Kubernetes context is not set - kubernetes

Question

I have this config file
apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
server: [REDACTED] // IP of my cluster
name: staging
contexts:
- context:
cluster: staging
user: ""
name: staging-api
current-context: staging-api
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users: []
I run this command
kubectl config --kubeconfig=kube-config use-context staging-api
I get this message
Switched to context "staging-api".
I then run
kubectl get pods
and I get this message
The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?
As far as I can tell from the docs
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/configure-access-multiple-clusters/
I'm doing it right. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

Yes, Try the following steps to access the kubernetes cluster. This steps assumes that you have your k8s certificates in /etc/kubernetes.
You need to setup the cluster name, Kubeconfig, User and Kube cert file in following variables and then simply run those commands:
CLUSTER_NAME="kubernetes"
KCONFIG=admin.conf
KUSER="kubernetes-admin"
KCERT=admin
cd /etc/kubernetes/
$ kubectl config set-cluster ${CLUSTER_NAME} \
--certificate-authority=pki/ca.crt \
--embed-certs=true \
--server=https://${KUBERNETES_PUBLIC_ADDRESS}:6443 \
--kubeconfig=${KCONFIG}
$ kubectl config set-credentials kubernetes-admin \
--client-certificate=admin.crt \
--client-key=admin.key \
--embed-certs=true \
--kubeconfig=/etc/kubernetes/admin.conf
$ kubectl config set-context ${KUSER}#${CLUSTER_NAME} \
--cluster=${CLUSTER_NAME} \
--user=${KUSER} \
--kubeconfig=${KCONFIG}
$ kubectl config use-context ${KUSER}#${CLUSTER_NAME} --kubeconfig=${KCONFIG}
$ kubectl config view --kubeconfig=${KCONFIG}
After this you will be able to access the cluster. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You need to fetch the credentials of the running cluster. Try this:
gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster_name> --zone <zone_name>
More info:
https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/container/clusters/get-credentials

Answer 3

I've got the same problem like mentioned in the title.
When I executed:
kubectl config current-context
The output was:
error: current-context is not set
And in my case it was indentation problem.
One white-space before current-context caused me a few hours of debugging:
contexts:
- context:
cluster: arn:aws:eks:us-east-2:...:cluster/...
user: arn:aws:eks:us-east-2:...:cluster/...
name: arn:aws:eks:us-east-2:...:cluster/...
current-context: arn:aws:eks:us-east-2:...:cluster/... <-Whitespace at the begging of the row was the source of the error.

Answer 4

I had the same issue on a mac m1...
The problem was that i am using kubectx and kubens, so that tools are ones that are controlling context and namespace.
In this situation The correct command has to be
kubectx staging-api
More information on the Official Repository