abiosoft/colima · error

error creating cni config dir: %w

Error message

error creating cni config dir: %w

What it means

During k3s provisioning, colima creates /etc/cni/net.d inside the guest VM ('sudo mkdir -p') before writing the flannel conflist, and that mkdir failed. Because everything runs over the guest runner, this almost always means the guest session/VM itself is unhealthy rather than a CNI-specific problem.

Source

Thrown at environment/container/kubernetes/cni.go:19

package kubernetes

import (
	_ "embed"
	"fmt"
	"path/filepath"

	"github.com/abiosoft/colima/cli"
	"github.com/abiosoft/colima/embedded"
	"github.com/abiosoft/colima/environment"
)

func installCniConfig(guest environment.GuestActions, a *cli.ActiveCommandChain) {
	// fix cni config
	a.Add(func() error {
		flannelFile := "/etc/cni/net.d/10-flannel.conflist"
		cniConfDir := filepath.Dir(flannelFile)
		if err := guest.Run("sudo", "mkdir", "-p", cniConfDir); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("error creating cni config dir: %w", err)
		}

		flannel, err := embedded.Read("k3s/flannel.json")
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("error reading embedded flannel config: %w", err)
		}
		return guest.Write(flannelFile, flannel)
	})
}

View on GitHub (pinned to c3a5f9184d)

Solutions

1. Retry from a clean state: 'colima stop && colima start'
2. Check guest disk: 'colima ssh -- df -h'
3. Verify the dir manually: 'colima ssh -- sudo mkdir -p /etc/cni/net.d'
4. Recreate the VM if the guest is corrupted: 'colima delete && colima start'

// cheap guest health gate before the chain step
if err := guest.RunQuiet("true"); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("guest unreachable before cni setup: %w", err)
}

if err := guest.Run("sudo", "mkdir", "-p", cniConfDir); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("error creating cni config dir: %w", err)
    // guest fs/ssh issues: a full 'colima stop && colima start' is the reliable retry
}

When it happens

Trigger: guest.Run('sudo','mkdir','-p','/etc/cni/net.d') errors: SSH to guest broken, guest disk full or read-only, sudo failure, or VM stopped mid-chain.

Common situations: colima start interrupted then resumed, guest disk exhausted by images, custom guest image without sudo, VM crashed during provisioning.

Related errors

• error persisting kubernetes settings: %w
• no IP address assigned to network interface
• '%s' overlaps '%s'
• dependency check failed for VM: %w
• error starting vm: %w

AI-assisted analysis of abiosoft/colima@c3a5f9184d (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4f9921cf26c82dcf. Report an issue: GitHub.