Airgapped/Disconnected Environment Installation Support

[itay-nvn-nv]

Problem

There is no official documentation or native support for installing Knative Operator in airgapped/disconnected environments.

Current challenges:

• No published list of required container images per Knative version
• spec.registry.imagePullSecrets in KnativeServing CR does not propagate to ServiceAccounts (requires manual patching)
• No global registry override option: users must configure multiple Helm values and CR fields separately
• On OpenShift, users deploy OpenShift Serverless Operator and create a KnativeServing instance; edge/disconnected clusters face the same issues with no streamlined private registry configuration

Persona:

Platform Operator: responsible for deploying and managing Knative on Kubernetes clusters, particularly in enterprise environments with network restrictions.

Exit Criteria

One of the following:

1. Documentation: Official guide published covering image list per version, mirroring steps, CR configuration, and ServiceAccount patching workarounds
2. Native support: spec.registry.imagePullSecrets automatically propagates to all relevant ServiceAccounts, and a CLI command exists to list all required images for a given version

Time Estimate (optional):

• Documentation only: 2-3 developer-days
• Native imagePullSecrets propagation fix: 3-5 developer-days
• Image list CLI tooling: 2-3 developer-days

Additional context (optional)

I've documented a working workaround here: https://github.com/runai-professional-services/knative-airgapped, this could serve as a reference for official documentation.

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