Kubernetes dashboard error messages: configmaps is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource

Question

The Kubernetes dashboard outputs a bunch of error messages.

Should you ignore them? If not, how do you fix them?

warning
configmaps is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "configmaps" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

warning
persistentvolumeclaims is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "persistentvolumeclaims" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

warning
secrets is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "secrets" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

warning
services is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "services" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

warning
ingresses.extensions is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "ingresses" in API group "extensions" in the namespace "default"

warning
daemonsets.apps is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "daemonsets" in API group "apps" in the namespace "default"

warning
events is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "events" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

warning
jobs.batch is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "jobs" in API group "batch" in the namespace "default"

warning
cronjobs.batch is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "cronjobs" in API group "batch" in the namespace "default"

warning
replicationcontrollers is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "replicationcontrollers" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

warning
statefulsets.apps is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:deployment-controller" cannot list resource "statefulsets" in API group "apps" in the namespace "default"

Answer 1

It looks like your cluster is RBAC enabled and the deployment-controller is missing a service account defined in the deployment-controller pod(s). You should be able to easily mitigate this issue by adding this SA and it's Roles/Bindings.

Two ways to do it.

You can create the binding with simple one liner from CLI or YAML way:

$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding deployment-controller --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:deployment-controller

If you want to define ClusterRoleBinding in YAML file - create the below file with some name say dashboard-rb.yaml and execute specific command:

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: deployment-controller
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: deployment-controller
  namespace: kube-system

 $ kubectl create -f dashboard-rb.yaml

Take a look: kubernetes-dashboard-access-warnings, accessing-rbac-enabled-kubernetes-dashboard, k8s-crb-warning, kubernetes-dashboard-is-forbidden-all-over-the-site.