Join Slack
News
Docs
Blog
Github

bitnami/kubeapps

Chart version: 5.0.1
Api version: v2
App version: 2.0.1
Kubeapps is a dashboard for your Kubernetes cluster that makes ...
application
Chart Type
Active
Status
Unknown
License
17770
Downloads
https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
Set me up:
helm repo add center https://repo.chartcenter.io
Install Chart:
helm install kubeapps center/bitnami/kubeapps
Versions (0)

Kubeapps

CircleCI

Kubeapps is a web-based UI for deploying and managing applications in Kubernetes clusters. Kubeapps allows you to:

TL;DR

helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
kubectl create namespace kubeapps
helm install kubeapps --namespace kubeapps bitnami/kubeapps

Check out the getting started to start deploying apps with Kubeapps.

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a Kubeapps deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

It also packages the Bitnami PostgreSQL chart which is required for bootstrapping a deployment for the database requirements of the Kubeapps application.

Prerequisites

  • Kubernetes 1.15+ (tested with Azure Kubernetes Service, Google Kubernetes Engine, minikube and Docker for Desktop Kubernetes)
  • Helm 3.0.2+
  • Administrative access to the cluster to create Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)

Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name kubeapps:

helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
kubectl create namespace kubeapps
helm install kubeapps --namespace kubeapps bitnami/kubeapps

The command deploys Kubeapps on the Kubernetes cluster in the kubeapps namespace. The Parameters section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Caveat: Only one Kubeapps installation is supported per namespace

Once you have installed Kubeapps follow the Getting Started Guide for additional information on how to access and use Kubeapps.

Parameters

For a full list of configuration parameters of the Kubeapps chart, see the values.yaml file.

Specify each parameter using the --set key=value[,key=value] argument to helm install. For example,

helm install kubeapps --namespace kubeapps \
  --set assetsvc.service.port=9090 \
    bitnami/kubeapps

The above command sets the port for the assetsvc Service to 9090.

Alternatively, a YAML file that specifies the values for parameters can be provided while installing the chart. For example,

helm install kubeapps --namespace kubeapps -f custom-values.yaml bitnami/kubeapps

Configuration and installation details

Configuring Initial Repositories

By default, Kubeapps will track the community Helm charts and the Kubernetes Service Catalog charts. To change these defaults, override with your desired parameters the apprepository.initialRepos object present in the values.yaml file.

Enabling Operators

Since v1.9.0 (and by default since v2.0), Kubeapps supports to deploy and manage Operators within its dashboard. More information about how to enable and use this feature can be found in this guide.

Exposing Externally

Note: The Kubeapps frontend sets up a proxy to the Kubernetes API service which means that when exposing the Kubeapps service to a network external to the Kubernetes cluster (perhaps on an internal or public network), the Kubernetes API will also be exposed for authenticated requests from that network. It is highly recommended that you use an OAuth2/OIDC provider with Kubeapps to ensure that your authentication proxy is exposed rather than the Kubeapps frontend. This ensures that only the configured users trusted by your Identity Provider will be able to reach the Kubeapps frontend and therefore the Kubernetes API. Kubernetes service token authentication should only be used for users for demonstration purposes only, not production environments.

LoadBalancer Service

The simplest way to expose the Kubeapps Dashboard is to assign a LoadBalancer type to the Kubeapps frontend Service. For example, you can use the following parameter: frontend.service.type=LoadBalancer

Wait for your cluster to assign a LoadBalancer IP or Hostname to the kubeapps Service and access it on that address:

kubectl get services --namespace kubeapps --watch

Ingress

This chart provides support for ingress resources. If you have an ingress controller installed on your cluster, such as nginx-ingress or traefik you can utilize the ingress controller to expose Kubeapps.

To enable ingress integration, please set ingress.enabled to true

Hosts

Most likely you will only want to have one hostname that maps to this Kubeapps installation (use the ingress.hostname parameter to set the hostname), however, it is possible to have more than one host. To facilitate this, the ingress.extraHosts object is an array.

