📣 If you have an Intel-based Mac, see this post instead
What Is Argo CD?
Argo CD is a Kubernetes controller, responsible for continuously monitoring all running applications and comparing their live state to the desired state specified in the Git repository. It can automatically apply any change to the desired state in the Git repository to the target environment, ensuring the applications remain in sync.
In short, it’s awesome! And we’re going to try it out on minikube on our Mac 🤟
Prerequisites
To continue with the steps below, you need to:
- Have Homebrew installed
- Install Docker Desktop for Mac
- Install minikube using Homebrew by simply running
brew install minikube
Launch Minikube locally
Now that we’re all set, let’s get cooking by launching Minikube. If you don’t know it already, Minikube is a lightweight Kubernetes implementation that creates a VM on your local machine and deploys a simple cluster containing only one node. It is, also, awesome!
In a new Terminal window, run the following:
❯ minikube start💡 If at any point you believe you messed up, you can always reset minikube with minikube delete
Install ArgoCD
❯ kubectl create namespace argocd
❯ kubectl apply -n argocd -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/argoproj/argo-cd/stable/manifests/install.yaml
This will create a new namespace, argocd, where ArgoCD services and application resources will live.
Make sure all argocd resources are up:
❯ kn argocd
Context "minikube" modified.
Active namespace is "argocd".
❯ kga
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
pod/argocd-application-controller-0 1/1 Running 11 (19h ago) 26h
pod/argocd-applicationset-controller-7dd9d4b769-rwgvc 1/1 Running 0 26h
pod/argocd-dex-server-655f944db8-svvkq 1/1 Running 0 26h
pod/argocd-notifications-controller-759b6bcc4d-wmdsl 1/1 Running 1 (20h ago) 26h
pod/argocd-redis-896595fb7-mhcx9 1/1 Running 0 26h
pod/argocd-repo-server-856b477f86-s8qtz 1/1 Running 8 (19h ago) 26h
pod/argocd-server-5bb99cbcb-dsbvz 1/1 Running 0 31m
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
service/argocd-applicationset-controller ClusterIP 10.109.204.182 <none> 7000/TCP,8080/TCP 26h
service/argocd-dex-server ClusterIP 10.110.204.15 <none> 5556/TCP,5557/TCP,5558/TCP 26h
service/argocd-metrics ClusterIP 10.105.76.14 <none> 8082/TCP 26h
service/argocd-notifications-controller-metrics ClusterIP 10.99.243.176 <none> 9001/TCP 26h
service/argocd-redis ClusterIP 10.99.10.128 <none> 6379/TCP 26h
service/argocd-repo-server ClusterIP 10.99.98.96 <none> 8081/TCP,8084/TCP 26h
service/argocd-server ClusterIP 10.108.22.53 <none> 80/TCP,443/TCP 26h
service/argocd-server-metrics ClusterIP 10.98.228.0 <none> 8083/TCP 26h
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
deployment.apps/argocd-applicationset-controller 1/1 1 1 26h
deployment.apps/argocd-dex-server 1/1 1 1 26h
deployment.apps/argocd-notifications-controller 1/1 1 1 26h
deployment.apps/argocd-redis 1/1 1 1 26h
deployment.apps/argocd-repo-server 1/1 1 1 26h
deployment.apps/argocd-server 1/1 1 1 26h
NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY AGE
replicaset.apps/argocd-applicationset-controller-7dd9d4b769 1 1 1 26h
replicaset.apps/argocd-dex-server-655f944db8 1 1 1 26h
replicaset.apps/argocd-notifications-controller-759b6bcc4d 1 1 1 26h
replicaset.apps/argocd-redis-896595fb7 1 1 1 26h
replicaset.apps/argocd-repo-server-856b477f86 1 1 1 26h
replicaset.apps/argocd-server-5674bcbc44 0 0 0 26h
replicaset.apps/argocd-server-5bb99cbcb 1 1 1 31m
NAME READY AGE
statefulset.apps/argocd-application-controller 1/1 26h
Note that the following commands are aliases:
kn– Stands forkubens, a sweet set of tools used to jump between contexts and namespaces on Kubernetes clusterskga– Is aliased tokubectl get allkis aliased tokubectl(you’ll see this on the next command)
Now let’s set up port forwarding in order to access the UI. We can see that the service argocd-server is using ports 80 and 443 – We will use the next command to connect to the API server without exposing the service:
❯ k port-forward svc/argocd-server 8080:443
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:8080 -> 8080
Forwarding from [::1]:8080 -> 8080
Now if we browse to 127.0.0.1:8080 (or localhost:8080) we are presented with the ArgoCD UI. Hoorah! 🎉
To login, the default user in admin, but we still need to retrieve the password. To do so, launch a new Terminal tab or window (this is important: closing or interrupting our existing terminal session will cause us to lose our current connection to the web UI; all next steps until we setup the Ingress should be performed in this new Terminal window) and run:
❯ k get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
password: S05za0QtbnB3MmdmNU5mUQ==
kind: Secret
metadata:
creationTimestamp: "2022-05-31T10:20:12Z"
name: argocd-initial-admin-secret
namespace: argocd
resourceVersion: "133179"
uid: 956bf056-1285-4465-aa77-d8ac87f65d13
type: Opaque
Grab the password and decode it:
❯ echo S05za0QtbnB3MmdmNU5mUQ== | base64 --decode
KNskD-npw2gf5NfQ
⚠️ You should delete the
argocd-initial-admin-secretfrom the Argo CD namespace once you changed the password. The secret serves no other purpose than to store the initially generated password in clear and can safely be deleted at any time. It will be re-created on demand by Argo CD if a new admin password must be re-generated.
