Jenkins pod unable to create deployments in Private Kubernetes cluster

Question

Jenkins is running as a pod in a private GKE cluster. Currently when executing deployments using helm, the following error is encountered.

User "system:serviceaccount:jenkins:jenkins" cannot list resource "pods" in API group "" in the namespace "kube-system"

The command used for deployment is

helm install --values=/values_env.yaml --name / --set image.repository= --set image.tag= --namespace

User "system:serviceaccount:jenkins:jenkins" cannot list resource "pods" in API group "" in the namespace "kube-system"

Answer 1

The service account jenkins doesn't have privileges to list pods kube-system. You have to create Roles with those privileges and bind it with a ClusterRoleBinding / RoleBinding along with jenkins service account.

kind: ClusterRole
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: jenkins
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - services
  - endpoints
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
  - create
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - secrets
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - configmaps
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
  - update
  - create
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - pods
  verbs:
  - get
  - delete
  - list
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - events
  verbs:
  - create
  - patch
- apiGroups:
  - extensions
  resources:
  - ingresses
  verbs:
  - list
  - watch
  - get
- apiGroups:
  - "extensions"
  resources:
  - ingresses/status
  verbs:
  - update
- apiGroups:
  - apps
  - extensions
  resources:
  - deployments
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
  - create
  - update
  - patch
  - delete
---
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: jenkins
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: jenkins
  namespace: jenkins
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: jenkins
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io