K3S Change Data Storage Path

This article explains how to change the data storage path of K3S, a lightweight and minimal Kubernetes distribution, by utilizing the `K3S_DATA_DIR` environment variable. It also guides users through stopping services, copying data, modifying service files with the new path, and restarting k3s using a daemon reload.

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you can configure K3S_DATA_DIR environment variable during installation

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first, stop all k3s services

# run with root
systemctl stop k3s # k3s-agent otherwise
k3s-killall.sh

copy the data to new location

rsync -avh --progress /var/lib/rancher/k3s <path_to_store_data>

then modify the service file under /etc/systemd/system/k3s.service or /etc/systemd/system/k3s-agent.service, add one additional flag --data-dir <path_to_store_data> to the commandline

restart the service after done

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start k3s