If you plan to serve Kubeapps under a subpath (eg., example.com/subpath), you will have to disable the default path by setting ingress.hostname="" and the enter the hostname and path in the extraHost array; for instance: ingress.extraHosts[0].name="example.com" and ingress.extraHosts[0].path="/subpath"

Annotations

For annotations, please see this document. Not all annotations are supported by all ingress controllers, but this document does a good job of indicating which annotation is supported by many popular ingress controllers. Annotations can be set using ingress.annotations.

TLS

To enable TLS, please set ingress.tls to true. When enabling this parameter, the TLS certificates will be retrieved from a TLS secret with name INGRESS_HOSTNAME-tls (where INGRESS_HOSTNAME is a placeholder to be replaced with the hostname you set using the ingress.hostname parameter).

You can use the ingress.extraTls to provide the TLS configuration for the extra hosts you set using the ingress.extraHosts array. Please see this example for more information.

You can provide your own certificates using the ingress.secrets object. If your cluster has a cert-manager add-on to automate the management and issuance of TLS certificates, set ingress.certManager boolean to true to enable the corresponding annotations for cert-manager. For a full list of configuration parameters related to configuring TLS can see the values.yaml file.

Upgrading Kubeapps

You can upgrade Kubeapps from the Kubeapps web interface. Select the namespace in which Kubeapps is installed (kubeapps if you followed the instructions in this guide) and click on the “Upgrade” button. Select the new version and confirm.

You can also use the Helm CLI to upgrade Kubeapps, first ensure you have updated your local chart repository cache:

helm repo update

Now upgrade Kubeapps:

export RELEASE_NAME=kubeapps
helm upgrade $RELEASE_NAME bitnami/kubeapps

If you find issues upgrading Kubeapps, check the troubleshooting section.

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall/delete the kubeapps deployment:

helm uninstall -n kubeapps kubeapps

# Optional: Only if there are no more instances of Kubeapps
kubectl delete crd apprepositories.kubeapps.com

The first command removes most of the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release. After that, if there are no more instances of Kubeapps in the cluster you can manually delete the apprepositories.kubeapps.com CRD used by Kubeapps that is shared for the entire cluster.

NOTE: If you delete the CRD for apprepositories.kubeapps.com it will delete the repositories for all the installed instances of kubeapps. This will break existing installations of kubeapps if they exist.

If you have dedicated a namespace only for Kubeapps you can completely clean the remaining completed/failed jobs or any stale resources by deleting the namespace

kubectl delete namespace kubeapps

FAQ

  • How to install Kubeapps for demo purposes?
  • How to install Kubeapps in production scenarios?
  • How to use Kubeapps?
  • How to configure Kubeapps with Ingress
    • Serving Kubeapps in a subpath
  • Can Kubeapps install apps into more than one cluster?
  • Can Kubeapps be installed without Internet connection?
  • Does Kubeapps support private repositories?
  • Why can’t I configure global private repositories?
  • Does Kubeapps support Operators?
  • More questions?

How to install Kubeapps for demo purposes?

Install Kubeapps for exclusively demo purposes by simply following the getting started docs.

How to install Kubeapps in production scenarios?

For any user-facing installation, you should configure an OAuth2/OIDC provider to enable secure user authentication with Kubeapps and the cluster. Please also refer to the Access Control documentation to configure fine-grained access control for users.

How to use Kubeapps?

Have a look at the dashboard documentation for knowing how to use the Kubeapps dashboard: deploying applications, listing and removing the applications running in your cluster and adding new repositories.

