Install Kubectl and Helm Clients Directly on a Host¶

You can use kubectl and helm to interact with a controller from a remote system.

About this task

Commands such as those that reference local files or commands that require a shell are more easily used from clients running directly on a remote workstation.

Complete the following steps to install kubectl and helm on a remote system.

The following procedure shows how to configure the kubectl and helm clients directly on remote host, for an admin user with cluster-admin cluster role. If using a non-admin user such as one with only role privileges within a private namespace, the procedure is the same, however, additional configuration is required in order to use helm.

Procedure

On the controller, if an admin-user service account is not already available, create one.

Create the admin-user service account in kube-system namespace and bind the cluster-admin ClusterRoleBinding to this user.

% cat <<EOF > admin-login.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-admin
  namespace: kube-system
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
type: kubernetes.io/service-account-token
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-admin-sa-token
  namespace: kube-system
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/service-account.name: kubernetes-admin
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-admin
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: kubernetes-admin
  namespace: kube-system
EOF
% kubectl apply -f admin-login.yaml

Retrieve the secret token.

~(keystone_admin)]$ TOKEN_DATA=$(kubectl -n kube-system describe secret $(kubectl -n kube-system get secret | grep kubernetes-admin | awk '{print $1}') | grep "token:" | awk '{print $2}')

On a remote workstation, install the kubectl client. Go to the following link: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-linux/.

Install the kubectl client CLI (for example, an Ubuntu host).

% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
% curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
sudo apt-key add
% echo "deb https://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main" | \
sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install -y kubectl

Set up the local configuration and context.

Note

In order for your remote host to trust the certificate used by the StarlingX K8S API, you must ensure that the k8s_root_ca_cert specified at install time is a trusted CA certificate by your host. Follow the instructions for adding a trusted CA certificate for the operating system distribution of your particular host.

If you did not specify a k8s_root_ca_cert at install time, then specify --insecure-skip-tls-verify, as shown below.

The following example configures the default ~/.kube/config. See the following reference: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/configure-access-multiple-clusters/. You need to obtain a floating OAM IP.
```
% kubectl config set-cluster mycluster --server=https://${OAM_IP}:6443 \
--insecure-skip-tls-verify
% kubectl config set-credentials kubernetes-admin@mycluster --token=$TOKEN_DATA
% kubectl config set-context kubernetes-admin@mycluster --cluster=mycluster \
--user kubernetes-admin@mycluster --namespace=default
% kubectl config use-context kubernetes-admin@mycluster
```
$TOKEN_DATA is the token retrieved in step 1.

Test remote kubectl access.

% kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME           STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION   INTERNAL-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE ...
controller-0   Ready    master   15h    v1.12.3   192.168.204.3     <none>        CentOS L ...
controller-1   Ready    master   129m   v1.12.3   192.168.204.4     <none>        CentOS L ...
worker-0       Ready    <none>   99m    v1.12.3   192.168.204.201   <none>        CentOS L ...
worker-1       Ready    <none>   99m    v1.12.3   192.168.204.202   <none>        CentOS L ...
%

On the workstation, install the helm client on an Ubuntu host by taking the following actions on the remote Ubuntu system.

Install helm. See the following reference: https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/. Helm accesses the Kubernetes cluster as configured in the previous step, using the default ~/.kube/config.
```
% wget https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.2.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz
% tar xvf helm-v3.2.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz
% sudo cp linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin
```

Verify that helm installed correctly.

% helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.2.1", GitCommit:"fe51cd1e31e6a202cba7dead9552a6d418ded79a", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.13.10"}

Run the following commands:

% helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
% helm repo update
% helm repo list
% helm search repo
% helm install wordpress bitnami/wordpress