Attention: Legacy Kubernetes Package Repositories Are Being Frozen!

On August 15, 2023, the Kubernetes project announced the general availability of the community-managed package repositories for Debian and RPM packages under pkgs.k8s.io. These new repositories replace the outdated, Google-hosted package repositories: apt.kubernetes.io and yum.kubernetes.io. The announcement post for pkgs.k8s.io highlighted that we will no longer publish packages to the old repositories in the future.

Today, we officially announce the deprecation of the old package repositories (apt.kubernetes.io and yum.kubernetes.io) and inform you about our plans to freeze the content of these repositories on September 13, 2023.

ℹ️ Update (March 26, 2024): The old Google-hosted repositories were removed on March 4, 2024. It is no longer possible to install Kubernetes packages from the old Google-hosted package repositories.

What does this mean for me as a Kubernetes end-user?

This change affects users who directly install upstream versions of Kubernetes, either manually by following the official installation guide and upgrade guide, or by using a Kubernetes installer that provides packages offered by the Kubernetes project.

This change also affects you if you use Linux on your own PC and have installed kubectl via the old package repositories. We will explain later how you can check if you are affected.

If you use fully managed Kubernetes, for example through a cloud provider’s service, you are only affected if you also installed kubectl on your Linux PC using packages from the old repositories. Cloud providers typically use their own Kubernetes distributions and therefore do not use packages provided by the Kubernetes project; more importantly: If someone else manages Kubernetes for you, they usually take responsibility for this check.

If you have a managed Control Plane but are responsible for managing the nodes yourself, and one of those nodes runs Linux, you should check if you are affected.

If you manage your clusters yourself by following the official installation and upgrade guides, please follow the instructions in this blog post to migrate to the (new) community-managed package repositories.

If you use a Kubernetes installer that uses packages from the Kubernetes project, check the communication channels of the installation tool for information on the necessary steps and contact the maintainers if necessary to inform them of this change.

What does this mean for me as a Kubernetes distributor?

If you use the old repositories as part of your project (e.g., a Kubernetes installation tool), you should migrate to the community-managed repositories as soon as possible and inform your users about this change and the necessary steps.

Source: Kubernetes Blog