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K8SaaS

Authenticate to the cluster

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”

Kubectl

Section titled “Kubectl”

Kubectl is the Kubernetes command-line tool that allows you to interact with the Kubernetes API.

Install kubectl

Pinniped

Section titled “Pinniped”

Pinniped is a Kubernetes authentication provider that allows you to authenticate to a cluster using OIDC.

Install Pinniped

Kubeconfig

Section titled “Kubeconfig”

Your organization will provide you with a Kubeconfig file. This file contains the necessary information to authenticate to the cluster.

Two options are available for the discovery of your Kubeconfigs:

  • consolidate all the configurations in one file at $HOME/.kube/config
  • load the configuration from specific file(s) using the KUBECONFIG environment variable
    • export KUBECONFIG=<path/to/kubeconfig>
    • export KUBECONFIG=<path/to/kubeconfig1>:<path/to/kubeconfig2>

Check if your Kubeconfig was successfully loaded by running kubectl config view.

Authenticate

Section titled “Authenticate”

Then, interacting with the Kubernetes API with kubectl will, the first time, ask you to connect using your SSO credentials. Do so, and then re-execute the command.

Terminal window
$ kubectl auth whoami
# Follow instructions and login in to with your SSO account.
ATTRIBUTE   VALUE
Username    oidc:john.doe@example.com
Groups      [oidc:group1 oidc:group2 system:authenticated]
$ kubectl get namespaces
NAME                 STATUS   AGE
default              Active   42m
k8saas-system        Active   42m
kube-node-lease      Active   42m
kube-public          Active   42m
kube-system          Active   42m
[...]