How to sign in kubernetes dashboard?

Question

I just upgraded kubeadm and kubelet to v1.8.0. And install the dashboard following the official document.

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/master/src/deploy/recommended/kubernetes-dashboard.yaml

After that, I started the dashboard by running

$ kubectl proxy --address="192.168.0.101" -p 8001 --accept-hosts='^*$'

Then fortunately, I was able to access the dashboard thru http://192.168.0.101:8001/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/https:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/

I was redirected to a login page like this which I had never met before. It looks like that there are two ways of authentication.

I tried to upload the /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf as the kubeconfig but got failed. Then I tried to use the token I got from kubeadm token list to sign in but failed again.

The question is how I can sign in the dashboard. It looks like they added a lot of security mechanism than before. Thanks.

Answer 1

As of release 1.7 Dashboard supports user authentication based on:

• Authorization: Bearer <token> header passed in every request to Dashboard. Supported from release 1.6. Has the highest priority. If present, login view will not be shown.
• Bearer Token that can be used on Dashboard login view.
• Username/password that can be used on Dashboard login view.
• Kubeconfig file that can be used on Dashboard login view.

— Dashboard on Github

Token

Here Token can be Static Token, Service Account Token, OpenID Connect Token from Kubernetes Authenticating, but not the kubeadm Bootstrap Token.

With kubectl, we can get an service account (eg. deployment controller) created in kubernetes by default.

$ kubectl -n kube-system get secret
# All secrets with type 'kubernetes.io/service-account-token' will allow to log in.
# Note that they have different privileges.
NAME                                     TYPE                                  DATA      AGE
deployment-controller-token-frsqj        kubernetes.io/service-account-token   3         22h

$ kubectl -n kube-system describe secret deployment-controller-token-frsqj
Name:         deployment-controller-token-frsqj
Namespace:    kube-system
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  kubernetes.io/service-account.name=deployment-controller
              kubernetes.io/service-account.uid=64735958-ae9f-11e7-90d5-02420ac00002

Type:  kubernetes.io/service-account-token

Data
====
ca.crt:     1025 bytes
namespace:  11 bytes
token:      eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.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.OqFc4CE1Kh6T3BTCR4XxDZR8gaF1MvH4M3ZHZeCGfO-sw-D0gp826vGPHr_0M66SkGaOmlsVHmP7zmTi-SJ3NCdVO5viHaVUwPJ62hx88_JPmSfD0KJJh6G5QokKfiO0WlGN7L1GgiZj18zgXVYaJShlBSz5qGRuGf0s1jy9KOBt9slAN5xQ9_b88amym2GIXoFyBsqymt5H-iMQaGP35tbRpewKKtly9LzIdrO23bDiZ1voc5QZeAZIWrizzjPY5HPM1qOqacaY9DcGc7akh98eBJG_4vZqH2gKy76fMf0yInFTeNKr45_6fWt8gRM77DQmPwb3hbrjWXe1VvXX_g

Kubeconfig

The dashboard needs the user in the kubeconfig file to have either username & password or token, but admin.conf only has client-certificate. You can edit the config file to add the token that was extracted using the method above.

$ kubectl config set-credentials cluster-admin --token=bearer_token

Alternative (Not recommended for Production)

Here are two ways to bypass the authentication, but use for caution.

Deploy dashboard with HTTP

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/master/src/deploy/alternative/kubernetes-dashboard.yaml

Dashboard can be loaded at http://localhost:8001/ui with kubectl proxy.

Granting admin privileges to Dashboard's Service Account

$ cat <<EOF | kubectl create -f -
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-dashboard
  labels:
    k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: kubernetes-dashboard
  namespace: kube-system
EOF

Afterwards you can use Skip option on login page to access Dashboard.

If you are using dashboard version v1.10.1 or later, you must also add --enable-skip-login to the deployment's command line arguments. You can do so by adding it to the args in kubectl edit deployment/kubernetes-dashboard --namespace=kube-system.

Example:

      containers:
      - args:
        - --auto-generate-certificates
        - --enable-skip-login            # <-- add this line
        image: k8s.gcr.io/kubernetes-dashboard-amd64:v1.10.1