User friendly kubernetes tools

This project is a collection of tools created to demystify your kubernetes clusters and make them more accessible to non-expert users.

• kubefs is a filesystem that allows you to browse the kubernetes objects in your cluster in a familiar way, as files and directories.
• podview is a terminal program which gives you a real time view of pods that interest you, across clusters. You can use it to watch code deployments in real time, or check up on the health of your workloads.

kubefs - a fuse filesystem for browsing clusters

kubefs is a read-only filesystem that runs in user space (you don't need to be root to mount it) that allows you to browse objects in your Kubernetes clusters.

It loads your kube config(s) from $KUBECONFIG or ~/.kube and uses that to present a top level view for you to navigate. The modification timestamps of the files and directories reflect the creationTimestamp of the kube objects themselves.

Behind the scenes, kubefs makes requests to the k8s API server to fetch all these objects and populate the filesystem. This can be slow, so directory entries are cached.

podview - a real time dashboard for pods

podview is a curses based terminal program which gives you a real time view of the pods that you want to see.

It loads your kube config(s) from $KUBECONFIG or ~/.kube and uses that to detect all your clusters. You can then filter on:

• cluster name using -c / --cluster
• namespace name using -n / --namespace
• pod name using -p / --pod

A very common case is watching the state of pods for a particular workload/service across all your clusters:

$ ./pv --pod 'prom*'

On startup podview first lists all the pods matching your filter, and then proceeds to watch them for updates.

Pods are listed per cluster, and sorted by creationTimestamp so you will see the oldest pods at the top.

Keyboard controls:

• Arrow keys to scroll horizontally or vertically by one character.
• PageUp/PageDown to scroll vertically by half a page.

Getting started

Requirements: ​

• Python 3.8 or later.
• A working kube config (make sure kubectl works).
• Additional dependencies for kubefs (not required for podview):
  • fuse (available on Linux and Mac)
  • Somewhere to mount the filesystem. ~/kubeview is the suggested mount point, but you can use any location you like.

Ubuntu

System packages

Let's first check the version of your system Python:

$ python3 -V
Python 3.8.10

Install the fuse packages and the python-venv package matching your installed version:

$ sudo apt install fuse libfuse2 python3.8-venv

Project setup (the scripted way)

Clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/nearmap/kubefs
$ cd kubefs

These scripts automate the manual setup below:

# kubefs
$ mkdir -p ~/kubeview
$ ./kfs ~/kubeview

# podview
$ ./pv

They basically manage the virtual environment for you, so they have to be run outside of the virtual environment.

The scripts assume that you either:

• Don't have a virtual environment in .ve/ at all (it will setup it up for you), or
• You have a fully populated virtual environment in .ve/ (it will assume it's up to date to avoid running pip install every time).

If your virtual environment isn't working try removing it by doing rm -rf .ve and re-running the scripts. See also the Troubleshooting section below.

Project setup (the manual way)

Clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/nearmap/kubefs
$ cd kubefs

Create the virtual environment by doing:

$ python3 -m venv .ve

Activate it by doing:

$ . .ve/bin/activate
(.ve) $

Once you've activated the virtual environment install the dependencies into it:

(.ve) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Finally, make sure kubefs and podview can be started without errors:

# kubefs
(.ve) $ mkdir -p ~/kubeview
(.ve) $ bin/kubefs ~/kubeview

# podview
(.ve) $ bin/podview

Troubleshooting

When running kubefs or podview I get ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'fuse'

Your virtual environment is missing one or more dependencies. Try re-creating it and re-installing the dependencies. See the Project setup steps above.

While creating/installing dependencies into a virtual environment I see errors in red, something about Failed building wheel.

These are not fatal errors and you can ignore them.

When running kubefs or podview I get FileNotFoundError: [Error 2] No such file or directory: '/home/user/.kube'.

Your kube config files could not be detected. (Does kubectl work?)

If you have $KUBECONFIG set make sure it's pointing at one or more valid kube config files, eg. KUBECONFIG=/home/user/.kube/cluster1:/home/user/.kube/cluster2.

Otherwise, make sure that your ~/.kube directory contains at least one valid kube config file.

Using logs to troubleshoot problems that occur at runtime.

kubefs runs in the foreground and logs to stdout/stderr.

podview runs a curses ui in the foreground. It logs to var/log/podview.log.