How to configure Kubeapps with Ingress

The example below will match the URL http://example.com to the Kubeapps dashboard. For further configuration, please refer to your specific Ingress configuration docs (e.g., NGINX or HAProxy).

helm install kubeapps --namespace kubeapps \
  --set ingress.enabled=true \
  --set ingress.hostname=example.com \
    bitnami/kubeapps

Serving Kubeapps in a subpath

You may want to serve Kubeapps with a subpath, for instance http://example.com/subpath, you have to set the proper Ingress configuration. If you are using the ingress configuration provided by the Kubeapps chart, you will have to set the ingress.extraHosts parameter:

helm install kubeapps --namespace kubeapps \
    --set ingress.enabled=true
    --set ingress.hostname=""
    --set ingress.extraHosts[0].name="console.example.com"
    --set ingress.extraHosts[0].path="/catalog"
    bitnami/kubeapps

Besides, if you are using the OAuth2/OIDC login (more information at the using an OIDC provider documentation), you will need, also, to configure the different URLs:

helm install kubeapps bitnami/kubeapps \
  --namespace kubeapps \
  # ... other OIDC flags 
  --set authProxy.oauthLoginURI="/subpath/oauth2/login" \
  --set authProxy.oauthLogoutURI="/subpath/oauth2/logout" \
  --set authProxy.additionalFlags="{<other flags>,--proxy-prefix=/subpath/oauth2}"

Can Kubeapps install apps into more than one cluster?

Yes! Kubeapps 2.0+ supports multicluster environments. Have a look at the Kubeapps dashboard documentation to know more.

Can Kubeapps be installed without Internet connection?

Yes! Follow the offline installation documentation to discover how to perform an installation in an air-gapped scenario.

Does Kubeapps support private repositories?

Of course! Have a look at the private app repositories documentation to learn how to configure a private repository in Kubeapps.

Why can’t I configure global private repositories?

You can, but you will need to configure the imagePullSecrets manually.

Kubeapps does not allow you to add imagePullSecrets to an AppRepository that is available to the whole cluster because it would require that Kubeapps copies those secrets to the target namespace when a user deploys an app.

If you create a global AppRepository but the images are on a private registry requiring imagePullSecrets, the best way to configure that is to ensure your Kubernetes nodes are configured with the required imagePullSecrets - this allows all users (of those nodes) to use those images in their deployments without ever requiring access to the secrets.

You could alternatively ensure that the imagePullSecret is available in all namespaces in which you want people to deploy, but this unnecessarily compromises the secret.

Does Kubeapps support Operators?

Yes! You can get started by following the operators documentation.

More questions?

Feel free to open an issue if you have any questions!

Troubleshooting

Nginx Ipv6 error

When starting the application with the --set enableIPv6=true option, the Nginx server present in the services kubeapps and kubeapps-internal-dashboard may fail with the following:

nginx: [emerg] socket() [::]:8080 failed (97: Address family not supported by protocol)

This usually means that your cluster is not compatible with IPv6. To disable it, install kubeapps with the flag: --set enableIPv6=false.

Forbidden error while installing the Chart

If during installation you run into an error similar to:

Error: release kubeapps failed: clusterroles.rbac.authorization.k8s.io "kubeapps-apprepository-controller" is forbidden: attempt to grant extra privileges: [{[get] [batch] [cronjobs] [] []...

Or:

Error: namespaces "kubeapps" is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:default" cannot get namespaces in the namespace "kubeapps"

It is possible, though uncommon, that your cluster does not have Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) enabled. To check if your cluster has RBAC you can execute:

kubectl api-versions

If the above command does not include entries for rbac.authorization.k8s.io you should perform the chart installation by setting rbac.create=false:

helm install --name kubeapps --namespace kubeapps bitnami/kubeapps --set rbac.create=false

Error while upgrading the Chart

It is possible that when upgrading Kubeapps an error appears. That can be caused by a breaking change in the new chart or because the current chart installation is in an inconsistent state. If you find issues upgrading Kubeapps you can follow these steps:

Note: These steps assume that you have installed Kubeapps in the namespace kubeapps using the name kubeapps. If that is not the case replace the command with your namespace and/or name.

