kube-explorer

kube-explorer is a portable explorer for Kubernetes without any dependency.

It integrates the Rancher steve framework and its dashboard, and is recompiled, packaged, compressed, and provides an almost completely stateless Kubernetes resource manager.

Usage ✅

Please download the binary from the release page.

To run an HTTP only server:

./kube-explorer --kubeconfig=xxxx --http-listen-port=9898 --https-listen-port=0

Then, open the browser to visit http://x.x.x.x:9898 .

Build ✅

To debug on an AMD64 Linux host:

make dev

# $basedir=/opt/ui/dist/
# prepare the file trees like this
# $basedir/dashboard/
# $basedir/api-ui/
# $basedir/index.html

# good to go!
./bin/kube-explorer --debug  --ui-path /opt/ui/dist/ --http-listen-port=9898 --https-listen-port=0

To build all cross-platform binaries:

CROSS=tag make

Supported features

• Specified system default registry for shell image, e.g. --system-default-registry
• Specified shell image name, e.g. --pod-image
• Deployed behind proxy
  • Behind ingress with dns name
  • Behind ingress with dns name and path prefix
  • Base auth via ingress such as nginx, traefik-v1 and traefik-v2

Support Matrix

Currently, there are several major versions under maintenance, each tailored to different Kubernetes version ranges due to the use of varying steve and client-go versions.

Major	Target Rancher Branch	K8s version range
v0.4	v2.8.x	>= 1.25 <= 1.28
v0.5	v2.9.x	>= 1.27 <= 1.30

Please use the proper kube-explorer version for your k8s setup.

Related Projects

• kube-explorer ui(https://github.com/cnrancher/kube-explorer-ui)
• autok3s(https://github.com/cnrancher/autok3s)
• api-ui(https://github.com/rancher/api-ui)