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Working with the agent for Kubernetes (FREE)

Use the following tasks when working with the agent for Kubernetes.

View your agents

Introduced in GitLab 14.8, the installed agentk version is displayed on the Agent tab.

Prerequisite:

  • You must have at least the Developer role.

To view the list of agents:

  1. On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find the project that contains your agent configuration file.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters.
  3. Select Agent tab to view clusters connected to GitLab through the agent.

On this page, you can view:

  • All the registered agents for the current project.
  • The connection status.
  • The version of agentk installed on your cluster.
  • The path to each agent configuration file.

View an agent's activity information

Introduced in GitLab 14.6.

The activity logs help you to identify problems and get the information you need for troubleshooting. You can see events from a week before the current date. To view an agent's activity:

  1. On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find the project that contains your agent configuration file.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters.
  3. Select the agent you want to see activity for.

The activity list includes:

  • Agent registration events: When a new token is created.
  • Connection events: When an agent is successfully connected to a cluster.

The connection status is logged when you connect an agent for the first time or after more than an hour of inactivity.

View and provide feedback about the UI in this epic.

Debug the agent

The grpc_level was introduced in GitLab 15.1.

To debug the cluster-side component (agentk) of the agent, set the log level according to the available options:

  • error
  • warning
  • info
  • debug

The agent has two loggers:

  • A general purpose logger, which defaults to info.
  • A gRPC logger, which defaults to error.

One can change their log levels by using a top-level observability section in the agent configuration file, for example setting the levels to debug and warning:

observability:
  logging:
    level: debug
    grpc_level: warning

When grpc_level is set to info or below, there will be a lot of gRPC logs.

Commit the configuration changes and inspect the agent service logs:

kubectl logs -f -l=app=gitlab-agent -n gitlab-agent

For more information about debugging, see troubleshooting documentation.

Reset the agent token

  • Introduced in GitLab 14.9.
  • Introduced in GitLab 14.10, the agent token can be revoked from the UI.

To reset the agent token without downtime:

  1. Create a new token:
    1. On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find your project.
    2. On the left sidebar, select Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters.
    3. Select the agent you want to create a token for.
    4. On the Access tokens tab, select Create token.
    5. Enter token's name and description (optional) and select Create token.
  2. Securely store the generated token.
  3. Use the token to install the agent in your cluster and to update the agent to another version.
  4. To delete the token you're no longer using, return to the token list and select Revoke ({remove}).

Remove an agent

You can remove an agent by using the GitLab UI or the GraphQL API. The agent and any associated tokens are removed from GitLab, but no changes are made in your Kubernetes cluster. You must clean up those resources manually.

Remove an agent through the GitLab UI

Introduced in GitLab 14.7.

To remove an agent from the UI:

  1. On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find the project that contains the agent configuration file.
  2. From the left sidebar, select Infrastructure > Kubernetes clusters.
  3. In the table, in the row for your agent, in the Options column, select the vertical ellipsis ({ellipsis_v}).
  4. Select Delete agent.

Remove an agent with the GitLab GraphQL API

  1. Get the <cluster-agent-token-id> from a query in the interactive GraphQL explorer.

    • For GitLab.com, go to https://gitlab.com/-/graphql-explorer to open GraphQL Explorer.
    • For self-managed GitLab, go to https://gitlab.example.com/-/graphql-explorer, replacing gitlab.example.com with your instance's URL.
    query{
  project(fullPath: "<full-path-to-agent-configuration-project>") {
    clusterAgent(name: "<agent-name>") {
      id
      tokens {
        edges {
          node {
            id
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

  2. Remove an agent record with GraphQL by deleting the clusterAgentToken.

    mutation deleteAgent {
  clusterAgentDelete(input: { id: "<cluster-agent-id>" } ) {
    errors
  }
}

mutation deleteToken {
  clusterAgentTokenDelete(input: { id: "<cluster-agent-token-id>" }) {
    errors
  }
}

  3. Verify whether the removal occurred successfully. If the output in the Pod logs includes unauthenticated, it means that the agent was successfully removed:

    {
    "level": "warn",
    "time": "2021-04-29T23:44:07.598Z",
    "msg": "GetConfiguration.Recv failed",
    "error": "rpc error: code = Unauthenticated desc = unauthenticated"
}

  4. Delete the agent in your cluster:

    kubectl delete -n gitlab-kubernetes-agent -f ./resources.yml