# 

LLMS index: [llms.txt](/llms.txt)

---

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Run this on any machine you wish to join an existing cluster

### Synopsis



When joining a kubeadm initialized cluster, we need to establish
bidirectional trust. This is split into discovery (having the Node
trust the Kubernetes Control Plane) and TLS bootstrap (having the
Kubernetes Control Plane trust the Node).

There are 2 main schemes for discovery. The first is to use a shared
token along with the IP address of the API server. The second is to
provide a file - a subset of the standard kubeconfig file. The
discovery/kubeconfig file supports token, client-go authentication
plugins ("exec"), "tokenFile", and "authProvider". This file can be a
local file or downloaded via an HTTPS URL. The forms are
kubeadm join --discovery-token abcdef.1234567890abcdef 1.2.3.4:6443,
kubeadm join --discovery-file path/to/file.conf, or kubeadm join
--discovery-file https://url/file.conf. Only one form can be used. If
the discovery information is loaded from a URL, HTTPS must be used.
Also, in that case the host installed CA bundle is used to verify
the connection.

If you use a shared token for discovery, you should also pass the
--discovery-token-ca-cert-hash flag to validate the public key of the
root certificate authority (CA) presented by the Kubernetes Control Plane.
The value of this flag is specified as "&lt;hash-type&gt;:&lt;hex-encoded-value&gt;",
where the supported hash type is "sha256". The hash is calculated over
the bytes of the Subject Public Key Info (SPKI) object (as in RFC7469).
This value is available in the output of "kubeadm init" or can be
calculated using standard tools. The --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash flag
may be repeated multiple times to allow more than one public key.

If you cannot know the CA public key hash ahead of time, you can pass
the --discovery-token-unsafe-skip-ca-verification flag to disable this
verification. This weakens the kubeadm security model since other nodes
can potentially impersonate the Kubernetes Control Plane.

The TLS bootstrap mechanism is also driven via a shared token. This is
used to temporarily authenticate with the Kubernetes Control Plane to submit a
certificate signing request (CSR) for a locally created key pair. By
default, kubeadm will set up the Kubernetes Control Plane to automatically
approve these signing requests. This token is passed in with the
--tls-bootstrap-token abcdef.1234567890abcdef flag.

Often times the same token is used for both parts. In this case, the
--token flag can be used instead of specifying each token individually.


The "join [api-server-endpoint]" command executes the following phases:
```
preflight               Run join pre-flight checks
control-plane-prepare   Prepare the machine for serving a control plane
  /download-certs         Download certificates shared among control-plane nodes from the kubeadm-certs Secret
  /certs                  Generate the certificates for the new control plane components
  /kubeconfig             Generate the kubeconfig for the new control plane components
  /control-plane          Generate the manifests for the new control plane components
kubelet-start           Write kubelet settings, certificates and (re)start the kubelet
etcd-join               Join etcd for control plane nodes
kubelet-wait-bootstrap  Wait for the kubelet to bootstrap itself
control-plane-join      Join a machine as a control plane instance
  /mark-control-plane     Mark a node as a control-plane
wait-control-plane      Wait for the control plane to start
```


```
kubeadm join [api-server-endpoint] [flags]
```

### Options

   <table style="width: 100%; table-layout: fixed;">
<colgroup>
<col span="1" style="width: 10px;" />
<col span="1" />
</colgroup>
<tbody>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--apiserver-advertise-address string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>If the node should host a new control plane instance, the IP address the API Server will advertise it's listening on. If not set the default network interface will be used.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--apiserver-bind-port int32&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Default: 6443</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>If the node should host a new control plane instance, the port for the API Server to bind to.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--certificate-key string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Use this key to decrypt the certificate secrets uploaded by init. The certificate key is a hex encoded string that is an AES key of size 32 bytes.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--config string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Path to a kubeadm configuration file.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--control-plane</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Create a new control plane instance on this node</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--cri-socket string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Path to the CRI socket to connect. If empty kubeadm will try to auto-detect this value; use this option only if you have more than one CRI installed or if you have non-standard CRI socket.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--discovery-file string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>For file-based discovery, a file or URL from which to load cluster information.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--discovery-token string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>For token-based discovery, the token used to validate cluster information fetched from the API server.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--discovery-token-ca-cert-hash strings</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>For token-based discovery, validate that the root CA public key matches this hash (format: &quot;&lt;type&gt;:&lt;value&gt;&quot;).</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--discovery-token-unsafe-skip-ca-verification</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>For token-based discovery, allow joining without --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash pinning.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--dry-run</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Don't apply any changes; just output what would be done.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">-h, --help</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>help for join</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--ignore-preflight-errors strings</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>A list of checks whose errors will be shown as warnings. Example: 'IsPrivilegedUser,Swap'. Value 'all' ignores errors from all checks.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--node-name string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Specify the node name.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--patches string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Path to a directory that contains files named &quot;target[suffix][+patchtype].extension&quot;. For example, &quot;kube-apiserver0+merge.yaml&quot; or just &quot;etcd.json&quot;. &quot;target&quot; can be one of &quot;kube-apiserver&quot;, &quot;kube-controller-manager&quot;, &quot;kube-scheduler&quot;, &quot;etcd&quot;, &quot;kubeletconfiguration&quot;, &quot;corednsdeployment&quot;. &quot;patchtype&quot; can be one of &quot;strategic&quot;, &quot;merge&quot; or &quot;json&quot; and they match the patch formats supported by kubectl. The default &quot;patchtype&quot; is &quot;strategic&quot;. &quot;extension&quot; must be either &quot;json&quot; or &quot;yaml&quot;. &quot;suffix&quot; is an optional string that can be used to determine which patches are applied first alpha-numerically.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--skip-phases strings</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>List of phases to be skipped</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--tls-bootstrap-token string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Specify the token used to temporarily authenticate with the Kubernetes Control Plane while joining the node.</p></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--token string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>Use this token for both discovery-token and tls-bootstrap-token when those values are not provided.</p></td>
</tr>

</tbody>
</table>



### Options inherited from parent commands

   <table style="width: 100%; table-layout: fixed;">
<colgroup>
<col span="1" style="width: 10px;" />
<col span="1" />
</colgroup>
<tbody>

<tr>
<td colspan="2">--rootfs string</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td style="line-height: 130%; word-wrap: break-word;"><p>The path to the 'real' host root filesystem. This will cause kubeadm to chroot into the provided path.</p></td>
</tr>

</tbody>
</table>

---

Section pages:

- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-join/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-join_all/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-join_mark-control-plane/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-prepare/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-prepare_all/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-prepare_certs/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-prepare_control-plane/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-prepare_download-certs/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_control-plane-prepare_kubeconfig/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_etcd-join/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_kubelet-start/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_kubelet-wait-bootstrap/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_preflight/)
- [](/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/generated/kubeadm_join/kubeadm_join_phase_wait-control-plane/)
