error: couldn't read version from server

Question

I am getting the following error when trying to run kubectl locally.

error: couldn't read version from server: Get http://localhost:8080/api: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connection refused

I know this relates to the kubectl config but I'm at a loss in how to resolve it. 2 days ago, I was experimenting with GKE and did set the config to point to GCE. I tried deleting this config file and then getting Vagrant with CoreOS locally. This vagrant up throws a similar error complaining about not being able to connect.

What is the appropriate way to instrument kubectl so it can connect to the API and return information?

Answer 1

tl;dr gcloud container get-credentials --cluster=CLUSTER_ID --zone=YOURZONE

---

So a little background: the kubectl tool is developed by google but isn't actually integrated into google cloud directly, the google cloud just helps you get a compatible version with it when you tell it to install the component.

If you're getting the Get http://localhost:8080/api: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connection refused it is likely due to the kubectl tool not being configured at all or misconfigured. What I believe it's trying to do is assuming you have kubernetes somehow setup locally only, which you don't in this case since it's all on the google cloud (hence the cryptic error).

You can verify your kubectl is misconfigured by running kubectl config view. If it's correctly configured you should see things like a few entries in cluster, with ip addresses, and in users you should see a user for each project, etc. If you see nothing of the sort (ie. empty clusters, and empty users) then you are misconfigured; you will also encounter cryptic issues if you dont see entries for the specific cluster you are trying to work on.

Annoyingly a lot of gcloud commands will silently auto-configure it for you, so if you follow something like a hello wordpress tutorial it will look like you dont have to do this and that somehow kubectl communicates with gcloud, but nothing of the sort happens. It's also very easy to lose that configuration.

To tell gcloud to give you the kubectl config run the following:

gcloud container get-credentials --cluster=CLUSTER_ID --zone=YOURZONE

For cluster id run gcloud container clusters list

Zone is "europe-west1-d" or whatever you've chosen.

Answer 2

This used to be beta, but that is no longer the case. So the command now is:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster-name> --zone=<zone-of-cluster> --project=<project-id>    

If you try to run it with the beta command you get the following error message:

WARNING: You invoked gcloud beta, but with current configuration Kubernetes Engine v1 API will be used instead of v1beta1 API. gcloud beta will switch to use Kubernetes Engine v1beta1 API by default by the end of March 2018.

Later on if you wish to switch between clusters via kubectl (only for ones that you have already authenticated for), you can use:

kubectl config use-context gke_<project-name>_<zone>_<cluster>

Example:

kubectl config use-context gke_my-project_europe-west1-c_my-cluster

To see where you currently are:

kubectl config current-context

Cheers

Answer 3

The above solution no longer works. You need to do the following instead:

gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster-name> \
    [--zone=<zone-of-cluster> --project=<project-id>]