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Enable Kubernetes audit log collection on a RKE1 cluster by creating the audit policy and webhook configuration files, configuring RKE1 to use them, and restarting the service.

Important
Important
  • RKE1 reaches end of life on July 31, 2025. Consider migrating to RKE2.
  • RKE1 runs kube-apiserver as a Docker container that uses external DNS rather than cluster CoreDNS. The audit collector must use hostNetwork: true.

Procedure

  1. Prepare the audit configuration files.
    Run the following commands to create the audit policy and webhook configuration:
    sudo mkdir -p /etc/kubernetes/audit
    
    sudo tee /etc/kubernetes/audit/audit-policy.yaml << 'EOF'
    apiVersion: audit.k8s.io/v1
    kind: Policy
    rules:
      - level: Metadata
        verbs: ["create"]
        resources:
          - group: "authorization.k8s.io"
            resources: ["subjectaccessreviews", "selfsubjectaccessreviews", "localsubjectaccessreviews"]
      - level: RequestResponse
        verbs: ["get", "list", "watch", "create", "update", "patch", "delete"]
        resources:
          - group: "rbac.authorization.k8s.io"
            resources: ["roles", "rolebindings", "clusterroles", "clusterrolebindings"]
      - level: Metadata
        verbs: ["create", "update", "delete"]
        resources:
          - group: ""
            resources: ["serviceaccounts"]
      - level: None
    EOF
    
    sudo tee /etc/kubernetes/audit/audit-webhook-config.yaml << 'EOF'
    apiVersion: v1
    kind: Config
    clusters:
    - name: audit-collector
      cluster:
        server: http://127.0.0.1:8030/k8s-audit
    contexts:
    - context:
        cluster: audit-collector
        user: ""
      name: default-context
    current-context: default-context
    preferences: {}
    users: []
    EOF
  2. Update cluster.yml with the audit configuration.
    services:
      kube-api:
        extra_args:
          audit-policy-file: /etc/kubernetes/audit/audit-policy.yaml
          audit-webhook-config-file: /etc/kubernetes/audit/audit-webhook-config.yaml
          audit-webhook-batch-max-size: "1"
        extra_binds:
          - "/etc/kubernetes/audit:/etc/kubernetes/audit:ro"
  3. Apply the changes.
    rke up --config cluster.yml
  4. Verify the configuration.
    # Check kube-apiserver container is running with audit flags
    docker inspect $(docker ps -q -f name=kube-apiserver) | grep -i audit
    
    # Check audit collector logs
    kubectl logs -n trendmicro-system -l app.kubernetes.io/component=trendmicro-audit-log-collector --tail=20
    
    # Restart api server if config is not applied
    docker restart $(docker ps -q -f name=kube-apiserver)