Installing Tekton Dashboard

This guide explains how to install Tekton Dashboard. It covers the following topics:

Before you begin

Choose the version of Tekton Dashboard you want to install. You have the following options:

  • Official - install this unless you have a specific reason to go for a different release.
  • Nightly - may contain bugs, install at your own risk.
  • [HEAD] - this is the bleeding edge. It contains unreleased code that may result in unpredictable behavior. To get started, see the development guide instead of this page.

Pre-requisites

In order to install the Tekton Dashboard, please make sure the following requirements are met:

  • You must have a Kubernetes cluster running version 1.24.0 or later. Tekton Pipelines or other projects may require a newer version.

    If you don’t already have a cluster, you can create one for testing with kind. Install kind and create a cluster by running kind create cluster. This will create a cluster running locally, with RBAC enabled and your user granted the cluster-admin role.

  • Tekton Pipelines must be installed in the cluster. See Installing Tekton Pipelines.

  • Optionally, install Tekton Triggers. See Installing Tekton Triggers.

Supported Tekton Pipelines and Tekton Triggers versions

Each Tekton Dashboard release is tested against specific Tekton Pipelines and Tekton Triggers versions. See the Tekton Dashboard release notes for details of the supported versions.

Installing Tekton Dashboard on Kubernetes

To install Tekton Dashboard on a Kubernetes cluster:

  1. Run the following command to install Tekton Dashboard:

    kubectl apply --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/dashboard/latest/release.yaml

    This will install the Dashboard in read-only mode by default.

    Previous versions are available at previous/$VERSION_NUMBER/*.yaml, e.g. https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/dashboard/previous/v0.32.0/release.yaml

    To install in read/write mode, use release-full.yaml.

    v0.31.0 and earlier used a different naming scheme for the release manifests:

    Mode Current v0.31.0 and earlier
    read-only release.yaml tekton-dashboard-release-readonly.yaml
    read/write release-full.yaml tekton-dashboard-release.yaml

  2. Monitor the installation using the following command until all components show a Running status:

    kubectl get pods --namespace tekton-pipelines --watch

    Note: Hit CTRL+C to stop monitoring.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Tekton Dashboard on your Kubernetes cluster.

Installing with the installer script

v0.8.0 and later releases provide an installer script to simplify deploying the Tekton Dashboard with custom options.

You can refer to the dev docs for more info on how to use the installer.

For example:

  • to install the latest release in read/write mode:

    curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tektoncd/dashboard/main/scripts/release-installer | \
  bash -s -- install latest --read-write

  • to install with access to a subset of namespaces instead of full cluster access:

    curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tektoncd/dashboard/main/scripts/release-installer | \
  bash -s -- install latest --read-write --tenant-namespaces tenant-namespace1,tenant-namespace2

    This will add the --namespaces arg to the Dashboard deployment and create a RoleBinding in each of the specified namespaces with role tekton-dashboard-tenant granted to the Dashboard ServiceAccount.

  • to install with support for loading logs from an external source:

    curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tektoncd/dashboard/main/scripts/release-installer | \
  bash -s -- install latest --read-write --external-logs <logs-provider-url>

    See Tekton Dashboard walk-through - Logs persistence for details

Accessing the Dashboard

By default, the Dashboard is not exposed outside the cluster.

There are several solutions described below for accessing the Dashboard UI depending on your setup.

Using kubectl proxy

The Dashboard can be accessed through its ClusterIP Service by running kubectl proxy.

Assuming tekton-pipelines is the install namespace for the Dashboard, run the following command:

kubectl proxy

Browse http://localhost:8001/api/v1/namespaces/tekton-pipelines/services/tekton-dashboard:http/proxy/ to access your Dashboard.

Using kubectl port-forward

An alternative way to access the Dashboard is using kubectl port-forward.

Assuming tekton-pipelines is the install namespace for the Dashboard, run the following command:

kubectl --namespace tekton-pipelines port-forward svc/tekton-dashboard 9097:9097

Browse http://localhost:9097 to access your Dashboard.