Note: If you are upgrading from 1.X to 2.X see the following section.

  1. (Optional) Backup your personal repositories (if you have any):
kubectl get apprepository -A -o yaml > <repo name>.yaml
  1. Delete Kubeapps:
helm del --purge kubeapps
  1. (Optional) Delete the App Repositories CRD:

Warning: Don’t execute this step if you have more than one Kubeapps installation in your cluster.

kubectl delete crd apprepositories.kubeapps.com
  1. (Optional) Clean the Kubeapps namespace:

Warning: Don’t execute this step if you have workloads other than Kubeapps in the kubeapps namespace.

kubectl delete namespace kubeapps
  1. Install the latest version of Kubeapps (using any custom modifications you need):
helm repo update
helm install --name kubeapps --namespace kubeapps bitnami/kubeapps
  1. (Optional) Restore any repositories you backed up in the first step:
kubectl apply -f <repo name>.yaml

After that you should be able to access the new version of Kubeapps. If the above doesn’t work for you or you run into any other issues please open an issue.

Upgrading to 2.0.1 (Chart 5.0.0)

On November 13, 2020, Helm 2 support was formally finished, this major version is the result of the required changes applied to the Helm Chart to be able to incorporate the different features added in Helm 3 and to be consistent with the Helm project itself regarding the Helm 2 EOL.

What changes were introduced in this major version?

  • Previous versions of this Helm Chart use apiVersion: v1 (installable by both Helm 2 and 3), this Helm Chart was updated to apiVersion: v2 (installable by Helm 3 only). Here you can find more information about the apiVersion field.
  • Move dependency information from the requirements.yaml to the Chart.yaml
  • After running helm dependency update, a Chart.lock file is generated containing the same structure used in the previous requirements.lock
  • The different fields present in the Chart.yaml file has been ordered alphabetically in a homogeneous way for all the Bitnami Helm Charts
  • In the case of PostgreSQL subchart, apart from the same changes that are described in this section, there are also other major changes due to the master/slave nomenclature was replaced by primary/readReplica. Here you can find more information about the changes introduced.

Considerations when upgrading to this version

  • If you want to upgrade to this version using Helm 2, this scenario is not supported as this version doesn’t support Helm 2 anymore
  • If you installed the previous version with Helm 2 and wants to upgrade to this version with Helm 3, please refer to the official Helm documentation about migrating from Helm 2 to 3
  • If you want to upgrade to this version from a previous one installed with Helm 3, you shouldn’t face any issues related to the new apiVersion. Due to the PostgreSQL major version bump, it’s necessary to remove the existing statefulsets:

Note: The command below assumes that Kubeapps has been deployed in the kubeapps namespace using “kubeapps” as release name, if that’s not the case, adapt the command accordingly.

$ kubectl delete statefulset -n kubeapps kubeapps-postgresql-master kubeapps-postgresql-slave

Useful links

Upgrading to 2.0

Kubeapps 2.0 (Chart version 4.0.0) introduces some breaking changes:

  • Helm 2 is no longer supported. If you are still using some Helm 2 charts, migrate them with the available tools. Note that some charts (but not all of them) may require to be migrated to the new Chart specification (v2). If you are facing any issue managing this migration and Kubeapps, please open a new issue!
  • MongoDB is no longer supported. Since 2.0, the only database supported is PostgreSQL.
  • PostgreSQL chart dependency has been upgraded to a new major version.

Due to the last point, it’s necessary to run a command before upgrading to Kubeapps 2.0:

Note: The command below assumes that Kubeapps has been deployed in the kubeapps namespace using “kubeapps” as release name, if that’s not the case, adapt the command accordingly.

kubectl delete statefulset -n kubeapps kubeapps-postgresql-master kubeapps-postgresql-slave

After that you should be able to upgrade Kubeapps as always and the database will be repopulated.