Installation

Operator fails due to cannot list resource "clusterroles" error

When the Kiali Operator installs a Kiali Server, the Operator will assign the Kiali Server the proper roles/rolebindings so the Kiali Server can access the appropriate namespaces. The Kiali Operator will check to see if the Kiali CR setting deployment.accessible_namespaces has a value of ['**']. If it does, this means the Kiali Server is to be given access to all namespaces in the cluster, including namespaces that will be created in the future. In this case, the Kiali Operator will create and assign ClusterRole/ClusterRoleBinding resources to the Kiali Server. But in order to do this, the Kiali Operator must itself be given permission to create those ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding resources. When you install the Kiali Operator via OLM, these permissions are automatically granted. However, if you installed the Kiali Operator with the Operator Helm Chart, and if you did so with the value clusterRoleCreator set to false then the Kiali Operator will not be given permission to create cluster roles. In this case, you will be unable to install a Kiali Server if your Kiali CR has deployment.accessible_namespaces set to ['**'] - you will get an error similar to this:

Failed to list rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1, Kind=ClusterRole:
clusterroles.rbac.authorization.k8s.io is forbidden:
User "system:serviceaccount:kiali-operator:kiali-operator"
cannot list resource "clusterroles" in API group
"rbac.authorization.k8s.io" at the cluster scope

Thus, if you do not give the Kiali Operator the permission to create cluster roles, you must tell the Operator which specific namespaces the Kiali Server can access (you cannot use [**']). When specific namespaces are specified in deployment.accessible_namespaces, the Kiali Operator will create Role and RoleBindings (not the “Cluster” kinds) and assign them to the Kiali Server.

What values can be set in the Kiali CR?

A Kiali CR is used to tell the Kiali Operator how and where to install a Kiali Server in your cluster. You can install one or more Kiali Servers by creating one Kiali CR for each Kiali Server you want the Operator to install and manage. Deleting a Kiali CR will uninstall its associted Kiali Server.

All the settings that you can define in a Kiali CR are fully documented here. If you are using a specific version of the Operator, the Kiali CR that is valid for that version can be found in the version tag within the github repository (e.g. Operator v1.25.0 supported these Kiali CR settings).

Note that that example Kiali CR is formatted in such a way that if you uncomment a line (by deleting the line’s leading # character), that line’s setting will be at the appropriate indentation level. This allows you to create an initial Kiali CR by simply uncommenting lines of the settings you want to define. The comments are also specifically laid out in such a way that each major top-level group of settings are in their own major comment section, and each value in each commented setting is the default value (so if you do not define that setting yourself, you will know what its default value is).

How to configure some operator features at runtime

Once the Kiali Operator is installed, you can change some of its configuration at runtime in order to utilize certain features that the Kiali Operator provides. These features are configured via environment variables defined in the operator’s deployment.

Perform the following steps to configure these features in the Kiali Operator:

1. Determine the namespace where your operator is located and store that namespace name in $OPERATOR_NAMESPACE. If you installed the operator via helm, it may be kiali-operator. If you installed the operator via OLM, it may be openshift-operators. If you are not sure, you can perform a query to find it:

OPERATOR_NAMESPACE="$(kubectl get deployments --all-namespaces  | grep kiali-operator | cut -d ' ' -f 1)"

2. Determine the name of the environment variable you need to change in order to configure the feature you are interested in. Here is a list of currently supported environment variables you can set:

• ALLOW_AD_HOC_KIALI_NAMESPACE: must be true or false. If true, the operator will be allowed to install the Kiali Server in any namespace, regardless of which namespace the Kiali CR is created. If false, the operator will only install the Kiali Server in the same namespace where the Kiali CR is created - any attempt to do otherwise will cause the operator to abort the Kiali Server installation.
• ALLOW_AD_HOC_KIALI_IMAGE: must be true or false. If true, the operator will be allowed to install the Kiali Server with a custom container image as defined in the Kiali CR’s spec.deployment.image_name and/or spec.deployment.image_version. If false, the operator will only install the Kiali Server with the default image. If a Kiali CR is created with spec.deployment.image_name or spec.deployment.image_version defined, the operator will abort the Kiali Server installation.
• ANSIBLE_DEBUG_LOGS: must be true or false. When true, turns on debug logging within the Operator SDK. For details, see the docs here.
• ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY_KIALI_KIALI_IO: Controls how verbose the operator logs are - the higher the value the more output is logged. For details, see the docs here.
• ANSIBLE_CONFIG: must be /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg or /opt/ansible/ansible-profiler.cfg. If set to /opt/ansible/ansible-profiler.cfg a profiler report will be dumped in the operator logs after each reconciliation run.

