Telepresence fails, saying my namespace doesn't exist, pointing to problems with my k8s context - kubernetes

Question

I've been working with a bunch of k8s clusters for a while, using kubectl from the command line to examine information. I don't actually call kubectl directly, I wrap it in multiple scripting layers. I also don't use contexts, as it's much easier for me to specify different clusters in a different way. The resulting kubectl command line has explicit --server, --namespace, and --token parameters (and one other flag to disable tls verify).
This all works fine. I have no trouble with this.
However, I'm now trying to use telepresence, which doesn't give me a choice (yet) of not using contexts to configure this. So, I now have to figure out how to use contexts.
I ran the following (approximate) command:
kubectl config set-context mycontext --server=https://host:port --namespace=abc-def-ghi --insecure-skip-tls-verify=true --token=mytoken
And it said: "Context "mycontext " modified."
I then ran "kubectl config view -o json" and got this:
{
"kind": "Config",
"apiVersion": "v1",
"preferences": {},
"clusters": [],
"users": [],
"contexts": [
{
"name": "mycontext",
"context": {
"cluster": "",
"user": "",
"namespace": "abc-def-ghi"
}
}
],
"current-context": "mycontext"
}
That doesn't look right to me.
I then ran something like this:
telepresence --verbose --swap-deployment mydeployment --expose 8080 --run java -jar target/my.jar -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=5000,server=y,suspend=n
And it said this:
T: Error: Namespace 'abc-def-ghi' does not exist
Update:
And I can confirm that this isn't a problem with telepresence. If I just run "kubectl get pods", it fails, saying "The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused". That tells me it obviously can't connect to the k8s server. The key is my "set-context" command. It's obviously not working, and I don't understand what I'm missing.

Answer 1

You don't have any clusters or credentials defined in your configuration. First, you need to define a cluster:
$ kubectl config set-cluster development --server=https://1.2.3.4 --certificate-authority=fake-ca-file
Then something like this for the user:
$ kubectl config set-credentials developer --client-certificate=fake-cert-file --client-key=fake-key-seefile
Then you define your context based on your cluster, user and namespace:
$ kubectl config set-context dev-frontend --cluster=development --namespace=frontend --user=developer
More information here
Your config should look something like this:
$ kubectl config view -o json
{
"kind": "Config",
"apiVersion": "v1",
"preferences": {},
"clusters": [
{
"name": "development",
"cluster": {
"server": "https://1.2.3.4",
"certificate-authority-data": "DATA+OMITTED"
}
}
],
"users": [
{
"name": "developer",
"user": {
"client-certificate": "fake-cert-file",
"client-key": "fake-key-seefile"
}
}
],
"contexts": [
{
"name": "dev-frontend",
"context": {
"cluster": "development",
"user": "developer",
"namespace": "frontend"
}
}
],
"current-context": "dev-frontend"
}