Using an Ingress rule

A more advanced solution is to expose the Dashboard through an Ingress rule.

This way the Dashboard can be accessed as a regular website without requiring kubectl.

Assuming you have an ingress controller up and running in your cluster, and that tekton-pipelines is the install namespace for the Dashboard, run the following command to create the Ingress resource:

# replace DASHBOARD_URL with the hostname you want for your dashboard
# the hostname should be setup to point to your ingress controller
DASHBOARD_URL=dashboard.domain.tld
kubectl apply -n tekton-pipelines -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: tekton-dashboard
  namespace: tekton-pipelines
spec:
  rules:
  - host: $DASHBOARD_URL
    http:
      paths:
      - pathType: ImplementationSpecific
        backend:
          service:
            name: tekton-dashboard
            port:
              number: 9097
EOF

You can now access the Dashboard UI at http(s)://dashboard.domain.tld in your browser (assuming the host configured in the ingress is dashboard.domain.tld)

Notes:

  • The exact Ingress resource definition may vary a little depending on the ingress controller installed in the cluster. Some specific annotations may be required for the ingress controller to process the Ingress resource correctly
  • If you don’t have access to a domain you can use the freely available nip.io service

An example using the NGINX ingress controller to expose the Dashboard on a specific path instead of at the root of the domain:

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: tekton-dashboard
  namespace: tekton-pipelines
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /$2
spec:
  rules:
  - host: domain.tld
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /tekton(/|$)(.*)
        backend:
          service:
            name: tekton-dashboard
            port:
              number: 9097

You can then access the Dashboard UI at http(s)://domain.tld/tekton/

Access control

The Dashboard does not provide its own authentication or authorization, however it will pass on any authentication headers provided to it by a proxy deployed in front of the Dashboard. These are then handled by the Kubernetes API server allowing for full access control via Kubernetes RBAC. In case of forbidden access the Dashboard will display corresponding error notifications.

See the walk-throughs for an example of enabling authentication using oauth2-proxy.

By default the Dashboard accesses resources and performs actions in the cluster using the permissions granted to its own ServiceAccount (i.e. the tekton-dashboard ServiceAccount in the tekton-pipelines namespace). If you wish to have the Dashboard perform actions on behalf of the authenticated user or some other ServiceAccount this can be achieved via user impersonation. This is known to work with a number of popular solutions including oauth2-proxy, Keycloak, OpenUnison, Traefik, Istio’s EnvoyFilter, and more.

Typically when configuring impersonation you would have the proxy forward its ServiceAccount token in the Authorization header, and details of the user and groups in the Impersonate-User and Impersonate-Group headers respectively. See the docs of your chosen solution for details.

When using a reverse proxy, with impersonation headers or the user’s account, you should remove the Dashboard’s privileges to better maintain a “least privileged” approach. This will make it less likely that the Dashboard’s ServiceAccount will be abused:

kubectl delete clusterrolebinding -l rbac.dashboard.tekton.dev/subject=tekton-dashboard
kubectl delete rolebinding -l rbac.dashboard.tekton.dev/subject=tekton-dashboard -n tekton-pipelines

If you’re using one of these proxies to provide authentication but still want to use the Dashboard’s ServiceAccount to access the Kubernetes APIs you may need to modify the proxy config to prevent it from sending the Authorization header on upstream requests to the Dashboard. Some examples of relevant config:

Uninstalling the Dashboard on Kubernetes

The Dashboard can be uninstalled by running the following command:

kubectl delete --filename https://storage.googleapis.com/tekton-releases/dashboard/latest/release.yaml

The above command assumes that the current latest version was installed, refer to Installing Tekton Dashboard on Kubernetes to find the correct --filename argument if another version was installed.

Next steps

To get started with Tekton Dashboard, see the tutorial.

To add more functionality to your Tekton Dashboard, see the Tekton Dashboard extensions

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.