First cluster build is going nowhere

I have been trying the following and I have been getting nowhere.

  1. Minimal install of RHEL 8.6 on my node. Firewalld is disabled simply to remove potential issues for now. I’ll mess with that later.
  2. Building a custom cluster with v1.23.7+RKE2r2, leaving all defaults in the “Custom” creation. I am simply giving it a name and clicking Create.
    2a. Sometimes I get “Failure when cluster create”. I still see a listing for the created cluster but it is stuck in a “transitioning” state and I have to delete it and try to create again. This happens for a while and eventually I might get through and it will create the cluster.
  3. Register the node with the copied registration commands. This might work, but sometimes I get a “reconciling” loop where the node seems stuck in a state where an agent won’t report in. To fix this I have to delete the cluster and go back to step 2.
  4. I’m also adding artifactory as a registry (docker deployment), so I created a secret based on that path, labeled it and stored, but when I try to add a deployment from that path I get pullbackoff and it appears to be due to “anonymous” not having access/permissions to that path. I gave the name and password in the secret, so is Rancher’s attempt to deploy simply ignoring the credentials?