Does /etc/rancher/k3s/registries.yaml affect `k3s ctr` and `k3s crictl`?

Question

k3s ctr launches the contianerd CLI, and k3s crictl is the CRI cli. I'm told you configure k3s authentication to the image registries using /etc/rancher/k3s/registries.yaml. Does this yaml file configure containerd, and CRI such that these commands no longer require --creds?

k3s crictl pull     --creds "evancarroll:$TOKEN" docker.io/alpine:3
k3s ctr images pull --creds "evancarroll:$TOKEN" docker.io/library/alpine:3

And can just be

k3s crictl pull     docker.io/alpine:3
k3s ctr images pull docker.io/library/alpine:3

Answer 1

This is the answer I got from Rancher Developer Brandon D in their slack

ctr and crictl both interact with containerd, via different apis. ctr uses the containerd native api, and crictl uses the CRI api. The registries.yaml config is used by containerd itself, and will be honored no matter what it is that does the pull or how.