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K3s Kubernetes

Helm + Arkade

Intro

In this tutorial, we will install Helm and Arkade. These two are something like package managers in linux e.g. yum or apt, just for Kubernetes apps.

Helm

Let’s get this out of the way. This is the easy stuff. We are going to pretty much follow the official guide, since Helm supports arm64. https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/

More info about Helm 3: https://helm.sh/docs/

#Make sure GIT is installed
apt -y install git
#We need to fix kubeconfig file for helm to stop complaining
export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/config
mkdir ~/.kube 2> /dev/null
sudo k3s kubectl config view --raw > "$KUBECONFIG"
chmod 600 "$KUBECONFIG"
echo "KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG" >> /etc/environment
#Switch to home directory
cd
#Create a directory for helm
mkdir helm
#Switch to helm directory
cd helm
#Download helm installer
curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
#change permissions to execute
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
#install helm
./get_helm.sh
#check if helm is installed
root@control01:~/helm# helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.11.0", GitCommit:"472c5736ab01133de504a826bd9ee12cbe4e7904", GitTreeState:"clean", GoVersion:"go1.18.10"}}

Arkade

This is basically Helm, just made even simpler.

More info about Arkade: https://github.com/alexellis/arkade

#Execute
curl -sLS https://get.arkade.dev | sudo sh

#Check version:
root@ControlNode1:~/helm# arkade version

Open Source Marketplace For Developer Tools

Version: 0.8.60
Git Commit: 9c7df2b619a90f8e609bc959495bcdc65c3b9455

 🐳 arkade needs your support: https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis

We are not going into detail right now how to use them. We just want to make them ready for when we do need them later on.

Upgrading

You can safely upgrade Helm3 and Arkade running the same commands as install. It will detect and update on its own.