Alternatively, we can run:
❯ kubectl -n argocd get secret argocd-initial-admin-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.password}" | base64 -d; echo
Sweet, now we have the admin password and can proceed with changing it.
ArgoCD CLI Login
Now that we have the admin password, we are able to sign in to argocd from the terminal. However, we need to install the argocd cli first. To do so, run:
❯ brew install argocd
There. That simple.
Now let’s login in to argocd using the CLI and update the password:
❯ argocd login localhost:8080
WARNING: server certificate had error: x509: “Argo CD” certificate is not trusted. Proceed insecurely (y/n)? y
Username: admin
Password:
'admin:login' logged in successfully
Context 'localhost:8080' updated
❯ argocd account update-password
*** Enter password of currently logged in user (admin):
*** Enter new password for user admin:
*** Confirm new password for user admin:
Password updated
Context 'localhost:8080' updated
Note that you need to enter your current password first (the one we identified in the steps above) before typing your new password twice.
Ingress
So far, we have reached the ArgoCD UI by broswing to http://localhost:8080. However, this is not ideal.
An ingress exposes HTTP and HTTPS routes from outside the cluster to services within the cluster. Traffic routing is controlled by rules defined on the Ingress resource.
Here is a simple example where an Ingress sends all its traffic to one Service:
In short, instead of reaching the ArgoCD UI using localhost:8080, I would rather this behaves like a “normal” site, like -for example- https://argocd.apexlemons.com
With that in mind, let’s enable the ingress addon for minikube first:
❯ minikube addons enable ingress
To create the ingress, create a new file named argocd-ingress.yaml with the following content:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: argocd
namespace: argocd
annotations:
networking.gke.io/v1beta1.FrontendConfig: argocd-frontend-config
spec:
tls:
- secretName: secret-yourdomain-com
rules:
- host: argocd.apexlemons.com
http:
paths:
- pathType: Prefix
path: "/"
backend:
service:
name: argocd-server
port:
number: 80
Note, make sure to replace the host value above with a domain of your choice (ie argocd.whatever.com). It can be anything, the beauty is that you don’t even need a domain to make this work, as we will point it to the local minikube IP in the next steps below.
Next, apply it to the argocd namespace:
❯ kubectl apply -f argocd-ingress.yaml -n argocdDue to an issue with the ingress specifically on Apple Silicon, we need to edit our /etc/hosts file and add the desired host to the localhost entry:
/etc/hosts:
127.0.0.1 localhost argocd.apexlemons.comI found this issue here: https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/13510
Once the entry has been added, and the ingress deployed, enter minikube tunnel on your terminal. Make sure you’re in the argocd namespace when you do that and you should be good to go with:
❯ minikube tunnel
✅ Tunnel successfully started
📌 NOTE: Please do not close this terminal as this process must stay alive for the tunnel to be accessible...Now however, attempting to browse to https://argocd.apexlemons.com will result in a ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error.
ArgoCD handles TLS termination by itself and always redirects HTTP requests to HTTPS. The problem here is that the nginx ingress controller also handles TLS termination and communicates with the backend service with HTTP and the result is that the ArgoCD’s server always responds with a redirect to HTTPS which is the cause for the multiple redirects. More on this here.
The solution is to ensure that the service doesn’t handle TLS by passing the --insecure flag to the argocd-server deployment. Edit the deployment with the following command and then add the required flag:
❯ kubectl edit deployment argocd-server -n argocd
[...]
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: argocd-server
command:
- argocd-server
- --insecure <-- Add this bit
[...]
You should now be able to browse to your argocd instance
Make sure to keep the terminal session where you ran minikube tunnel open in order to keep the connection to argocd alive.
Enjoy!
✌🏽