3. Store the name of the environment variable you want to change in $ENV_NAME:

ENV_NAME="ANSIBLE_CONFIG"

4. Store the new value of the environment variable in $ENV_VALUE:

ENV_VALUE="/opt/ansible/ansible-profiler.cfg"

5. The final step depends on how you installed the Kiali Operator:

• If you installed the operator via helm, simply set the environment variable on the operator deployment directly:

oc -n ${OPERATOR_NAMESPACE} set env deploy/kiali-operator "${ENV_NAME}=${ENV_VALUE}"

• If you installed the operator via OLM, you must set this environment variable within the operator’s CSV and let OLM propagate the new environment variable value down to the operator deployment:

oc -n ${OPERATOR_NAMESPACE} patch $(oc -n ${OPERATOR_NAMESPACE} get csv -o name | grep kiali) --type=json -p "[{'op':'replace','path':"/spec/install/spec/deployments/0/spec/template/spec/containers/0/env/$(oc -n ${OPERATOR_NAMESPACE} get $(oc -n ${OPERATOR_NAMESPACE} get csv -o name | grep kiali) -o jsonpath='{.spec.install.spec.deployments[0].spec.template.spec.containers[0].env[*].name}' | tr ' ' '\n' | cat --number | grep ${ENV_NAME} | cut -f 1 | xargs echo -n | cat - <(echo "-1") | bc)/value",'value':"\"${ENV_VALUE}\""}]"

How can I inject an Istio sidecar in the Kiali pod?

By default, Kiali will not have an Istio sidecar. If you wish to deploy the Kiali pod with a sidecar, you have to define the sidecar.istio.io/inject=true label in the spec.deployment.pod_labels setting in the Kiali CR. For example:

spec:
  deployment:
    pod_labels:
      sidecar.istio.io/inject: "true"

If you are utilizing CNI in your Istio environment (for example, on OpenShift), Istio will not allow sidecars to work when injected in pods deployed in the control plane namespace, e.g. istio-system. (1) (2) (3). In this case, you must deploy Kiali in its own separate namespace. On OpenShift, you can do this using the following instructions.

Determine what namespace you want to install Kiali and create it. Give the proper permissions to Kiali. Create the necessary NetworkAttachmentDefinition. Finally, create the Kiali CR that will tell the operator to install Kiali in this new namespace, making sure to add the proper sidecar injection label as explained earlier.

NAMESPACE="kialins"

oc create namespace ${NAMESPACE}

oc adm policy add-scc-to-group privileged system:serviceaccounts:${NAMESPACE}

cat <<EOM | oc apply -f -
apiVersion: k8s.cni.cncf.io/v1
kind: NetworkAttachmentDefinition
metadata:
  name: istio-cni
  namespace: ${NAMESPACE}
EOM

cat <<EOM | oc apply -f -
apiVersion: kiali.io/v1alpha1
kind: Kiali
metadata:
  name: kiali
  namespace: ${NAMESPACE}
spec:
  istio_namespace: istio-system
  auth:
    strategy: anonymous
  deployment:
    accessible_namespaces: [ '**' ]
    pod_labels:
      sidecar.istio.io/inject: "true"
EOM

After the operator installs Kiali, confirm you have two containers in your pod. This indicates your Kiali pod has its proxy sidecar successfully injected.

$ oc get pods -n ${NAMESPACE}
NAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kiali-56bbfd644-nkhlw   2/2     Running   0          43s