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Version: 2.0

Local Platform Installation with GitLab

kubefirst is the name of our CLI that installs the platform of the same name to your local or cloud environment.

kubefirst k3d with GitLab Cluster Diagramkubefirst k3d with GitLab Cluster Diagram

Prerequisites​

GitLab​

GitLab SaaS offering has limitations that require us to use groups contrary to GitHub which can be use without an organization.

Install the CA (Certificate Authority) of mkcert in your trusted store​

We use mkcert to generate local certificates and serve https with the Traefik Ingress Controller. During the installation, kubefirst generates these certificates and pushes them to Kubernetes as secrets to attach to Ingress resources.

To allow the applications running in your kubefirst platform in addition to your browser to trust the certificates generated by your kubefirst local install, you need to install the CA (Certificate Authority) of mkcert in your trusted store. To do so, follow these simple steps:

brew install mkcert
mkcert -install

This is not an optional step: the cluster creation will fail if you don't install the mkcert CA in your trusted store. If you are using Firefox, you have one more step: you need to install the Network Security Services (NSS):

brew install nss

Create your new local cluster​

To create a new kubefirst cluster locally, run

kubefirst k3d create \
  --git-provider gitlab \
  --gitlab-group your-group \
  --cluster-name kubefirst

Details about your execution will be logged to your ~/.k1/logs directory. More information on kubefirst k3d, including optional flags, can be discovered by running kubefirst k3d help.

We are able to create an ephemeral GitLab token that expires after 8 hours using a process that will prompt your browser to request access to your account. If you need a quick environment, this is a frictionless approach. However, if you need this environment for longer than 8 hours, which is probably the case, please follow our GitHub Token Guide and export a more permanent token to your terminal by using the following command:

export GITLAB_TOKEN=gl_xxxxxxxx

When Docker is provided 5 GB of memory and 5 CPUs, the local kubefirst platform will provision in about 6 minutes and deprovision in about 1 minute.

Installed Applications​

To see what is installed by kubefirst, check the overview page.

After installation​

After the ~5 minute installation, your browser will open a new browser tab at completion with the Console UI at https://kubefirst.kubefirst.dev to provide you an easy way to navigate through the different services that were provisioned.

Console UI Screen​

kubefirst console screen

Example of terminal output following cluster creation​

terminal handoff

Root credentials​

To obtain your 3 initial passwords, run

kubefirst k3d root-credentials

terminal handoff

the kubefirst k3d root-credentials command was introduced in 2.0.1

Connecting to Kubernetes​

You will be automatically connected to your new Kubernetes cluster. To view all cluster pods, run

kubectl get pods -A