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Installation: Frequently Asked Questions

This section tracks some of the more frequently encountered issues with installing or getting started with Helm.

We'd love your help making this document better. To add, correct, or remove information, file an issue or send us a pull request.

Downloading

I want to know more about my downloading options.

Q: I can't get to GitHub releases of the newest Helm. Where are they?

A: We no longer use GitHub releases. Binaries are now stored in a GCS public bucket.

Q: Why aren't there Debian/Fedora/... native packages of Helm?

We'd love to provide these or point you toward a trusted provider. If you're interested in helping, we'd love it. This is how the Homebrew formula was started.

Q: Why do you provide a curl ...|bash script?

A: There is a script in our repository (scripts/get) that can be executed as a curl ..|bash script. The transfers are all protected by HTTPS, and the script does some auditing of the packages it fetches. However, the script has all the usual dangers of any shell script.

We provide it because it is useful, but we suggest that users carefully read the script first. What we'd really like, though, are better packaged releases of Helm.

Installing

I'm trying to install Helm/Tiller, but something is not right.

Q: How do I put the Helm client files somewhere other than ~/.helm?

Set the $HELM_HOME environment variable, and then run helm init:

export HELM_HOME=/some/path
helm init --client-only

Note that if you have existing repositories, you will need to re-add them with helm repo add....

Q: How do I configure Helm, but not install Tiller?

By default, helm init will ensure that the local $HELM_HOME is configured, and then install Tiller on your cluster. To locally configure, but not install Tiller, use helm init --client-only.

Q: How do I manually install Tiller on the cluster?

Tiller is installed as a Kubernetes deployment. You can get the manifest by running helm init --dry-run --debug, and then manually install it with kubectl. It is suggested that you do not remove or change the labels on that deployment, as they are sometimes used by supporting scripts and tools.

Getting Started

I successfully installed Helm/Tiller but I can't use it.

Q: Trying to use Helm, I get the error "client transport was broken"

E1014 02:26:32.885226   16143 portforward.go:329] an error occurred forwarding 37008 -> 44134: error forwarding port 44134 to pod tiller-deploy-2117266891-e4lev_kube-system, uid : unable to do port forwarding: socat not found.
2016/10/14 02:26:32 transport: http2Client.notifyError got notified that the client transport was broken EOF.
Error: transport is closing

A: This is usually a good indication that Kubernetes is not set up to allow port forwarding.

Typically, the missing piece is socat. If you are running CoreOS, we have been told that it may have been misconfigured on installation. The CoreOS team recommends reading this:

Here are a few resolved issues that may help you get started:

Q: Trying to use Helm, I get the error "lookup XXXXX on 8.8.8.8:53: no such host"

Error: Error forwarding ports: error upgrading connection: dial tcp: lookup kube-4gb-lon1-02 on 8.8.8.8:53: no such host

A: We have seen this issue with Ubuntu and Kubeadm in multi-node clusters. The issue is that the nodes expect certain DNS records to be obtainable via global DNS. Until this is resolved upstream, you can work around the issue as follows:

  1. Add entries to /etc/hosts on the master mapping your hostnames to their public IPs
  2. Install dnsmasq on the master (e.g. apt install -y dnsmasq)
  3. Kill the k8s api server container on master (kubelet will recreate it)
  4. Then systemctl restart docker (or reboot the master) for it to pick up the /etc/resolv.conf changes

See this issue for more information: helm#1455

Upgrading

My Helm used to work, then I upgrade. Now it is broken.

Q: After upgrade, I get the error "Client version is incompatible". What's wrong?

Tiller and Helm have to negotiate a common version to make sure that they can safely communicate without breaking API assumptions. That error means that the version difference is too great to safely continue. Typically, you need to upgrade Tiller manually for this.

The Installation Guide has definitive information about safely upgrading Helm and Tiller.

The rules for version numbers are as follows:

  • Pre-release versions are incompatible with everything else. Alpha.1 is incompatible with Alpha.2.
  • Patch revisions are compatible: 1.2.3 is compatible with 1.2.4
  • Minor revisions are not compatible: 1.2.0 is not compatible with 1.3.0, though we may relax this constraint in the future.
  • Major revisions are not compatible: 1.0.0 is not compatible with 2.0.0.

Uninstalling

I am trying to remove stuff.

Q: When I delete the Tiller deployment, how come all the releases are still there?

Releases are stored in ConfigMaps inside of the kube-system namespace. You will have to manually delete them to get rid of the record.

Q: I want to delete my local Helm. Where are all its files?

Along with the helm binary, Helm stores some files in $HELM_HOME, which is located by default in ~/.helm.