Kubectl

The Botkube Kubectl executor plugin allows you to run the kubectl command directly in the chat window of each communication platform.

By default, just the read-only kubectl commands are supported. For enabling commands that require create, update or delete rules, you need to create specific (Cluster)Role and (Cluster)RoleBinding and reference it in the RBAC configuration. To learn more, refer to the RBAC section.

Enabling plugin

Self-hosted Botkube installation

The Kubectl plugin is hosted by the official Botkube plugin repository. First, make sure that the botkube repository is defined under plugins in the values.yaml file.

plugins:
  repositories:
    botkube:
      url: https://github.com/kubeshop/botkube/releases/download/v1.10.0/plugins-index.yaml

To enable Kubectl executor, add `--set 'executors.k8s-default-tools.botkube/kubectl.enabled=true' to a given Botkube install command.

Configuration Syntax

This plugin supports the following configuration:

# Configures the default Namespace for executing Botkube `kubectl` commands. If not set, uses the 'default'.
defaultNamespace: "default"
# Configures the interactive kubectl command builder.
interactiveBuilder:
  allowed:
    # Configures which K8s namespace are displayed in namespace dropdown.
    # If not specified, plugin needs to have access to fetch all Namespaces, otherwise Namespace dropdown won't be visible at all.
    namespaces: ["default"]
    # Configures which `kubectl` methods are displayed in commands dropdown.
    verbs: ["api-resources", "api-versions", "cluster-info", "describe", "explain", "get", "logs", "top"]
    # Configures which K8s resource are displayed in resources dropdown.
    resources: ["deployments", "pods", "namespaces"]

The default configuration for Helm chart can be found in the values.yaml file.

Merging strategy

For all collected kubectl executors bindings, configuration properties are overridden based on the order of the binding list for a given channel. The priority is given to the last binding specified on the list. Empty properties are omitted.

Example

Consider such configuration in the Botkube self-hosted installation:

communications:
  "default-group":
    socketSlack:
      channels:
        "default":
          name: "random"
          bindings:
            executors:
              - kubectl-one
              - kubectl-two
              - kubectl-three

executors:
  "kubectl-one":
    kubectl:
      enabled: true
      config:
        defaultNamespace: "default"
        interactiveBuilder:
          allowed:
            verbs: ["api-resources", "api-versions", "cluster-info", "describe", "explain", "get", "logs", "top"]
            resources: ["deployments", "pods", "namespaces"]
  "kubectl-two":
    kubectl:
      enabled: true
      config:
        interactiveBuilder:
          allowed:
            namespaces: ["default"]
            verbs: ["api-resources", "top"]
  "kubectl-three":
    kubectl:
      enabled: false
      config:
        interactiveBuilder:
          allowed:
            namespaces: ["kube-system"]

We can see that:

• Only the default namespace is displayed in the interactive command builder. This is a result of merging kubectl-one and kubectl-two. The kubectl-three binding is not taken into account as it's disabled.
• Only the api-resources and top verbs are displayed in the interactive command builder as they are overridden by the kubectl-two.
• All resources defined in kubectl-one are displayed in the interactive command builder as other enabled bindings don't override this property.