Running 'kubeadm init' from kubernetes1.24-kubeadm fails with the error
message:
 [ERROR KubeletVersion]: the kubelet version is higher than the control plane
version. This is not a supported version skew and may lead to a malfunctional
cluster. Kubelet version: "1.24.15" Control plane version: "1.23.4"

Reason:
kubeadm queries a release version server which resides at
https://dl.k8s.io/release while for upstream but the Leap/TW kubeadm package
has patched to https://kubic.opensuse.org/release.
This responds to a requrest for https://kubic.opensuse.org/release/stable-1.txt
with 1.23.4 although SUSE already provides version 1.27.3.
Since this appears to announce that the containers provided by openSUSE are
older than the kubeadm version, it refuses to work.
Since the above URL is hard coded and cannot be overridden, the only way to
overcome this obstacle was to rebuild the package with this patch removed.

This made kubeadm query the upstream server which returned v1.27.4. Since here
the minor number is higher than the one of kubeadm, the fallback mechanism
kicked in querying for https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable-1.24.txt - which
returned v1.24.16.

Next problem:
After dropping the fix,`init` proceeded attempting to download container
images. This again failed with the error messages:

error execution phase preflight: [preflight] Some fatal errors occurred:
        [ERROR ImagePull]: failed to pull image
registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver:v1.24.16: output:
time="2023-07-30T19:14:10+02:00" level=fatal msg="pulling image failed: rpc
error: code
, error: exit status 1
        [ERROR ImagePull]: failed to pull image
registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-controller-manager:v1.24.16: output:
time="2023-07-30T19:14:12+02:00" level=fatal msg="pulling image failed: rpc err
, error: exit status 1
        [ERROR ImagePull]: failed to pull image
registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-scheduler:v1.24.16: output:
time="2023-07-30T19:14:13+02:00" level=fatal msg="pulling image failed: rpc
error: code
, error: exit status 1
        [ERROR ImagePull]: failed to pull image
registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-proxy:v1.24.16: output:
time="2023-07-30T19:14:14+02:00" level=fatal msg="pulling image failed: rpc
error: code = Un
, error: exit status 1
        [ERROR ImagePull]: failed to pull image
registry.opensuse.org/kubic/coredns:v1.8.6: output:
time="2023-07-30T19:14:28+02:00" level=fatal msg="pulling image failed: rpc
error: code = Unknown
, error: exit status 1

Obviously, it tried to download containers of the version advertised by
upstream, however, these versions are not (yet) available on
registry.opensuse.org - as can be checked using `podman search`:
 $ podman search --list-tags registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver
 NAME                                        TAG
 registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver  latest
 [..]
 registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver  v1.24.3
 registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver  v1.24.3-3.1532
 registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver  v1.26.6
 [..]
 registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver  v1.27.3-5.91
 registry.opensuse.org/kubic/kube-apiserver  v1.27.3-5.93

The latest available version of v1.24 here is v1.24.3 - this should have been
served querying https://kubic.opensuse.org/release/stable-1.24.txt, however,
this URL returns 404.
The last major.minor version combo served is:
 $ curl -L https://kubic.opensuse.org/release/stable-1.23.txt
 1.23.4
i.e. the latest kubernetes-1.23 version available on registry.opensuse.org.

It appears as if a script triggered by the build of new versions to update or
newly create stable-1<N>.txt files is no longer running. Since the URL cannot
be overridden it renders `kubernetes1.<X>-kubeadm` packages for <X> > 23
useless at least when running `kubeadm init`.