When you want to remove Rancher from your installation cluster as part of a Rancher reinstall (or uninstall), follow the instructions below to download and run system-tools, a utility that removes all Rancher components from Rancher Server nodes provisioned by RKE.

Download and Configuration

You can download the latest version of Rancher system-tools from its GitHub releases page. Download the version of system-tools for the OS that you're running the tool from.

Operating System File
MacOS system-tools_darwin-amd64
Linux system-tools_linux-amd64
Windows system-tools_windows-amd64.exe


After you download the tools, complete the following actions:

  1. Rename the file to system-tools.

  2. Give the file executable permissions by running the following command:

    chmod +x system-tools 1. Find the kubeconfig file that was generated during your Rancher installation, kube_config_rancher-cluster.yml. Move it to the ~/.kube on your workstation, if it isn't already there. Create this directory if it doesn't exist.

    System-tools uses this file to access your installation cluster.

Using the System-Tool

System-tools is a utility for running operational tasks on Rancher clusters. In this use case, it will help you remove the Rancher from your installation nodes.

Usage

After you move the system-tools and kubeconfig file to your workstation's ~/.kube directory, you can run system-tools by changing to the ~/.kube directory and entering the following command.

Warning: This command will remove data from your etcd nodes. Make sure you have created a backup of etcd before executing the command.

./system-tools remove --kubeconfig <$KUBECONFIG> --namespace <NAMESPACE>


When you run this command, the components listed in What Gets Removed? are deleted.

Options
Option Description
--kubeconfig <KUBECONFIG_PATH>, -c <KUBECONFIG_PATH> The cluster's kubeconfig file absolute path, usually ~/.kube/kube_config_rancher-cluster.yml.1
--namespace <NAMESPACE>, -n cattle-system Rancher 2.x deployment namespace (<NAMESPACE>). If no namespace is defined, the options defaults to cattle-system.
--force Skips the the interactive removal confirmation and removes the Rancher deployment without prompt.

1 If you are working with multiple Kubernetes clusters, you can place kube_config_rancher-cluster.yml in another directory path and then set the KUBECONFIG environment variable to its path. export KUBECONFIG=$(pwd)/kube_config_rancher-cluster.yml

What Gets Removed?

When removing Rancher from server nodes launched using RKE, the following components are deleted.

Using 2.0.8 or Earlier?

These versions of Rancher do not automatically delete the serviceAccount, clusterRole, and clusterRoleBindings resources after the job runs. You'll have to delete them yourself.