kubectl can't connect to Google Container Engine

Question

I have followed the installation steps: https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/docs/tutorials/guestbook#install_gcloud_and_kubectl

A Google Container Engine cluster is up and running and gcloud CLI is authenticated and works.

But kubectl says: "couldn't read version from server: Get http://local host:8080/api: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connection refused"

I think I need to use kubectl config set-cluster to setup the connection to my cluster on GCE.

Where do I find the address of the Kubernetes master of my GCE cluster? With gcloud beta container clusters list I seemingly get the master IP of my cluster. I used that with kubectl config set-cluster.

Now it says: "error: couldn't read version from server: Get http:// 104.197.49.119/api: dial tcp 104.197.49.119:80: i/o timeout"

Am I on the right track with this?

Additional strangeness:

• gcloud container or gcloud preview container doesn't work for me. Only gcloud beta container

• MASTER_VERSION of my cluster is 0.21.4, while the version of my kubectl client is GitVersion:"v0.20.2", even though freshly installed with gcloud.

Answer 1

Run

gcloud container clusters get-credentials my-cluster-name

to update the kubeconfig file and point kubectl at a cluster on Google Container Engine.

Answer 2

as @ScyDev stated Run: gcloud container get-credentials <cluster_name> But you may have to set your compute zone before, in case you initialized a new cloud shell terminal. That was my case

if you're working in windows (ex. powershell), you need to check this out: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/34395