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Enable kubelet server certificate rotation.

Risk Level

Low

Address

Security

Compliance Standards

  • CIS Kubernetes

Triage and Remediation

Remediation

Manual Steps

  1. On every worker node, open the kubelet systemd drop-in file for editing:
  2. In that file, locate the line that defines KUBELET_CERTIFICATE_ARGS (create it if it does not exist), and set/merge the feature gate so it contains:
    If other feature gates are already present, include this one in the same list, for example:
  3. Ensure the kubelet command line in the same file actually uses KUBELET_CERTIFICATE_ARGS (add it if missing). The ExecStart= line should include:
  4. Reload systemd and restart kubelet on the same worker node to apply the change (this will restart the kubelet process):
  5. Repeat steps 1–4 on every worker node in the cluster.
  6. Verification (on each worker node): confirm the kubelet process was started with the correct feature gate:
    Check that the output command line includes:
    --feature-gates=RotateKubeletServerCertificate=true (or within a comma-separated --feature-gates= list).
kubectl cannot configure kubelet process flags or edit host files like /etc/systemd/system/kubelet.service.d/10-kubeadm.conf or /var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml on worker nodes. To enable RotateKubeletServerCertificate, you must modify the kubelet systemd unit and configuration directly on every worker node; see the Manual Steps section for the exact host-level commands.

Additional Reading: