following command:
$ oc get pod
Example output
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE tunepod 1/1 Running 0 47s
Log in to the pod by running the following command:
$ oc rsh tunepod
Verify the values of the configured sysctl flags. For example, find the value
net.ipv4.conf.net1.accept_redirects
by running the following command:sh-4.4# sysctl net.ipv4.conf.net1.accept_redirects
Expected output
net.ipv4.conf.net1.accept_redirects = 1