FluxCD - Bootstrapping with Gitlab

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To observe changes in the git (see Version Control - Git) or helm-releases (see Helm), The Flux components need to be deployed in the cluster. The following tutorial describes how to do this.

Result: Flux components are deployed in the cluster. The system is integrated with your git repo and watches it for applying changes.

Tutorial

source: https://fluxcd.io/flux/installation/bootstrap/gitlab/

To get started, it is required to deploy the flux system in a dedicated namespace. The basic steps are:

brew install fluxcd/tap/flux

Type the following commands to create the necessary directory structure (source: https://fluxcd.io/flux/installation/configuration/boostrap-customization/):

cd myfluxrepo
mkdir -p clusters/my-cluster/flux-system
cd clusters/my-cluster/flux-system
touch gotk-components.yaml gotk-sync.yaml kustomization.yaml

Add the following to the kustomization.yaml file:

apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
  - gotk-components.yaml
  - gotk-sync.yaml

Go to gitlab again and create a personal access token (PAT) according to the flux documenation. It will require full api access.

Copy the value of the token. Export the token value as follows:

export GITLAB_TOKEN=<token-value>. # full api token

Use the following command to bootstrap the cluster:

flux bootstrap gitlab \
  --deploy-token-auth \ # alternative --token-auth
  --owner=my-gitlab-username \
  --repository=my-project \
  --branch=master \
  --path=clusters/my-cluster \
  --personal./

param desc

• --deploy-token-auth: will use the the PAT to make changes to the repo once, afterwards it’ll store a readonly token in the cluster
• token-auth: will store the PAT continuously in the cluster. Will enable features like image-automation or auto-version-bumps
• --owner=my-gitlab-username: Specifies the GitLab namespace (user or group) where the repository resides.
• --repository=my-project: The name of the GitLab repository that will store the Flux configuration.
• --branch=master: The Git branch Flux will use for bootstrapping and continuous reconciliation.
• --path=clusters/my-cluster: The path within the repository that contains the Kubernetes manifests for this cluster.
• --personal: Indicates that the repository is located under a personal GitLab account rather than a group.

Flux has now a reference to the git repository for applying changes to the deployment. This git repo get shown as follows:

kubectl get gitrepositories.source.toolkit.fluxcd.io -n flux-system