After installing to Kubernetes v1.31.2 running on Talos 1.8.3, pods with the 'kube-system' namespace are still running

[fabriziogiudici]

I'm installing Flannel on Kubernetes v1.31.2 running on Talos 1.8.3.

Expected Behavior

I've followed the documentation (paragraph "Deploying Flannel with kubectl") and ran:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/flannel-io/flannel/releases/latest/download/kube-flannel.yml

Flannel pods should run fine after this.

Current Behavior

The Flannel pods with the kube-flannel namespace started, but there were other three pods with the kube-system namespace already present on Kubernetes. They are still present after the step described above. This causes troubles and makes the new Flannel pods to randomly fail.

Possible Solution

THIS WAS EDITED - at first I thought the workaround fixed it and asked for a confirmation, but I later realized it is not working.

I tried to fix the problem by explicitly removing the old pods before the Flannel installation:

kubectl delete -n kube-system daemonset.apps/kube-flannel

Actually the bogus flannel elements are removed, but they reappear after a restart.

Your Environment

• Flannel version: latest
• Kubernetes version (if used): v1.31.2
• Operating System and version: Talos v.1.8.3

[thomasferrandiz]

It sounds like flannel was already installed in your cluster before you applied the manifest.

What method did you use to deploy the kubernetes cluster?

[fabriziogiudici]

The Talos distribution already contains Kubernetes and, as far as I was able to investigate, flannel is already installed, v0.25.7. I suppose that v0.26.0 changed the namespace from kube-system to kube-flannel, hence the problem.
I think that at this point I can just skip the explicit installation of flannel, since I don't think I need the latest features. Probably the next version of Talos will align with a newer flannel.

[thomasferrandiz]

We started using the kube-flannel namespace in v0.19.0 in 2022.
It looks like Talos is not following the upstream manifest closely.

In that case, you would need to manually uninstall flannel before installing it again but as you said there is no major new feature in v0.26.0.