Tiller is installed but not found by Helm

Question

Background I have kubernetes installed in clustered mode.
All nodes are up and running
I want to use jenkins-x to get ease of deployment.
Now jenkins-x uses Helm to do this job; Helm comes up with client and server architecture.

Helm setup can be achieved by following two ways:-

Using jenkins-x

jx install --username <username>

Standalone Helm

helm init

This helps to setup itsserver (Tiller), by putting it in pod of Kubernetes.

Whats issue

The issue is when I use first approach it does Tiller installation and later get failed by saying 'Tiller is available but not up and running'.

Created ClusterRoleBinding tiller
retrying after error:existing tiller deployment found but not running, please check the kube-system namespace and resolve any issues

Second approach also gets fail in similar path

It also does the Tiller installation but it does not find Tiller when I'm trying to list it.

helm ls

Error: could not find tiller

So essence of issue is :

It does Tiller installation but fails it in finding later.

helm init

Warning: Tiller is already installed in the cluster.

helm ls

Error: could not find tiller

Answer 1

I just went ahead and installed both helm and Jx with no problem. So, I don't know how to resolve your issue, but you can install it as below, and should work.

Installing Helm:

$ wget https://kubernetes-helm.storage.googleapis.com/helm-v2.9.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf helm-v2.9.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz
$ cd linux-amd64/
$ sudo cp helm /usr/local/bin/helm
$ helm init

Installing Jx

$ curl -L https://github.com/jenkins-x/jx/releases/download/v1.2.98/jx-linux-amd64.tar.gz | tar xzv 
$ sudo mv jx /usr/local/bin

Making Tiller cluster-admin role:

$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-admin \
     --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
     --serviceaccount=kube-system:default

Checking it works:

$ helm install --name prometheus stable/prometheus
$ helm ls

prometheus 1 Sun Jun 3 09:47:12 2018 DEPLOYED prometheus-6.7.0 default

Answer 2

there may be a problem with the tiller pod starting either due to resources or RBAC. Try these commands:

kubectl get deploy -n kube-system
kubectl get node -n kube-system

that might give more of a clue. If you can find a tiller pod thats failing mabe

kubectl describe pod tiller-1234 -n kube-system