HTTP Repositories

Updated Aug 19, 2022 ·

Overview

This guide shows how to connect FluxCD to a Helm chart repository hosted over HTTP.

For simplicity, we'll be using the private repository ChartMuseum (from previous lab) as the HTTP Helm repository.

A few notes:

I'm running the lab in a Windows 10 machine
Tools used: Docker Desktop, WSL2
A Kubernetes cluster is using kind
Flux is running inside the Kubernetes cluster
Gitlab is used for the Git repositories

Flux connecting to the HTTP repository:

The private repository is deployed as a container in the same Windows machine
For user to connect to the private repository via HTTP, use the 127.0.0.1:8080
For Flux to connect to the private repository via HTTP, use the host.docker.internal:8080

Pre-requisites

Project Directory

info

Make sure to go through the pre-requisites before proceeding to the next steps

If you followed the steps in setting up Flux, your project directory should have the following files:

$ tree
.
├── README.md
└── charts
└── clusters
    └── dev
        └── flux-system
            ├── gotk-components.yaml
            ├── gotk-sync.yaml
            ├── kustomization.yaml

3 directories, 6 files

To organize the manifests, we will create folders for each lab, along with their respective kustomization.yaml file.

For this lab, create the helm-repos-http directory:

mkdir clusters/dev/helm-repos-http

Create the Helm Repository

info

Make sure ChartMuseum is deployed and listening on port 8080 before proceeding with the steps below.

Start by defining the Helm repository resource in your cluster directory. In the cluster folder, create a new YAML file for the HelmRepository

# clusters/dev/helm-repos-http/localhttprepo.yaml
---
apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: HelmRepository
metadata:
  name: local-http-repo
  namespace: default
spec:
  interval: 5m0s
  url: http://host.docker.internal:8080  ## this is the ChartMuseum address
  secretRef:
    name: local-http-repo-secret
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: local-http-repo-secret
  namespace: default
stringData:
  username: chartuser
  password: ***********

This tells FluxCD to pull charts from the HTTP Helm repo every 5 minutes.

Create Helm Release Resource

Now define the HelmRelease that will use the repository.

# clusters/dev/helm-repos-http/busybox-helm-release.yaml
apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2beta1
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: helmrelease-busybox
  namespace: default
spec:
  interval: 1m
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: busybox            ## Chart name and version
      version: 0.1.0
      interval: 1m
      sourceRef:
        kind: HelmRepository    
        name: local-http-repo   ## Created in the previous step
        namespace: default

This will deploy the busybox chart from the defined repo every 1 minute.

Add to `kustomization`

Add the files to the kustomization.yaml to ensre Flux watch for the changes:

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
- gotk-components.yaml
- gotk-sync.yaml
- podinfo-repo.yaml
- podinfo-customization.yaml
- nginx-helm-release.yaml
- busybox-helm-release.yaml
- localhttprepo.yaml

Commit and Push the Changes

After writing the YAML, commit and push it to your Git repository.

## Make sure main branch is updated 
git checkout main 
git pull

## Create the new branck then push
git checkout -b local-http-helm-repo
git add .
git commit -m "Add Helm repo and busybox release"
git push origin local-http-helm-repo

After pushing, merge the changes to the main branch. Since we are using Gitlab in this setup, login to the Gitlab UI and go to the repository. We should see a Create merge request at the top. Click it and provide a title and description to the merge request in the next step.

In a typical team setting, developers create merge requests which are then reviewed and approved by other team members. For this lab, you can go ahead and click Approve and Merge directly.

Trigger Reconciliation

Once changes are merged, tell FluxCD to sync the state.

flux reconcile kustomization flux-system --with-source

Verify deployment:

$ kubectl get helmrelease  
NAME                  AGE   READY   STATUS
helmrelease-busybox   8m    True    Helm install succeeded for release default/helmrelease-busybox.v1 with chart busybox@0.1.0

$ kubectl get helmrepo
NAME              URL                                AGE    READY   STATUS
local-http-repo   http://host.docker.internal:8080   8m5s   True    stored artifact: revision 'sha256:be893c02c34a98008a65f26812c0492525896cc686e3946e58637cc026451211'

$ kubectl get po
NAME                                   READY   STATUS             RESTARTS        AGE
helmrelease-busybox-64cbf9fb98-xhh7g   1/1     Running            0               87s  

Troubleshooting

To check if the Helm repository is created:

$ flux get sources helm -A

NAMESPACE       NAME            REVISION        SUSPENDED  READY   MESSAGE
default         local-http-repo    sha256:a1af7d4c False      True    stored artifact: revision 'sha256:a1af7d4c'

If you're running the test locally inside a Windows machine, you may need to se the url for the ChartMuseum address to:

apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: HelmRepository
metadata:
  name: local-http-repo
  namespace: default
spec:
  interval: 5m0s
  url: http://host.docker.internal:8080  ## this is the ChartMuseum address
  secretRef:
    name: local-http-repo-secret

For other errors, please see General Troubleshooting.

Overview​

Pre-requisites​

Project Directory​

Create the Helm Repository​

Create Helm Release Resource​

Add to kustomization​

Commit and Push the Changes​

Trigger Reconciliation​

Troubleshooting​